Cloud computing celebrates six decades since the American computer scientist Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider began to forge this concept. Today it is a mature and more relevant technology in the management of information and digital operations of any company, regardless of its size.
Organizations have understood that the capabilities offered by the Cloud are essential to drive their innovation. This is a technology that allows investment to be transformed from CAPEX (capital expenditure) to OPEX (operational expenditures). While CAPEX implies an investment such as the purchase of an asset, OPEX is the contracting of the right to use these assets as a service, and this translates into savings for organizations.
The Cloud solutions architect at CMA, Miguel Jiménez, explains that for a fraction of the cost, companies can host their systems and data in sites that have the most demanding security and business continuity requirements. Likewise, the user begins to have the latest versions of operating systems for his use and disregards the technological obsolescence of hardware and software.
“The monthly investment that a company will make in Cloud services is directly associated with productivity, since the existence of idle resources disappears and you only pay for the processing capacity that you are using. At the same time, it frees Information Technology (IT) staff from team management, allowing them to channel their efforts to develop technology management to support and strengthen business productivity,” Jiménez details.
Tailored solution
Cloud storage by itself is not a business solution, but must respond to a need such as production systems, data processing, backups, connectivity, among others. Once the company is clear about its objective or need with the cloud, it should be well advised to be certain of the comprehensive solution it requires.
In short, it is not just a matter of considering the type of storage to contract, but many additional and contractual technological elements, such as: penalty clauses for unplanned resources, data download costs and integration in the rest of the company’s communications, etc.
Sponsorship
“The space to hire is always a critical issue to define. A system with 100% processors and memory usually does not experience a crash; but if the disk is full, it can happen. For this reason, it is best to get good advice to acquire the space and project the growth of your needs”, recommends the CMA specialist.
The Cloud must guarantee a stable and redundant environment in accordance with the SLA (Service Level Agreement, service level that a client expects from its provider) contracted, in addition to having mechanisms to keep its physical equipment protected and supported by contracts with manufacturers.
Once a cloud computing service has been agreed upon, the success of migrating any project depends on having carried out a preliminary study and clearly understanding the interrelationship between the servers before moving them and being clear about how users consume the services on them. Having these clear premises, a 90% success rate will be achieved when moving them to the cloud.
Cloud 4.0
The Costa Rican companies CMA and CODISA have their own Cloud 4.0 supported by the latest HPE technology for cloud services, with the aim of providing IT services according to the specific needs of each company. “Before any quote, previous meetings are held to understand the relationships of the servers and simulations are carried out on the current ones to measure the real capacity consumed and not the assigned one. This is because in cloud services the idea is to have what we need and not idle capacity”, explains Miguel Jiménez.
Likewise, the Cloud 4.0 does not condition its clients to contracts for specific periods, the user is free to leave without penalties when he considers it. Another important differentiator is that there are no costs for downloading information. “We are a cloud with feet on the ground, we help them size and migrate their operations with total reliability”, concludes Jiménez.
