Computación en la nube

Cloud computing is a subscription-based delivery model that provides scalability, fast delivery and greater IT efficiencies. It has removed many physical and financial barriers to aligning IT needs with evolving business goals. With a promise to deliver better applications, platforms and infrastructure quickly and cheaply, cloud computing has become a major force for business innovation across all industries.

• History
•     
• Today's World
•     
• Who Uses It
•     
• How It Works
•     
• Next Steps

History & evolution of cloud computing

The term "cloud computing" came into widespread use in the mid-2000s, but its heritage can be traced to a number of computing business models beginning in the 1960s that enabled customers to purchase computing time on large mainframe computers rather than buying the hardware and software themselves.

In the 1970s, the major hardware and software vendors began using virtual machines as a way of providing independent, multiple platforms and operating systems on a host server. This improvement on the shared mainframe approach enabled a communication and data revolution by enabling multiple computing environments on a single physical system.

Telecommunications companies realized that they could provide the new private network connections far cheaper but with the same quality of service as their old point-to-point data offerings. By the 1990s, telecommunications companies were creating virtual private network (VPN) services on surplus network bandwidth, allowing companies to host their own software and data centers. The term "cloud" came into common use during this period because communication network diagrams represent the handoff between the service provider and the user with a cloud icon.

Building on that early cloud foundation was a series of intermediate, but crucial, steps that integrated emerging technologies and business approaches that have become cloud computing as we use it today. Some of those enabling advances include:

Cloud computing terms to know

La computación en la nube es un modelo de entrega por suscripción que ofrece adaptabilidad, entrega rápida y mejor eficiencia en TI. Ha permitido la eliminación de innumerables barreras físicas y financieras para nivelar las necesidades en TI con los cambiantes objetivos de negocio. Con la promesa de ofrecer unas mejores aplicaciones, plataformas e infraestructura de forma rápida y económica, la computación en la nube se ha convertido en una gran fuerza para la innovación de negocio a lo largo de todas las industrias.

El auge de Internet y de la red informática mundial (World Wide Web) y su capacidad para conectar enormes cantidades de ordenadores fueron el catalizador que permitió que estas tecnologías basadas en la nube estuvieran completamente integradas para la creación de computación en la nube moderna.

Cloud computing in today’s world

Cloud computing’s ability to provide elastic scalability, faster service delivery, greater IT efficiency and a subscription-based accounting model has broken down many of the physical and financial barriers to aligning IT with evolving business goals. With the promise to deliver better business models and services quickly and cheaply, cloud computing has become a major driver of business innovation across all industries.

Today, cloud computing has moved to the center of many organizations’ technology strategies. Cloud computing’s technological advantages – the ability to scale computing resources up and down, more reliable network connections and the ubiquity of big data – make it appealing to organizations of all sizes.

And the cloud provides not only delivery of software services, but also data storage. The growth and flexibility offered by cloud infrastructure have enabled organizations to explore the full potential of data assets in a fast and cost-effective manner. Cloud platforms are now an integral part of many organizations’ data strategies.

However, the shift to cloud has not been without problems. Migration of critical business data from on-site, secured data centers to storage on public cloud platforms has raised concerns over data security. This has been the case specifically around personal, customer data storage.

How cloud computing works & key technologies

Cloud computing encompasses business applications and data storage, networking and processing capabilities, too. It enables organizations of all sizes to take advantage of powerful analytical technologies such as natural language processing and artificial intelligence. If computing services are available in the marketplace, they’re almost certainly available via the cloud.

For users, moving critical business activities to the cloud leads to greater productivity. Placing your data stores and software services on the cloud means they are no longer stored on individual servers or computers and are then available through a web-based interface. This allows users to access services from wherever they are via a web connection to a cloud platform using almost any device. The cloud makes collaboration easy and nearly effortless.

Cloud computing won't change the way your organization needs software services to be delivered, but will change how IT departments support their organizations. With cloud computing, you can reap a number of benefits:

• Infrastructure. Reduce hardware spending by sharing infrastructure and other resources on the cloud, saving procurement cycles and money.
• Scalability. Improve processing or store more data on the cloud with the ability to expand or reduce computing resources as needed.
• Automation. Reduce the need for additional personnel to manage software updates or version compatibility with different operational systems and databases.
• Mobility. Access information from the cloud wherever and whenever via web browsers to improve the productivity of an increasingly mobile workforce.
• Collaboration. Share documents, data and computing solutions in the cloud to reduce governance issues related to platform accessibility.
• Subscription. Transitioning to ongoing subscription licensing reduces the upfront expense of cloud computing and provides an opportunity to use operational budgets rather than capital expenditures.

Cloud computing standard service models

Now you need to decide how you want those services delivered. As with the cloud hosting options, there are three service delivery options to consider – software as a service, platform as a service and infrastructure as a service.

Platform as a service (PaaS)

PaaS provides the ability to create and manage custom cloud applications. It enables users to deploy their created or acquired applications using programming languages, frameworks and tools that are provided by the cloud host. The user doesn't manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure (networks, servers, operating systems and storage), but does have control over deployed applications and possibly the application-hosting configurations.

Using PaaS is ideal when you have lots of developers working on the same project or if you're using several vendors. In many ways, it helps simplify the creation and rapid deployment of apps.

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

But what if you just want to let someone else manage all that? Then you need IaaS. It is considered the most basic “as-a-service” level where infrastructure equipment and resources are provided to clients. These can include storage, networks, processing and other general computing resources. The IaaS user can run software from the cloud; access operating systems, applications and frameworks; and perform the general administrative functions, but does not manage or control the underlying infrastructure.

IaaS provides cloud infrastructure that is typically accessed by IT and operations. IaaS delivers cloud infrastructure support for SaaS and PaaS. PaaS can provide development and support for SaaS, but it is not required because SaaS can be delivered on top of IaaS.