ist Magazine January 2022

Feature

10 Things to Know If You’re New to Cloud-computing

By Susanne Tedrick

C loud-computing has products and services. Given the Cloud’s flexibility and agility, organizations were able to use Cloud services to continue mission critical operations and allow em- ployees to work from home. According to Flexera’s 2021 State of The Cloud re- port, 36% of enterprise respondents said that they expect to pay $12M or more in Cloud services, and 90% expected that their Cloud usage would exceed their prior plans because of the pandemic. This sped-up Cloud use and spending has caused some additional challenges, particularly around having skilled resources. According to a recent study by the information technology research firm Gartner, many IT leaders said that they lack in-house skills to handle 60% of their current operational tasks (particularly in the areas of security, dev ops, networking and compliance), and over 50% felt that in 2022, they won’t meet their company’s Cloud adoption goals because of a lack of in-house skills and experience. changed how people and organizations consume information technology

for what would eventually become what we know the Internet to be to- day. In his article, “The Computer as a Communication Device," Licklider described what the internet is: a place where everyone can be connected and access specific programs or data from any location; a precursor to what we

Now more than ever, having Cloud-computing knowledge and skills is important. If you’ve never heard of Cloud-computing or are not entirely familiar with the concept, here’s ten things you should know: 1. Cloud-computing is not a new concept. At a top level, Cloud-computing is the delivery of information technolo- gy resources over the internet. Rather than purchasing and maintaining computer hardware and software, you “rent” services from someone else. While the term Cloud-computing is relatively recent, the underlying concept dates back all the way to the 1960s. It was then that computer scientist J.C.R. Licklider came up with an idea for an interconnected system of computers called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) that laid the groundwork

know as “Cloud-computing.” 2. We’re already using Cloud-computing. Most modern applications and

websites are using Cloud services to run. If you’ve ever used online productivity software, like Office 365 or Google Suite, then you have 100% used Cloud services. 3. Self-service With Cloud service, no out- side help is needed! Whenever a person needs a virtual machine or needs to create a document or spreadsheet, they can create it on their own; resources are available automatically or near-in- stantly. No outside salesperson or other party is generally needed to get started with most Cloud services. t

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January 2022 istmagazine.com