Cloud computing advances in Brazil promoting more efficient business

There is an old business cliché according to which an opportunity lies in every crisis. As Brazil struggles to drag itself out of its worst-ever recession, companies that managed to find competitive advantages and keep pushing for a more efficient structure during the toughest times are now reaping the benefits.

Technology has been pivotal in this context. Probably one of the hottest areas is cloud computing, which Microsoft defines as the offer of services, such as storage, networks, software, analysis, and intelligence, on the internet.

It allows companies to outsource server racks to providers, saving money on personnel, energy, and the cooling systems required to maintain a server. They are also able to scale—increasing or decreasing the digital space available—and to make backups more easily. 

Cloud computing also allows other advantages, such as having archives available everywhere, anytime you want. When you deploy this kind of technology in crucial areas, the results could even save lives. That’s the case with FIDI, a Brazilian services provider responsible for managing diagnostic imaging exams in 85 public hospitals around the country. 

The organization began migrating their workloads to the cloud in 2012, and now they have about 600 terabytes of images stored on Amazon Web Services servers. The massive archive—the result of 5 million X-rays,...