Due to technological advances, organizations have to face many challenges in providing support through the use of information technologies (IT) to carry out tasks that require computing skills. It is important to adopt adequate resources with the aim of developing processing skills that meet actual needs. Cloud computing (CC) represents an alternative that offers many opportunities to be exploited. This chapter introduces characteristics of CC, the technologies that enable its deployment, and a model of selection based on qualifications and mathematical development.
TopIntroduction
The progress in the fields of computing and communications are changing the way organizations have access to IT resources. CC represents a new technological model through which an institution enters a platform with technical and functional characteristics such as scalability, elasticity and efficiency. According to this, it is possible to define CC as a model that enables “an omnipresent, convenient in demand web access” (Habbal A., Abdullah S. A., Mkpojiogu E. O. C., Hassan S. & Benamar N., 2017) to computing resources, that allows fast and easy scalability.
The possibility of access to computing resources makes the use of CC attractive for organizations because they can reach a number of applications, services and capacities by means of a data network or the Internet. Similarly, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines it as, “a technological model that enables on ubiquitous, adapted, network attached on demand access to a shared group of configurable computing resources - networks, servers, storing equipment, apps and services - that can be quickly stocked and freed with a low management effort or a minimal interaction with the service provider” (Mell P. & Grance T., 2011).
Other authors express that “CC is aimed to provide cloud services via the Internet. Instead of configuring and maintaining costly local hardware and software, cloud services consumers can get the abstract resources as computing, hardware, software and storage according to what they need” (Lei Q., Jiang Y. & Yang M., 2014).
Say them that the delivery of computational abilities by means of visualized resources through a data network is one of the characteristics of CC. Consequently, using CC is convenient for organizations whose infrastructure does not meet the processing needs for making complex calculations, particularly in a parallel way. The virtualized infrastructure for the development of tasks can be used anytime anywhere. The possibility of using a variety of devices such as personal laptops, smartphones and tablets, without installing particular software gives a feeling of Independence.
As regards the support IT team, CC implies a change in the way of working, specially the one referred to the installation of tools and apps in the users, terminals, allowing the team to focus on other tasks such as the correct data network functioning and the Internet connectivity, with the purpose of having an adequate access to resources.
It is right to say that this paradigm has become a technological trend that has changed the way technological resources being offered, thus influencing the IT market motivated by the elimination of complex restrictions on space, time, energy and cost of equipment’s of the traditional IT field.
Consequently, it is necessary to know the characteristics of CC, its models, parts, which are the technologies that it involves and how they be selected in the right way.
This section the divided into three parts, which are of interest for the selection of resources in the cloud: (1) it is presented to cloud computing and its characteristics, (2) the hierarchical analytical process is described, (3) the method is applied in the case of selection of computing resources and (4) the conclusions obtained from the study.
Cloud Computing
CC is a paradigm that completely changes the way of accessing services and apps because it is they done through a data network or the Internet. According to (Joyanes Aguilar L., 2012) CC is “the evolution of a group of technologies that affects the approach of the organization in which a group of hardware and software, storing, services and interfaces enable information input as a service”. From these definitions it is possible to obtain the word service codes which are offered / acquired through a data network such as the Internet, this being a choice of the CC concept.
Thus, the cloud is not a place but a method of managing IT resources that replaces local machinery and private data centers with virtual infrastructure. As a result, users have access to virtual computing, network and storing resources that are available online through a remote provider. These resources can be they reached instantly. This is very useful for organizations that need to scale its infrastructure or reduce it quickly according to a fluctuating demand.
It is necessary to focus on the word service here. These must be divided in categories to determine which services can be offered and how. Moreover, there are characteristics recognized as essentials by the NIST (Badger L. et al., 2014) that must be bore in mind now of using the cloud.