Brazil Enterprises Move Aggressively to Private Clouds

Although cloud computing is still very incipient in Brazil, one local expert predicts a cloudy forecast for Brazil’s IT community in the next few years. Pedro Augusto de Oliveria, Brazil IT Manager of global gold producer AngloGold Ashanti, says current private cloud investments by large companies will evolve into public cloud investments by the business community at large.

Public Today, Private Tomorrow

“The Brazilian cloud computing movement started approximately three years ago but focused on private cloud,” said de Oliveria. “The public cloud was viewed with an expensive solution, low performance and, mainly, with risks for the customers.”

Many Brazilian companies, especially larger ones, have already included cloud computing as part of their medium-term strategic IT planning and are starting to migrate to private clouds, according to de Oliveria. “The use of SaaS based on cloud will be, without any doubt, the best solution for many companies in the near future.”

However, although de Oliveria sees the most important cloud applications developed by large Brazilian companies being based on public cloud, he predicts that in 10 years, everyone will be based in the public cloud, which may result in data centers no longer being company assets.

Small City Infrastructure Encourages Public Cloud Development

de Oliveria says variance in the robustness of Brazilian telecommunications infrastructure is already encouraging private cloud development among companies headquartered in smaller cities. “The telecommunication infrastructure is robust in the metropolitan cities, such as São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, and other big cities,” he explained. “However, there are a lot of big companies with headquarters based in small cities, and those kinds of companies cannot move to the Public Cloud as the telecommunications infrasturcture is not (robust enough).

“Due to this, there are a lot of companies investing in private cloud and it is clear that this infrastructure is cheaper than the traditional model.” de Oliveria added that development of either private or public cloud computing is that it offers better resource management and potential savings in the short, medium and long terms.

USA-Brazil Link Not Dependent on Cloud

While de Oliveria credits cloud computing as offering Brazilian companies many benefits, he says the link between the US and Brazil is strong irrespective of how cloud technology develops on the Brazilian side.

“It does not matter if applications are based in the American or Brazilian sites, systems performance will not be impacted significantly,” he stated. “Global companies are focusing on the business solution without worrying about the capacity of processing of the information, or even in which country the applications will be installed. The concerns are now about risks, appropriate costs and compatible performance demands from the business.”