Most of the major factors driving adoption of the Cloud Computing concept by companies in Brazil are the same ones that boost more mature markets such as the USA and Western Europe. Fortunately for the Latin American and Caribbean region, countries such as Brazil, Colombia and Chile were not so effected by the economic crisis as some other economies, prompting initial Cloud Computing investments already in 2009. The implicit cost reduction that the Cloud Computing pricing model suggests is seen by both CIOs and CFOs as one of the strongest drivers in the Latin American and Caribbean region. The decision to explore Cloud and other hosted options is primarily driven by economics.
Overview:
Cloud computing is a flexible and scalable, shared and/or private environment in which third-party suppliers or in-house architectures use virtualization technologies to create and distribute computing resources to customers on an as-needed basis, via the Internet browser.
The cloud computing model can have the following structures:
- Private Cloud: A “private cloud” is a cloud computing-based model under a private scheme in which only one organization has access to all resources. A private cloud should be able to incorporate policies and infrastructure capabilities that are executed or used by the organization exclusively. It can be run with the company’s own resources or through a dedicated hosting model.
- Public Cloud: A “public cloud’ implements cloud computing for multiple organizations through a single set of resources. The basic model for a “public cloud” is similar to a public utility – a third party manages the infrastructure to provide computing resources to customers that pay per use. Public clouds, for scalability reasons, tend to offer lower prices when compared to private cloud structures.
- Hybrid Cloud: It is a hybrid mix of public and private clouds, in which the organization can retain certain sensitive activities under monitored in-house or dedicated hosting infrastructures, while having other activities in a shared environment.
Brazil is the most developed IT market in Latin America. Among the Latin American IT markets, Chile, in terms of market development, and Mexico, in terms of market potential, are, to some extent, comparable to Brazil. Consequently, Brazil is expected to be an early adopter of cloud computing solutions in the region.
In the enterprise segment, a series of case studies describing the successful implementation of cloud computing architectures was marketed by IT manufacturers and service providers in 2010, aiming to expose the benefits of investing in this architecture. In Brazil, a majority of software vendors and IT service providers have been investing in order to market their capabilities and experiences with clients from different business verticals.
The cloud computing concept was catalyzed by the economic crisis experienced in 2008 and 2009, as the characteristics of this IT concept are highly appealing in times of economic uncertainty. In 2010, xx.x percent of the enterprises interviewed had cloud computing solutions or services in place. While the term “cloud computing” is relatively recent, the various concepts it encompasses – shared environment, pay per use, third-party provider – have been a part of enterprise computing for many years. Cloud computing characteristics such as pay per use and scalibility are extremely advantageous to enterprises.
Even in more mature IT markets such as the United States and Germany, the cloud computing concept is still in a developing stage; as a consequence, global IT market participants are working to develop cost-effective solutions and services to be offered to the enterprise segment.
The most common cloud computing solution in place in Brazil relates to applications, particularly e-mails and customer relations management solutions. In addition, when compared to the Colombian market, for example, the platforms and infrastructure levels had a much higher penetration of the cloud computing concept in Brazil in 2010.