We could say that the innovation that was first implemented and accelerated the technological progress of the world was the spread of broadband internet connections – which are the nervous system – of increasingly interconnected societies and economies. The second and most important innovation is the cloud.
But what is the Cloud? The State as well as private companies are accelerating their transition to it, already using it extensively in their own Government Cloud, as far as the Public Sector is concerned. Technology giants Microsoft, AWS are announcing investments in various countries around the world, while the labor market is desperately asking for IT scientists.
Cloud is a simple idea implemented on a huge scale: For IT infrastructure, businesses and organizations rent the necessary computing resources from providers with huge datacenters, instead of their (small) datacenters. So the cloud is the huge global set of datacenters with huge computing power, storage space, network interface respectively, that provides this infrastructure to use.
But what are the advantages? The private DataCenter has the cost of acquiring and operating (physical) space of specific security specifications, power supply, air conditioning, network connection, purchase of equipment (includes computers, storage media, networks, etc.), installation, maintenance and management. Increased speed, response, or load requirements further increase maintenance costs, and often require secondary synchronization of datacenters.
In the Cloud, on the other hand, the organization / business simply requests and commits resources: “pieces” of the provider’s datacenter systems, and storage space, network equipment, connection speed, and whatever is necessary for its applications. It does not care about time, acquisition, installation costs, while it is immediate and economical: it achieves tremendous economies of scale, but also a “pay-as-you-go” model, as it pays for the resources it uses and for as long as it uses them.
This is how opex triumphs over capex. While the ability to commit additional resources when needed (eg increased traffic, closing fiscal year) and after release, gives flexibility unimaginable to date: There was costly surplus unused capacity, otherwise in times of stress the systems “suffered”. In addition, with multiple datacenters the global coverage, the choice of secondary location, is simple and intuitive. In the security of installations and systems, the protection devices (firewalls, security appliances, etc.) are the best, and available to all users.
The providers have management teams, security specialists, network and so on, just for this purpose. The cloud also brought optimized application execution platforms. You just “upload” your applications there, not caring about the installation and management of infrastructure, platform, database.
The cloud is the catalyst for the digital evolution of the global society. For the first time in the history of IT, small businesses can easily and quickly and cheaply develop the ability to expand their interface with other businesses and markets without armies of IT specialists. Technology has brought about the universality of solutions. The private and public sectors have embraced the provision of digital services in the Cloud, as a key element of development.
