Cloud computing users

 Cloud Computing has gone from being a solution to save costs and convert investments into current expenditure, to being a strategic solution for any company or institution.

Having the ability to access the most advanced and cutting-edge software of  Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, or Big Data, passes today through Cloud Computing providers . So companies of all sizes, from the largest multinationals in the world to SMEs and even private entrepreneurs, are hiring Cloud Computing services to have access to the most sophisticated computer tools.

An example of this is Machine learning as a service (MLaaS), which allows the development of sophisticated Artificial Intelligence solutions, and is offered by four giants of computing and Cloud Computing: The services of Amazon Machine Learning, Azure Machine Learning, Google Cloud AI e IBM Watson n are the most demanded and put within the reach of any tools that a few years ago were elitist, very expensive and very complex to use.

It’s easy to get lost in the variety of solutions available. Each of the large Cloud Computing providers offer a hundred or more services, some of their own and others from third-party specialists. They differ in terms of algorithms, differ in terms of required skills, and differ in programming interfaces and tasks. This situation is quite common in such an incipient and innovative market. The speed of change is impressive. There is a high probability that one vendor will be chosen, and suddenly another vendor will deploy something unexpected that will much better meet the needs of the business.

That is why it is essential to be prepared for Multicloud  and have defined the strategies of which provider you do what things with and make sure that they are as compatible as possible with other solutions.

Thus, perhaps the greatest impact for companies using Cloud Computing is access to cutting-edge and innovative technologies without needing huge investments or very specialized profiles. This means that the competitive advantages are more in talent and the human factor than in access to technology. The keys are:

• The strategic vision,
• The search for synergies with other market players, including competitors (what are called coopetidores) and
• Reach differential and superior ways of satisfying the needs of end customers.

According to LogicMonitor, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning will be the main catalysts driving greater adoption of cloud computing by 2020.

Plural of pyme

For SMEs  it has meant accessing solutions of the type CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) of the highest level that would otherwise be prohibited. The Cloud Computing model , which in this case would be a SaaS service (Software as a Service), not only facilitates access to this type of software for price, but because it is usually packaged and predefined so that expert profiles are not needed for its implementation.

This is another of the great important impacts of Cloud Computing: What was previously reserved for large companies with large budgets and teams of experts, is made available to SMEs, which can now compete one-on-one with anyone.

One of the most successful cases that has most democratized customer management and relationship (CRM) software is that of Salesforce. With more than 150,000 customers, Salesforce dominates the CRM market with a share of more than 20%, according to Forbes.

When the Future Trends Forum studied the cloud computing trend in 2010, Salesforce had a turnover of around one billion euros a year. This year 2019, it has invoiced more than 13 billion euros and has a market capitalization of 115 billion euros. And it is a paradigmatic case of the democratization of computer solutions: It is used by giants such as Facebook and Amazon or, at the Spanish level, three quarters of the IBEX35 companies, according to the ceo of Salesforce Spain, Enrique Polo de Lara , to startups of new economy.

Another very interesting contender for SMEs and entrepreneurs is HubSpot, which offers its software for free.

Public administration

Regarding Public Administrations, the use of Chttps://www.fundacionbankinter.org/en/ftf-informes/cloud-computing-2/loud Computing has not been as massive as in the business field, although the new laws and regulations we believe will intensify its use. In the Spanish case, the different administrations must promote the Electronic Administration framed in Law 39/2015, of October 1, on the Common Administrative Procedure of Public Administrations and for this, hybrid Cloud Computing and Multicloud are enabling tools.

In the United States, according to Gartner, nearly half of U.S. government organizations actively use cloud services.

Public Administrations, according to the aforementioned Gartner report , basically pursue two objectives with Cloud Computing: “to provide services efficiently and achieve cost savings”.

In addition to their role as users of the model, Public Administrations also have a fundamental role in the regulatory field. It is worth mentioning in this regard the “Guide for customers who contract Cloud Computing services“, published by the Baspanish Data Protection Agency.

Society

In our daily lives we use Cloud Computing constantly, probably without thinking about it: as when we use the web-based email service, watching movies or series through some payment platform, editing documents and storing images or sharing and consulting Social Networks or the media.

The sharing economy is a big user of Cloud Computing. For example, Wallapop, a Spanish startup for the purchase and sale of second-hand products was born as a business based on the Amazon cloud, AWS and today, already downloaded by tens of millions of users, continues to bet on a cloud model.

The world’s largest long-distance ride-sharing community, BlaBlaCar, is also in the cloud and uses the  container technology with the Kubernetes orchestrator.

And Adevinta (formerly Schibsted Spain), the leading company in MarketPlaces or “digital supermarkets” that is behind leaders fotocasa, habitaclia,  InfoJobs, coches.net, motos.net, milanuncios  and vibbo, makes intensive use of Cloud Computing in Multicloud format : Oracle Eloqua Marketing Cloud Service, and AWS in Spain, with container technology.

Another area in which Cloud Computing is having a huge impact is in that of games. It’s called Cloud Gaming. The shift towards online gaming versus physical copies of games began in mid-2010. The evolution of cloud computing has taken over most of the gaming industry. The latest to enter the market has been Google with Stadia , a subscription service for video games in the cloud and that is the trend: go to subscription and streaming models.

According to the  Global Games Market Report of the specialist analysis company, Newzoo, today there are more than 2.5 billion players worldwide who will spend about 150 billion euros on games in 2019, so it is a market that nobody wants to miss.

Education

To end the impact on society, we cannot fail to mention the revolution that Cloud Computing has brought to education: If we think about countries, the low cost of Cloud Computing, combined with its universal availability, can contribute to leveling the international playing field in terms of education. Not only is it possible to develop a universal curriculum for all schools in a country, but Cloud Computing also facilitates the possibility of offering all students, from the United States to Africa, the same experience in education.

 MOOCs ( Massive Open Online Course) are online courses aimed at an unlimited number of participants through the Internet according to the principle of open and mass education. In recent years we have seen a spectacular growth in this way of delivering education. Today, it is estimated that there are more than 100 million students who have completed a MOOC. In 2018, 20 million new students enrolled in at least one MOOC. With more than 900 universities involved and an offer of more than 11,000 courses, MOOCs allow access to quality education to people who otherwise could not be trained.

Along with MOOCs, LMS (Learning Management System) have also appeared, cloud-based learning applications, where teachers and students share resources. As an example, we can cite GoogleClassroom.