Roberto García Esteban

In the current state of maturity of Cloud services, we have all heard of terms such as SaaS (Software as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) or IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), related to different types of cloud services. In fact, the "as a Service" model with which Cloud Computing offers services over the Internet is a trend that continues to gain traction in all markets. SaaS (Software as a Service) services in particular, based on pay-as-you-go models, are already the de facto standard for accessing digital workplace service suites such as Microsoft Office, Google Workspace or Adobe Creative Suite. What is Everything as a Service (XaaS) However, a term that complements all of the above, XaaS (Everything as a Service), is recently becoming increasingly popular. XaaS represents how organisations are adopting the Cloud method of working with services based on monthly subscriptions to implement any type of services. For this reason, new and varied acronyms such as FaaS (Function as a Service), BPMaaS (Business Process Management as a Service) or ITaaS (IT as a Service) are also appearing. Even CaaS (Cybercrime as a Service) or RaaS (Ransomware as Service), the malware that some cybercriminals resell so that others can attack company systems. Cloud services transformation XaaS aims to convert occasional, one-time customers into recurring customers who pay a monthly fee. Customers get additional value by purchasing a combination of different services instead of buying them separately. The main purpose of XaaS services is to increase the value provided to the customer. This gives rise to concepts such as " servitization ", which describes the process by which a company that traditionally produces and sells goods and products, moves to selling services or a combination of products and services in a single package. The aim should not be to make more money for customers, but to provide them with more value. Cloud products and services available The idea behind XaaS is that any product or service, be it software or hardware, can be made available as a Cloud service, in the cloud. This new way of building services is a growing trend worldwide. A recent study by Deloitte reveals that 71% of companies say that XaaS makes up more than half of their company's technology The advantages of XaaS are obvious: Flexibility to build customised services. Scalability to easily make more resources available if needed. Pay-per-use to pay only for what you really need. XaaS implementation example An example of this trend is the integration of data management tools with cloud services, leading to services such as the one marketed by some aircraft engine manufacturers who offer their customers long-term leasing contracts for jet engines to maximise their flight potential. In this way, the manufacturer also maintains the engine, improving its efficiency and being able to recover it when it is no longer at full performance, because many of its components can be reused without any problem. Image: Freepik. The customer is charged a fixed amount per flight hour, and IoT sensors are added to the engine to obtain performance data which, after being stored and processed in the cloud, allows the engine's performance to be monitored throughout its lifetime. This improves engine efficiency, reduces engine failures, and ultimately lowers the final costs for the airline, which can forget about engine maintenance. It also saves money for the manufacturers, because more than half of the components of a used aircraft engine can be recovered, reused, or recycled for use in the manufacture of new engines. Cloud AI of Things ChatGPT and Cloud Computing: A happy marriage May 30, 2023 Challenges to adopting XaaS models Although the advantages of XaaS models are obvious, it is not always easy to move from a traditional product purchase model to a new 'everything as a service' model. The main obstacle is that customers do not always perceive the value of the new model. Returning to the previous example, if instead of aircraft engines we were talking about toasters, the value of paying a monthly fee for a toaster that connects to the cloud to be monitored and thus reduce its breakdowns is not so clear. The point is that the XaaS service avoids large outlays or investments, and also provides the customer with unique and differentiating value-added services throughout the life of the product. This combination of IoT devices and cloud services is likely to be something we will see more of in the future, as part of an XaaS-type service. Conclusion The Everything as a Service (XaaS) trend is significantly shaping the future evolution of cloud services. It seeks to offer a wide range of services on a subscription basis, transforming the way organisations interact with their customers by moving from one-off transactions to ongoing relationships. The XaaS model provides advantages such as service customisation, scalability and pay-per-use, making it a driver of efficiency and added value. As I said, going forward, we can expect to see even greater adoption of XaaS in various industries, driven by the combination of IoT devices and cloud services. This trend will not only improve business efficiency and profitability, but also enrich the customer experience. Ultimately, XaaS is defining the direction of Cloud services and promises to continue to be a key driver of innovation and competitiveness, offering a future full of new business opportunities for adopters. AI of Things Raspberry Pi for Edge AI: Artificial Intelligence at the Edge for Everyone May 8, 2023

Summer holidays are here and its time for almost all of us to take a well-deserved break. The activity of most companies is drastically reduced, although there are also others that follow the cliché of "making a killing" by multiplying their volume of activity in the summer months. In both cases, having fixed and inflexible IT resources means either wasting resources in the first case or failing to cover needs in the second. In other words, in summer, the greatest benefit of Cloud technology is particularly evident: making it easier for companies to adapt to peaks in demand, since with Cloud you only pay for what you actually consume. Therefore, if you need less storage or processing capacity, you will pay less for it, while if you need to temporarily reinforce resources, it is very easy to make them available quickly. It is estimated that with good planning of IT resource needs, you can save up to 15% on your IT resource bill during the summer months. Good planning of IT resource needs in the summer months can save up to 15% on IT bills with Cloud technology But one thing is for business activity to slow down in the summer; however, it is quite another for it to come to a complete halt. Those" closed for the holidays " days are long gone. Now, even if offices are half-empty, companies continue to sell and provide services to their customers thanks to the use of email, e-commerce, especially from mobile phones during the summer, downloads of apps of all kinds and backup services. Therefore, the continuity of business processes has to be ensured in summer just like during the rest of the year, and this is where Cloud Computing comes into play once again, as the data centres that house these processes are designed to overcome any unforeseen event (excessive heat, power cuts...) and are also constantly monitored and managed 24 hours a day, every day of the year to be able to deal with any incident that may arise in real time because the SLAs for cloud services are just as strict in summer as in any other month of the year. Cloud technology to access the workplace from any location (if necessary) Cloud Computing is part of the daily routine in many companies. Nowadays, planning an emergency solution to cover staff holidays makes no sense at all. On the contrary, business processes should be scheduled in advance so that they are easy to manage even during the holidays, allowing tasks to be delegated or alerts to be included so that important events are not overlooked. And although holidays are for disconnecting, everyone has to keep an eye on their email or resolve a small issue that may arise from the beach. The ease of teleworking from anywhere is another of the advantages of the Cloud, given that thanks to SaaS (Software as-a-Service) applications it is possible to use the same tools that you have at your fingertips in the office with the simple requirement of having an internet connection. Actions such as checking the status of an important order, authorising an operation or checking the receipt of an invoice can be carried out without any problem from our place of holiday if required. Cyber Security Out of Office: How to communicate your vacation while protecting your privacy and Cyber Security July 6, 2023 Peaceful holidays thanks to Cloud In short, Cloud Computing remains open during the holidays, even if the level of activity decreases, making it easier to maintain that activity even when half the company is away from its workstations. It also makes costs more flexible because the bill for cloud services will be lower if they are used less. In other words, we can peacefully go on holiday... and continue using cloud-based services such as language translation services, map downloads, navigation applications, streaming of all kinds of content, book downloads and the always-recommended backups so as not to lose those wonderful photos we take in the summer… So let's enjoy the holidays with the peace of mind of knowing that the business will continue to function thanks to the cloud and that the data will still be there in case we need to access it.

ChatGPT (you may not know that it stands for Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer) has become the talk of the town for its impressive ability to generate text that looks like it was written by a human, using a combination of both Machine Learning and Deep Learning algorithms. New use cases for this technology are emerging every day and many businesses are looking to integrate ChatGPT into their normal workflows. This is not the only artificial intelligence application we can use. Google is constantly announcing improvements to its Bard application, already available (for now in the US), which is able to generate longer texts than ChatGPT and also links in its free version to the fonts it used to generate its texts. This is useful for getting to the page and supplementing information or for including citations in papers. The relationship between ChatGPT and Cloud The relationship between ChatGPT and Cloud Computing is very close. OpenAI, the company that developed the application, uses the Microsoft Azure Cloud for this purpose. ChatGPT is already available within the Azure OpenAI Service, following the partnership established between OpenAI and Microsoft. ChatGPT can also be used in the Cloud to facilitate numerous tasks and processes. Both chatGPT and Bard or any other similar tool can open up a huge range of possibilities in the development of Cloud services. Here are some of them: Code generation ChatGPT has learned from millions and millions of code lines, which makes it a great tool for developers, although they should always keep in mind that this code may not be 100% correct. However, it is certainly a good starting point. It can also be used to remove bugs from code that has already been written, which will help developers test and correct their code. AI OF THINGS How to start programming in Artificial Intelligence: languages, tools and recommendations January 18, 2023 In addition, it can automatically generate notes and comments when developers create or make changes to their code to explain the latest updates. In the same way that real estate companies already use ChatGPT to write descriptions of their properties, the same approach is used by ecommerce websites to automatically create descriptions of the new items they add to their catalogue. Human interaction AI-based chatbots already exist in many customer services, but usually these chatbots handle pre-set responses that sound impersonal and unhelpful. However, integrating chatGPT with a company's cloud services will facilitate customer and employee interactions with the company by allowing requests for order cancellations, refunds, complaints, returns, etc. to be sent. Photo: Emiliano Vittoriosi / Unsplash And beyond customer service, they can also be very useful in training for employees, for instance. Customisation The ability to generate content in real-time is valuable for brands that use personalisation as a differentiator in their marketing strategies. Since ChatGPT stores a user's previous queries, it can provide highly personalised responses and also allows you to take personalisation a step further by offering a cost-effective method of creating content that is unique to each user. This can generate fully personalised emails or purchase recommendations, for example. It is essential to integrate ChatGPT with the CRM or ERP, usually Cloud-based, that most companies already use to achieve these improvements. Work optimisation ChatGPT can analyse large amounts of text and generate summaries, which is a valuable feature that transforms the use of cloud-based collaboration tools, allowing for example summarising email threads or generating meeting records. It is also possible to summarise complex documents such as contracts, SLAs, or company policies so that instead of having to go through all the documents stored in a cloud repository, chatGPT can produce a summary in a matter of seconds. Another use case for the integration of ChatGPT with Cloud services is to facilitate the summary of customer service tickets, integrating with the cloud CRM that each company has. AI OF THINGS Can Artificial Intelligence understand emotions? May 23, 2023 However... It is wise not to overestimate ChatGPT. Its responses are logical and coherent and facilitate some tasks, but it also uses generic content that is not always perfectly customised. There have also been many errors in its responses, in addition to the possible security problems reported. It is a tool that needs to be used cautiously, but at the same time it is obvious that it has great advantages. Integrating chatGPT with the cloud services a company is using will transform virtually every business process in any company. The number of use cases is very large, so there is no doubt that the Cloud—ChatGPT combination is leading us to one of the biggest technological revolutions of this century. Featured image: D Koi / Unsplash.

It was George Favaloro and Sean O'Sullivan, managers of Compaq Computer, who first used the expression "Cloud Computing" in 1996, and since then, the term has become so popular that I already meet primary school children who know, for example, that Siri does not live inside iPads but much further away, "in the cloud". However, as technology develops, a hodgepodge of terms and acronyms appear that are difficult for non-technologists to understand. So the intention of this post is to try to explain these terms in a simple way in order to explain the details of the very general concept of "the cloud”. Cloud terms glossary API: “Application Programming Interface”. It is the standard mechanism for communication between applications. It is an interface that allows different applications to request data and deliver it in a predefined format and according to specific rules. Cloud Computing: Here I borrow the definition given by Salesforce, which in 1999 was the first company to market enterprise services from the cloud: "Cloud computing is a technology that enables remote access to software, file storage and data processing over the Internet, thus providing an alternative to running on a personal computer or local server. In the cloud model, there is no need to install applications locally on computers. Cloud computing offers individuals and businesses the capability of a well-maintained, secure, easily accessible, on-demand pool of computing resources”. Hybrid Cloud: Cloud deployment model that combines the dedicated computing resources of a private cloud for critical data and applications with the shared resources of a public cloud to meet peak demand. Private Cloud: In this case, the computing resources and environment are for the exclusive use of an organisation. It is comparable to having one's own data centre within an organisation, but with the advantages of delegating its management and dimensioning it on demand thanks to virtualisation. Public Cloud: A deployment model in which an internet service provider offers computing resources over the internet on an infrastructure shared by several organisations on a pay-per-use basis. Cluster: It is a collection of servers that are connected to each other through a network, and which behaves like a single server in many respects. Colocation o Housing: Service offered by companies that provide data centres in advanced and secure facilities to host the technology platforms owned by their customers. These facilities offer high quality services and connectivity. DPC: Data Processing Centres. These are the physical locations where all the electronic equipment necessary for the processing and storage of a company's information is located. Hypervisor: A hypervisor, also known as a virtual machine monitor (VMM), is software that creates and runs virtual machines and isolates the operating system and hypervisor resources from the virtual machines, allowing them to be created and managed. When the physical hardware system is used as the hypervisor, it is referred to as a 'host', and the multiple virtual machines that use its resources are referred to as 'guests'. The hypervisor uses resources, such as CPU, memory and storage, as a pool of media that can be easily redistributed among its guests. IaaS: Infrastructure as a Service. With IaaS, a virtualisation-based solution is available where the customer pays for resource consumption such as disk space used, CPU time, database space or data transfer. Latency: Or network latency, the time it takes for a data packet to be transferred between a server and a user over a network. Virtual Machine: A virtual machine (VM) is a virtual environment created on physical hardware using a hypervisor that has its own operating system, CPU, memory, network interface and storage. Metacloud: Tools for the management and administration of multiple clouds, also managing resources in the cloud and exposing APIs to applications. Multicloud: A cloud deployment model in which services from multiple cloud providers are combined to take advantage of the specific benefits of each provider. On-demand: Equivalent to "on-demand". In the technology field, it is used to express the flexibility of cloud products, based on a pay-per-use model in which the provider makes all its resources available to the customer on demand so that the customer can respond to peaks and troughs in demand. On-premises: This is the traditional licensing scheme, i.e. the company acquires the licences that grant it the right to use the provider's systems, integrates them into its own installations and maintains its data within its own infrastructure. Open Source: Free software should not be confused with freeware because free software does not have to be free. The source code of Open Source is "Open Source" and programs licensed under the GPL ("General Public License"), once acquired, can be freely used, copied, modified and redistributed. PaaS or Platform as a Service is a cloud computing service model that provides a ready-to-use development environment over the Internet in which developers can develop, manage, distribute and test their software applications. PUE: Power Usage Effectiveness is the value that results from dividing the total amount of energy used by a data centre facility by the energy supplied to the data centre's IT equipment. Items such as lighting or cooling fall into the category of energy used by a data centre facility. The closer the PUE value is to 1, the more efficient the data centre is. Disaster Recovery: or Disaster Recovery is a method of recovering data and functionality after a system outage due to a disaster, natural or human-induceds. SaaS or Software as a Service is a cloud computing service model that consists of distributing software applications hosted in the cloud to users via the Internet through a subscription or purchase payment model, while maintaining the privacy of their data and the personalisation of the application. Bare-metal server: A bare-metal server is a physical server with a single tenant, i.e. for the exclusive use of the client that contracts it and which is not shared with other organisations or users. SLA: Service Level Agreement. This is a protocol, usually set out in a legal document, whereby a company that provides a service to another company undertakes to do so under certain service conditions. Oversubscription. Oversubscription of resources occurs when a shared hosting or Public Cloud provider offers a number of computing resources in excess of the available capacity, on the theory that customers do not use 100% of the resources offered. VPN: AVirtual Private Networkis a network that creates a private, encrypted and secure connection between two points over the Internet. VPN communication tunnels allow encrypted and secure traffic to be sent and allow company employees to access the information they need from their company, even if it is private. CLOUD What is a Cloud-Native Application? January 24, 2023

The pandemic has triggered an increase in the use of e-commerce around the world. As a result, consumers are becoming increasingly demanding in terms of delivery times and shipment reliability. Thus, the logistics sector, understood as all those operations that must be carried out to get a given product to the consumer from the warehouse of the company that produces it, is transforming at full speed in order to meet the demands of both the companies that make use of its services and consumers. The key to this transformation is to ensure the traceability of shipments at any time, with the difficulty that in logistics we find very heterogeneous systems, from different companies and that are not usually connected to each other. CLOUD Metacloud: a cloud of clouds February 8, 2023 Cloud Computing comes to the rescue for logistics companies The challenge is more complicated because in this sector, data must be collected from objects that are on the move all over the world in trucks, containers or simply on forklifts in warehouses. As in so many other sectors, Cloud Computing comes to the rescue for companies that need to cope with all this complexity as it is the perfect solution to manage decentralised environments and save investments in systems and maintenance. Cloud helps to save costs and makes it easier to respond to seasonal peaks in demand The use of the Cloud helps to save costs, since you only pay for the resources consumed and, as a result, it allows you to adapt the available resources to demand, making it easier to cope with seasonal peaks in demand (Black Friday, Christmas, etc.). In addition, the information stored in the cloud becomes accessible from mobile devices that can be on the move anywhere in the world, which is essential in the logistics sector. AI OF THINGS AI of Things (X) 10-minute delivery: how Artificial Intelligence optimises delivery routes September 29, 2022 Cloud Computing advantages for the logistics sector There are therefore several advantages that Cloud Computing brings to the logistics sector: Real-time inventory management, to facilitate an agile response to fluctuations in demand. Cloud Computing provides better visibility of all the processes involved in the supply chain, enabling supply chain managers to influence them in near real-time. Dynamic pricing, depending on cost fluctuations or price changes made by competitors, allowing margins and profitability to be preserved. Systems integration. The logistics sector involves a variety of systems managed by different companies. Without seamless communication between these systems, process efficiency will suffer. Cloud technology plays a key role in facilitating this coordination between systems, synchronising and monitoring processes in real time and improving the controllability of the entire model. Augmented intelligence: when all elements of the supply chain are connected, advanced analytics can be implemented to improve decision-making. Demand can be anticipated by analysing large volumes of data (e.g., vehicle sensor data, social media trend analysis or weather reports) to create accurate demand evolution scenarios. Rapid scalability: making the leap to Cloud Computing makes it possible to adjust the availability of IT resources, taking into account market conditions and customer demands. In short, Cloud Computing allows communications between the different components of the supply chain to be agile and capable of being monitored in real time. This accelerates speed to market, adapting to peaks in demand and achieving seamless interoperability between different platforms and systems. Cloud is therefore synonymous with collaboration, flexibility, savings, efficiency and agility, also applied to the logistics sector. Featured photo: Adrian Sulyok / Unsplash

The digitalisation of society is rapidly advancing, mainly driven by the development of the internet and Cloud technology. Companies are rushing to adopt these new technologies in pursuit of the mantra of digital transformation, prompted by the need to adapt to an increasingly digitalised and, at the same time, more demanding consumer. This race towards digitalisation, however, is often a bit of a mess. Many companies have been implementing multiple Clouds in a very heterogeneous way over the last ten years, with the management of the corporate Cloud becoming a chaos of increasing complexity. Metacloud is emerging as a solution to bring order to the network of management tools for the different clouds managed by companies Experts consider metacloud, also known as "super Cloud" or "sky computing", as a key trend in the coming years to untangle this chaos. To bring order to the network of management tools for the numerous Clouds that companies manage. Tools that are sometimes interconnected, sometimes redundant, but always complex to manage. CLOUD What is a Cloud-Native Application? January 24, 2023 Why metacloud is more necessary than ever Operating with one cloud is simply not enough for many companies. There are various statistics on the use of a multi-cloud environment in companies, but surely more than half of the world's companies with more than 1,000 employees work with more than one cloud. And that number is constantly growing. According to Deloitte, 25% of companies with more than 1,000 employees use at least five Cloud platforms in their daily operations Sometimes implementing multi-cloud solutions is the result of a strategic decision to increase flexibility, control costs, monetise the data the company manages or manage diverse data location requirements. However, it is often an unintended consequence of different teams within an organisation preferring to run applications or workloads in different clouds. Whatever the reason, the truth is that a multi-cloud strategy results in both optimised pricing and access to specialised capabilities, as well as increased complexity, inefficiencies and redundancies in its management. Mantener múltiples configuraciones de seguridad y repositorios de datos constituyen todo un desafío para las organizaciones. In this environment, metacloud offers the opportunity to move "above" the Cloud, providing a common layer of abstraction and automation to improve the simplicity and visibility of cloud services. It is one of the trends identified in Deloitte's Tech Trends 2023 report on the most important technology trends for 2023. Cloud Cloud Computing for a more sustainable future December 14, 2022 Metacloud benefits and opportunities Metacloud services work with the compatibility layer that lies "above the cloud", using APIs to access a variety of common services such as storage and compute, Artificial Intelligence, security, operations, or particular application development and deployment. A common interface is used, giving administrators centralised control over their multiple cloud instances. In addition to simplifying the management of a customer's different Cloud environments, metacloud is even more necessary at a time when the current shortage of professional supply makes it difficult to find qualified cloud technology personnel, as using metacloud reduces the need for specialists in specific cloud platforms. Metacloud is even more necessary considering the shortage of qualified Cloud technology professionals Another benefit of metacloud is improved security, as it allows developers to set up a single configuration from the compatibility layer, which will run on each cloud platform through their common cloud interface, thus simplifying the implementation of security policies. However, the development of metacloud services is limited by the interests of large hyperscalers because, although it is relatively simple to develop from a technical point of view, it would lead to Cloud providers becoming a kind of "commodity", making it difficult to distinguish the capabilities of one from the other. Unlike other technologies, however, where standardisation requires universal agreement, the software to create a compatibility layer between Clouds is widely available and third-party companies are already developing unified management tools for different clouds, using a single centralised control panel. It is also sometimes the customers themselves who develop this management layer using vendor APIs. While it is complex to deal with complexity, the end result will be to increase simplicity, so it looks like it will be worth the effort.

Governments and businesses around the world have been trying to reduce the environmental impact of their activities since the Paris Climate Summit in 2015 and the subsequent implementation of the 2030 Agenda. However, the increasing use of information technologies also has an impact on the environment. According to a study by Lancaster University in the UK, the use of ICT accounts for between 2% and 4% of the world's CO2 emissions, so digititalisation must also continue to contribute to their reduction. The use of Cloud Computing, on the other hand, can reduce these emissions. In the same way that the philosophy of cloud technology is that several customers share the same technical infrastructure and thus gain in efficiency, it also saves CO2 emissions. Companies that migrate their applications to the cloud reduce their carbon emissions by 84%, mainly due to the 65% saving in energy consumption —Accenture In other words, Cloud Computing helps to reduce the carbon footprint and can become a key element in curbing climate change because it is always more efficient to concentrate the infrastructure in large data centres than to have it dispersed in a multitude of private servers. Renewable energy to reduce the carbon footprint of data centres Data centres consume an estimated 200-terawatt hours (TWh), or 1% of the world's energy demand. Approximately 86 TWh are consumed by the big three hyperscalars: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google. This is even though these hyperscalers data centres can boast of being much less electricity intensive than those run by individual companies, as they have a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) value of around 1.1, i.e., they only need an additional 0.1 KWh for every KWh consumed by the servers to cool or maintain them. Major hyperscalers data centres are making great efforts to reduce their energy consumption and consequently their CO2 emissions Major hyperscalers data centres are making great efforts to reduce their energy consumption and consequently their CO2 emissions, relying increasingly on renewable energies to reduce the carbon footprint emitted by their data centres. In the case of data centres, the cost of cooling is particularly relevant, as keeping the rooms that house these data centres at an optimal temperature requires powerful air conditioning systems to compensate for the heat emitted by thousands of servers operating at full capacity. AI of Things Architecture, digitalisation, and sustainability as pillars of the transformation of football stadiums June 8, 2022 Alternatives: data centres under the ocean or in the Arctic The most peculiar alternatives are currently being pursued in order to reduce these cooling costs. In 2018, Microsoft launched the Natick project, which consisted of placing a data centre at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean one kilometre off the coast of the Orkney Islands (Scotland), where there is an important renewable energy centre that generates one hundred percent of the electricity consumed by its inhabitants and which powered the data centre in its entirety. The Microsoft Natick project in 2018. Photo: Microsoft Research The cold Atlantic waters kept the data centre cool and at a near-constant temperature and, believe it or not, the absence of human intervention was shown to reduce the failure rate. When the data centres were recovered two years after the start of the project, it was found that of the 864 servers that had been submerged, only eight had experienced any kind of failure, which is about eight times less than the usual failure rate. The seabed is not the only particular location for a data centre. Underneath Helsinki's Uspenski Cathedral is an Equinix data centre inside a former air raid shelter that uses the cold waters of the Baltic for cooling and heats the water that heats some 500 Helsinki homes with the heat it emits. Luleå Data Center. Photo: Meta / Facebook Meta (Facebook) built another data centre in Lulea, Sweden, very close to the Arctic Circle, where temperatures rarely rise above ten degrees Celsius, which contributes to the data centre's energy needs being approximately 40% lower than average. The challenge of becoming more efficient and sustainable AWS (Amazon) also announced in 2014 its commitment to the use of clean energy sources and in 2018, 50% of the energy consumed by the multinational was already of renewable origin. To this end, it has its own solar farms, some of the most important in the world being those it has built in Seville and Zaragoza (Spain). Finally, Google wants its data centres to run on clean energy 24 hours a day by 2030, for which it is offsetting its emissions and buying solar and wind energy for its facilities. Companies that find the most efficient solutions will have a significant competitive advantage in terms of savings and also in terms of reputation. So energy efficiency and sustainability are key parameters when designing a data centre. Companies that find the most efficient solutions will have a significant competitive advantage in terms of savings and also in terms of their image in society. In short, Cloud is proving to be one of the great allies of sustainability, so that migration to Cloud Computing not only brings productivity improvements or economic savings, but also becomes a very important aid in curbing climate change.

There is no doubt that Cloud Computing technology brings with it enormous opportunities for companies, but its financial particularities need to be well understood. Traditionally, the IT model was about "owning" resources, whereas in the Cloud, the focus has shifted to "consuming" resources. This paradigm shift means that some companies make mistakes when designing and budgeting their Cloud projects, which limits them from getting the most out of the technology. Here are some of the most common mistakes: Focusing on short-term results while neglecting long-term benefits. In the pursuit of immediate results, many companies focus on the immediate benefits of moving to the Cloud, such as savings on hosting or maintenance costs, while neglecting other longer-term benefits such as the ease of launching new services or the ability to innovate more quickly. Capturing these longer-term benefits sometimes requires greater investment than the short-term benefits, but it nevertheless pays to take the longer-term view Use of CAPEX instead of OPEX. Cloud services are operational expenditures (OPEX) because companies pay only for the resources they use, whereas a traditional IT model uses capital expenditures (CAPEX) that involve long-term financial planning. Companies therefore need to estimate as accurately as possible when and how much their daily use of Cloud resources will increase and have the operational budget for this, even if they can then reduce it when it is no longer needed. Estimating Cloud resource spending based on historical factors alone: As organisations make the leap from the CAPEX investment world of the traditional IT world to an OPEX model of the Cloud world, historical investments become a less accurate indicator of future Cloud spending. This is a problem when allocating budgets for Cloud migration projects and can result in up to 20% deviation between forecast and actual Cloud spending. The key to better budget forecasting is to link it to business needs rather than past IT investments. For example, if the company is planning a big Black Friday promotion, they will probably have a spike in demand during Black Friday that they may not have had in previous years. The same can be said if they are considering a business model change or launching new products that take advantage of the flexibility provided by Cloud Computing. Assume that all Cloud services have similar cost savings. The elasticity and scalability of the Cloud is economically ideal for workloads with varying patterns of resource consumption. However, enterprises sometimes fail to differentiate savings by workload, assuming that the savings from moving compute capacity to the Cloud will be the same as migrating storage when in reality, not all Cloud workloads have the same cost and therefore the same savings versus traditional models. Simplifying the cost savings model can lead to errors in project quoting. Estimate higher than the actual Cloud usage. When building the business case for a Cloud project, companies often assume optimistic levels of Cloud services usage. This over-inflates projected savings despite the Cloud's ability to dynamically scale resource usage to meet application demand. High service usage rates depend, at least in part, on an architecture capable of supporting them, and companies' financial plans are often not aligned with the needs to adapt their service architecture. Uploading everything to the Cloud. Some companies make a radical leap to the Cloud, uploading virtually all their workloads, even when it is unnecessarily costly. There are workloads that can remain in legacy environments without problems because moving to the Cloud does not bring significant savings for enterprises either. All of these mistakes highlight the need for companies to adapt their traditional financial models when considering a migration to the Cloud, otherwise they risk making the wrong financial decisions. To get the most out of Cloud services, it is crucial to budget projects accurately and to be aware of the occasions when they do not bring a significant benefit compared to traditional models, which also exist. CLOUD Cloud market trends until 2025 September 13, 2022

Healthcare is a sector that is continuously generating a large amount of data. To put it in numbers, every year our National Health System manages 234 million medical consultations in primary care, 83 million hospital consultations, 23 million emergencies and 4 million hospital admissions... Data and more data that should be stored, processed and analysed for two main purposes: Build the medical history of each patient to provide a better service. Facilitate critical public healthcare decision-making by aggregating (and, of course, anonymising) all data. This last need has been well illustrated in these recent years of pandemic. Healthcare data challenges Healthcare data have several particularities and therefore certain challenges specific to them require to be solved. Firstly, it is generated continuously (people go to the doctor every day) and comes from many different sources, from hospitals to the users themselves, who are increasingly connected and have advanced devices that allow them to provide a lot of relevant information. Therefore, one of the main challenges is to implement scalable solutions to manage this BigData, which is why Cloud Computing seems to be the only viable option. The aim is to achieve personalised and predictive medicine. Another major challenge is that healthcare data can have many recipients: researchers, doctors, patients... and not everyone needs the same data presented in the same way. They must also always be available to healthcare professionals, who may need to make use of them at any time of the 365 days of the year. The aim is to achieve personalised and predictive medicine, which is impossible to achieve without the management and processing of all the data provided by cloud technology. CLOUD Cloud market trends until 2025 September 13, 2022 Systems interoperability Another problem to be solved is the interoperability of systems. If a person suffers a medical emergency outside their area of residence, it is essential to make their medical data available to the person treating them wherever they are. Cloud technology makes it easier for patient data to be integrated into common platforms accessible to any healthcare professional. Security is another fundamental point to take into account given the special sensitivity of healthcare data. Given the particular sensitivity of healthcare data, security is another key consideration. There may be doubts about whether to use the public cloud or a private cloud, because of the security concerns that may exist with respect to the public cloud. However, today the big players in the public cloud market have such secure solutions that security should not really be an issue. Adoption of Cloud technology in the healthcare sector The current situation is that, despite the advantages of Cloud, its adoption is still far from massive in the healthcare sector. According to the report by the consultancy firm Quint "The current state and future of Cloud Computing in the healthcare sector", the main barriers to the adoption of Cloud Computing in this sector are regulatory compliance, cultural limitations of the business, hidden costs and the amortisation of on-premises infrastructure. These last two barriers are particularly significant in the healthcare sector compared to other sectors. Cloud Cloud Computing as a key player in the future of the logistics sector February 27, 2023 Conclusion In conclusion, healthcare organisations are facing a major change in the coming years. According to the aforementioned Quint report, 43% of healthcare organisations plan to increase their IaaS and PaaS budgets by more than 20% in the next twelve months, while 14% will increase their SaaS budgets in the same period, a lower percentage given that SaaS is already widespread in the healthcare sector, accounting for more than 25% of all IT spending for almost a third of organisations. Therefore, healthcare organisations will move in the next few years from using the Cloud primarily to store data to using the technology to analyse data, reduce costs and improve patient care. Cloud is not a fad, not in this sector either, but is here to stay and to transform business processes, despite the very special characteristics of healthcare data that have so far slowed the adoption of Cloud solutions in this sector compared to other sectors.

All of us who work in Cloud services are aware that this market is still in a phase of accelerated growth and that more and more companies are taking the plunge into the cloud or, having already done so, are continuing to incorporate new workloads and processes into it. We also see that the more technological the customer's business, the more likely it is to adopt the Cloud, although it is by no means a technology that is exclusive to any particular sector. Nevertheless, I think it is worth putting some numbers to that subjective feeling, and that is why I have reviewed the "Global Cloud Computing Market" report by the company Global Data, which was published this year. I will now summarise the most important conclusions of this report. Cloud market continues to grow rapidly Firstly, it confirms that those of us who thought that the Cloud market continues to grow rapidly were right, and it also shows that this growth shows no signs of slowing down. The size of this market was $543 billion in 2021 and Cloud market will grow to $864 billion by 2025, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.8% over that period. Cloud market grows by the need for companies to organise, secure and manage a growing volume of valuable data Asia-Pacific is the most important region in the Cloud market, but it is South America, however, where the highest growth in the Cloud business is forecast (CAGR of 17.2%). As a result, it is here where the greatest business opportunities lie. The need for companies to organise, secure and manage a growing volume of data from a wide range of sources and IT resources is at the root of these high growth rates. Cyber Security Cloud Collaborative solutions to address the challenge of hybrid working September 7, 2022 Public, private and hybrid Clouds Another fact highlighted by the report is that more than 61.6% of Cloud investment goes to the public cloud, 16.7% to the private cloud and 9.4% to the hybrid cloud (the rest of the market is divided between managed services and other cloud management platforms). However, the trend over the next few years is that the highest growth will be in hybrid cloud services (14.3% CAGR), while the private cloud will show the lowest growth. In other words, more and more companies are opting for a hybrid cloud model that combines the advantages of public and private clouds. Banking and insurance, the highest level of adoption According to sector, the banking and insurance sector is the one with the highest level of adoption of cloud technology in 2021. However, it is the sectors where Cloud Computing currently has the least presence (construction, food and retail) that are expected to grow the most in the coming years and, therefore, where we can find the most business opportunities. Spain, of course, is no stranger to these global market trends. As reflected in the report "Use of digital technologies by companies in Spain" published by the National Observatory of Technology and Society (ONTSI), 32% of Spanish companies claim to have used some cloud service in 2021, which represents a four-point increase over the previous year. In Spain, however, there is a wide variation in the use of cloud technology depending on the size of the company, from 28% adoption among small companies to 68% among large companies. Cloud Computing does is democratise access to technology, making it available to medium and small companies This disparity stems from the mistaken belief that Cloud Computing is an expensive and complicated technology, available only to large corporations, when it is precisely the other way round: the essence of the cloud is to pay only for those resources that are really needed and used, so that small customers, who need fewer capabilities than large ones, pay much less. CLOUD Edge Computing Made Simple April 14, 2022 As in other markets, Cloud Computing is most widely used in the most high-tech sectors in Spain, while more traditional sectors such as metallurgy and construction have a lower adoption rate, but at the same time a greater prospect of growth. E-mail and file storage are clearly the kings of the services that companies upload to the cloud, although they are by no means the only uses of the Cloud, with database servers, security applications and financial, accounting and customer management software also standing out. In short, Cloud Computing is an ever-growing market, a trend that is not expected to change in the coming years. It is key to the digitalisation of companies, many of which are already pursuing a "Cloud First" strategy for any digitalisation project. In other words, the digital transformation of companies will either be in the Cloud, or it will not. Cloud Cloud Computing as a key player in the future of the logistics sector February 27, 2023

Data analytics has become fundamental to sport. Gone are the days of coaches and trainers taking notes with their pen in a notebook during matches or training sessions. Everything from the fans' experience when they enter a sports venue to the strategy of the game or the performance of the players during matches and training sessions is now thoroughly studied and analysed. The results of these analysis are essential for decision making in the world of sports to the point that the market for data analytics applied to sports is expected to grow from $2.5 billion in 2021 to $8.4 billion in 2026. Quick and easy access to data that improves sporting performance Thus, the way in which sports organisations store and access the data and content they generate on a daily basis is a critical element for them. They need quick and easy access to this data and this is where Cloud Computing appears as a great facilitator, saving costs, time, and providing flexibility and scalability. Being able to analyse an athlete's performance in real time is the perfect example of how to take advantage of the potential of cloud services. A football team can for example analyse during a match millions of data related to the physical performance of the players, their position on the pitch and also the interactions of the fans on social media. However, once the match is over, not as much data processing capacity is needed, so it is much better for the club to use a cloud service that pays only for the capacity it needs at any given moment than to buy a complex IT infrastructure on its own. Cloud Computing and data analytics for all sports On the other hand, knowing in real time data about an athlete's physical performance can be the difference between winning and losing a match, and in this scenario the speed of access to data provided by Cloud Computing is critical. In other sports it is common to have data on how fast an athlete is running, how hard a ball has been hit, how long a team has been defending or attacking, or how many watts of power a cyclist is generating in real time during a race. In other words, all kinds of sports, including the not so mainstream ones, benefit from the data analysis capabilities derived from Cloud Computing. Sports broadcasting taken to a new level Cloud computing is also taking sports broadcasting to a new level, providing viewers with real-time statistics that make it much more interesting and contribute to more people being interested in watching. Moreover, the current competition between the three big companies that dominate the cloud business (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google) is also contributing to the development of new services dedicated to sport, as sport is a magnificent showcase for the services of the cloud giants. One example of this is the stir caused in the cloud market when Major League Baseball, the American professional baseball league, decided to replace AWS in favour of Google as the league's official statistics provider, which went on to promote Google's Statcast service as a source of all kinds of data for fans, from how much spin a ball carries to the level of difficulty of the catch. "The demand for cloud computing services from the sports industry is growing as it is able to generate more and more data" Thus, major sports organisations around the world are signing agreements with leading cloud service providers, which also serve as a way for companies such as Microsoft to promote their products. For example, Microsoft provides a service to the Seattle Seahawks football team whereby players use a Surface to chat during a game with fans who connect via Teams or has developed a Microsoft Azure-based platform for Real Madrid that allows the club to personalise its interactions with its fans. Benefits of the Cloud also for individual and amateur athletes It is not only sports organisations that can benefit from cloud computing, but also individual athletes. Belgian footballer Kevin de Bruyne once became the highest paid player in the English Premier League because he used performance metrics from a Big Data programme to negotiate his contract renewal with Manchester City, proving his enormous influence on the team's game. Photo: Solen Feyissa / Unsplash Any amateur athlete can also use a wearable device to store their training data in the cloud to monitor their progress or next training steps. Thus, the demand for cloud computing services from the sports industry is growing as it is able to generate more and more data. Both individual athletes and sports organisations are aware of this and are increasingly relying on these services as an indispensable aid to achieve their goals, both sporting and financial.

There is no doubt that the hybrid model in which face-to-face and remote work is shared is here to stay in companies all over the world, including SMEs. To successfully make the leap to a work model that combines face-to-face and remote work, it is necessary, on the one hand, to change the management model of companies with a management that is committed to this model, increasing trust in the worker, favouring collaboration between departments and eliminating isolated work teams. But of course, it is also essential that workers have mobile devices and suitable hardware and that companies provide them with the appropriate technological tools to facilitate this hybrid work model, in which face-to-face and remote work coexist. Cloud, to the rescue of companies How can technology, and in particular cloud solutions, help to improve business productivity and encourage remote working? Because buying applications and devices on a whim is not the solution. Today's businesses are faced with increasingly complex communications environments and a wide variety of communication methods. Employees, partners, suppliers and customers communicate with each other through endless combinations of fixed terminals, mobile phones, voice calls, email, chat and more. However, these tools are often not used as effectively as they should be, resulting in information overload, device overload, lack of agility and misdirected communications that slow down processes and reduce productivity rather than improve it. So possibly the technologies that have the greatest impact on improving productivity and making remote working easier for companies of all sectors and sizes, both SMEs and corporations, are unified communications services, collaboration tools and mobile workforce solutions. Indeed, cloud computing plays a key role in the development of all of these: Unified communications services serve to bring together mobile, voice, video and data applications, allowing users to connect to them anytime, anywhere and on any device or operating system via the internet. The concept of unified communications does not refer to a single product, but to a solution that encompasses elements such as email, voice and video messaging, telephony or presence status. These tools have a unified, easy-to-use interface across multiple devices, facilitating both real-time teamwork and enabling teams of people in different locations to work in a unified environment in the same way as if they were all in the same office. This helps control costs and increases productivity and competitiveness. On the other hand, collaboration tools include file sharing, remote and simultaneous file editing, virtual meeting organisation and corporate social network integration. This makes it easier for team members to share knowledge among themselves, resolve doubts or work in real time on the same files, thus avoiding having to handle different versions of the same files. In short, it facilitates innovation and saves time. Both of the above groups of services incorporate the notion of mobile employees, i.e., employees who may not necessarily work from the office. However, there is no doubt that opening up the range of possibilities for accessing company information brings with it security issues that need to be managed. It is therefore necessary to implement solutions such as establishing identity management in the cloud to enable authentication across all devices and applications and create a single sign-on so that employees can access resources from any device while working remotely. It is also highly recommended to have multi-factor authentication (MFA) so that employees must use a second security factor such as biometrics or authentication applications on mobile devices to access their corporate applications. The benefits of implementing teleworking are clear: more possibilities of reconciliation for employees, more flexible working hours, cost savings, improved productivity for the company, reduced absenteeism, the possibility of hiring better candidates... but to implement it successfully it is not enough for the company to acquire the appropriate technological tools, but it is also necessary that the company's management is committed to this change in the working model, giving confidence to workers, providing them with the necessary training in new technologies and guaranteeing their right to disconnect even if they work from home. The benefits of teleworking make it worth the effort.

Cloud Computing is an essential technology in companies' business continuity plans, and this has been made very clear in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is said that in the last year we have seen a growth in the Cloud market equivalent to that expected in five years. So, although it is sad to admit it, we can say that the coronavirus has had more influence on the expansion of the Cloud than the work carried out by the industry over the years. In this increasingly digital and globalised world, the shift to the Cloud is no longer an option but a necessity and practically an imperative for the survival of companies, whatever their sector and size. It might seem that Cloud Computing is a complex and costly technology, destined for large companies, but nothing could be further from the truth. SMEs are generally lagging technologically because until now they have had to invest heavily in digitalisation, and that is exactly what the Cloud has come to solve. Using Cloud Computing, services are normally billed on a monthly fee model and you only pay for the resources you actually use, so it can be said that the Cloud democratises access to technology, bringing it closer to SMEs and turning costly traditional investments in IT equipment into a periodical and affordable expense for companies of any size. This is far from being a science fiction scenario that we expect in several years' time, but a current reality as reflected in the latest Eurostat report, which states that 26% of Spanish companies with more than 10 employees are already using cloud services for the development of their activity. What the pandemic has brought about is an increase in the speed at which companies have become involved in digitalisation. The same report states that the penetration rate of Cloud Services will exceed 80% by 2035. The benefits that cloud technology brings to companies (tools for working remotely, flexibility to adapt to peaks and valleys in demand, cost efficiency, optimised internet presence...) have been key tools for survival not only in times of pandemic, but will also be so in the coming years, because what is clear is that Cloud Computing is here to stay. There is no doubt that everything that is IT (Information Technology) is moving to the Cloud, which means that IT assets are disappearing. COVID-19 has had a very negative impact on the business of practically all companies, which is a financial barrier to any investment or expenditure in IT, especially among small and medium-sized companies. However, the crisis has accelerated the adoption of Cloud Computing in Spain because companies are realising that mature cloud companies are those that have been able to turn the crisis into an opportunity and become different from the rest. According to a study by the National Telecommunications and Information Society Observatory (ONTSI), the use of the Cloud for online storage allows savings of up to 80% in the energy consumption of equipment and 40% in hardware and software. Cloud computing is also a catalyst of opportunities for SMEs because, in addition to the aforementioned democratisation of access to technology, it offers two other key elements to help them grow. Firstly, savings and cost control, as large investments in equipment are replaced by an operating expense that can also be modulated according to the needs at any given time. Secondly, it provides agility and flexibility in the consumption of technological services and in the creation of highly configurable environments, tailor-made for each SME, which translates into better response times in the event of unforeseen events or changes in business volume. Each and every step companies take on the path to the Cloud means moving out of the comfort zone of a closed, on-premises infrastructure and into a more flexible environment, which brings with it a number of additional IT security risks. It is therefore very important for businesses in general and SMEs in particular to choose a partner with experience in Cloud and security services to help them manage these risks and make the move to the Cloud a smooth and seamless process.