Embracing the Cloud: Unveiling the Digital Paradigm Shift

Much of our lives are no longer on Earth, but in the cloud. All the applications we use in our daily lives are consumed through the so-called "cloud computing". When we communicate with our friends on social networks, listen to music, watch videos on demand or use office automation tools for education or at work, we are relying on this ubiquitous, impalpable technology.

Cloud computing is a computer system that is consumed over the Internet. All use of your technology systems is processed, managed, updated, and stored in the cloud. Since the Internet is graphically represented as a cloud, Compaq Comptuer , the leading PC company at the time, coined the term cloud computing in 1996.

So instead of having this technology physically installed in our environment, either in an application on the computer or on a computer server, we access it remotely. This is the case with our email servers, such as Gmail; the collaborative home rental platforms Airbnb, or the Dropbox storage system. Each of these services is an example of a different type of cloud: software as a service (SaaS); platform as a service (PaaS); and infrastructure as a service, (IaaS) respectively.

Cloud operation is based on two key concepts: the front-end, which is what users see, and the back-end, which is where all the cloud technology systems are located. Both communicate through an intermediate system, the middleware, which manages the user's demands. To ensure the correct functioning of the cloud, there are backup copies in several places to avoid crashes due to network connection problems, and security is certified by encrypting data storage.

Salesforce was the company that popularized this technology in 1999, becoming the example of enterprise software that was consumed through the cloud, allowing software on demand, at low cost, and from anywhere. The paradigm shift meant that IT products became services, and we paid on a recurring basis for the use of these digital goods. Financially speaking, we moved from a capital expense to an operational one.

In the 2000s, the emergence of Amazon Web Services (AWS) , which provides the platform and infrastructure in the cloud, consolidated this technology. By accessing with programming interfaces, it allows easy access to the platform to create solutions and to be able to bill for their use. For example, the Netflix streaming platform runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS) , which allows it to process and analyze multiple terabytes of data daily, in a matter of milliseconds, to store, transfer and recommend video content to its users. This allows us to watch Netflix from any digital device with a browser or the App. Thanks to the cloud, Netflix is free from technological complexity and focuses on its business of providing the best entertainment.

The great advantage of using the cloud is to be able to access it from anywhere, if you have an internet connection, without being tied to a specific site. Since it is very easy to increase the services and we free the physical place of the office that would occupy a server, its consumption is more flexible; and the management of the maintenance and the updates are done by the provider. Little by little this technology has been adopted, to the point that, by 2024, the consulting firm Gartner estimates that the cloud will account for almost 50% of companies' technology spending.

However, there have been several barriers for technology adoption. The first was the reluctance of a third party to store corporate data on the same server with several companies. This was solved with the private cloud, which dedicates 100% of the infrastructure. Then came the geographical problem of data sovereignty. For example, if from a company in Europe we contract the cloud to any of the big providers, Amazon Web Services (AWS) , 谷歌 , IBM , or 微软 , all of them American, What regulation applies to our data? What happens if access is legally demanded? Data protection laws, and encryption techniques, which ensure that data cannot be accessed, have helped to solve this. For example, 谷歌 and Indra have reached an agreement this year to ensure greater data security and anatomy in Spain.

Published in El Mundo / Actualidad Economica on Feb 13, 2022

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