The cloud application market is expected to reach $166.83 billion by 2024. Apps are changing the way companies deliver products and services, and they’re changing the way customers interact with those companies.

Key characteristics of a cloud application:

1. Easy access to data - view and edit your company’s information from anywhere in the world, day or night and share information with internal company peers or external partners. 

2. Flexible use models - use cloud apps on multiple devices - enabling employees to work from anywhere - or improve project collaboration for your workforce and complete tasks quicker than ever before

3. Lower costs for software updates and upgrades - improve cloud app development through user feedback and avoid costly upgrades for legacy software (required every few years). Pay only for what you need and when you need it 

4. On-demand self-service -  provision compute capabilities - such as server time and network storage - automatically without requiring human interaction with multiple service providers.

5. Broad network access - access the information you need when you need it with a variety of different form factors such as laptop, desktop, mobile phones, PDAs, etc.

6. Resource pooling - get access to compute resources using a multi-tenant model - with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to demand.

Cloud applications can generally be organized into 3 categories:

1. SaaS business solutions - that may require software integration support (e.g. collaboration software and CRMs) 
2. Enterprise-class software solutions - that may require deployment, customization or integration support to setup stand alone environments on-premise, private or public cloud where the client is responsible for managing the tech stack (e.g. back office applications for business operations like ERPs (Dynamics, SAP, Oracle), or resource management (SharePoint), or finance (Sage))
3.  Front end web and mobile solutions - requiring custom application development, feature enhancement or integration services (e.g. front office applications for internal/external clients to engage with the business).

By launching applications on Amazon's Cloud services, AWS’ customers achieved transformative benefits through business agility and improved business performance: 

The full advantage of cloud-native features can be seen in improved agility, performance, and scalability. Developing or re-architecting applications in Cloud is usually driven by strong business demand to scale, accelerate product and feature releases, and to reduce costs.

• Cost efficiency - do not need to buy expensive hardware and build your own server infrastructure. You only pay for the resources your cloud-based application uses.
• Scalability - cloud platforms can manage the scaling automatically, upscaling the resources when needed and downgrading when not
• Reliability – cloud networks have points of presence all over the world so if one data center does go down, there are others to take its place and your application will not be impacted
• Security – cloud service providers take great efforts to protect your information, through firewalls, so do not worry about data loss or hacker attacks
• Go global in minutes – Easily deploy your application in multiple regions around the world with just a few clicks. This means you can provide lower latency and a better experience for your customers at minimal cost.

Amazon Cloud customer examples

“Bristol-Myers Squibb runs simulations 98% faster, reducing clinical trial costs - improving conditions for patients.”

“MedStar rebuilt its patient engagement portal on AWS - reducing downtime from 120 minutes per month to less than five.”

“Unilever now launches new projects 75 percent faster.”

“Dow Jones increased its product development velocity by 30%.”