Good question…  The concept of cloud computing has been with us for several years. It was first adopted as we now know it by the giant Internet providers, such as Google and Amazon, midway through 2000. These operators were looking for a competitive edge by offering mass services and infrastructure and "leasing" it to third parties, thus achieving economies of scale to drive price competitiveness and reach more businesses and individuals. Segments that were unable to benefit from this technological development, because they lacked the sufficient resources or investment to adopt certain IT solutions.   

The evolution of this "as a service" business model has led to a range of products becoming available. From Basic infrastructure (IaaS) to Software (SaaS), as well as Platforms (PaaS) to support the transparent development of applications that can then be then consumed as a service on a payment-for-use basis.

 

Applications and services are increasingly demanding... and they must factor in a variety of trends linked to mobility, big data processing and storage, device integration and management (the Internet of things), exposure and use via social networks…. and of course they have to work in the Cloud, sharing different customer contexts in a single instance (multitenancy) in order to optimize the resources used.

 

This trend is reflected in recent analyst reports on disruptive technology. Gartner refers to these elements as “The Nexus Forces”, while IDC talks directly of “The Third Platform” when referring to the combination of capacities demanded by the current and future markets.     

 

Soon talking of the Cloud will not make sense in isolation, because working in the Cloud will simply be one of many features that users demand from applications. With self-provisioning capabilities based on demand, to automatically scale and use just as much infrastructure as required, these platforms can be installed on different infrastructure and use the services of others; they will be able to scale linearly based on required use.

Having the right technology to support applications with such capacities will be essential to driving competitiveness. There are a number of elements that need to be considered:

• Having a Platform as a Service (PaaS) made up of reusable components and services and that supports the transparent development of cloud applications. Providing coverage and support to technological trends demanded by the current market (big data, IoT, mobility, Social Business, Cloud, etc.)
• Sustaining a portfolio of SaaS solutions and end2end services that can be provided via a proprietary or third party Market Place (such as Azure, Force.com, Google, etc.) and can be sold on a pay-for-use basis (as a service)
• Having a Managed Infrastructure service (proprietary, third party or hybrid) that allows the deployment of applications and services in an economic, secure and scalable fashion. Optimizing use of resources consumed by applications and services.
• Regarding methods and transformation, having a proprietary method to support technology consulting, in order to design and implement the migration of infrastructure and applications to cloud models (private, public or hybrid).   

Indra is very well positioned to offer end-to-end and cloud platform services. This is emphasized in the IDC report released early this year (http://www.indracompany.com/en/cloud-strategy).

With all these assets and services available to you, how come you're not already in the Cloud?