Building its own 'Qloud'

Cloud computing is an emerging approach to shared infrastructure in which large pools of systems are linked together to provide IT services. The need for such environments is fulled by dramatic growth in connected devices, real-time data streams, and the adoption of service-oriented architectures and Web 2.0 applications. Continuing advances in the performance of digital components has resulted in a massive increase in the scale of IT environments, driving the need to manage them as a unified cloud.

Taking a step in the same direction and to address the industry concerns, QuantM Net Technologies, one of the leading system integrators and foremost providers of consulting, technology and outsourcing services, has announced the launch of its own cloud computing offering, called 'Qloud Computing' and also unveiled its new datacenter, 'The Citadel' in association with IBM.

The company has extended its IT infrastructure offerings and services portfolio with Qloud Computing and by introducing India's first carrier neutral datacenter by a tier-2 SI. Its new datacenter, which focuses on cloud computing, will help its clients take full advantage of integrating cloud computing into their IT and business strategy. QuantM plans to leverage the fast developing cloud computing market that has the potential to create significant value for customers in terms of scale, flexibility, reducing time to market, environmental efficiency and given the economic climate, perhaps the most important feature of reduced capital expenditure.

According to QuantM, worldwide revenue from public IT cloud services exceeded $16 billion in 2009 and is forecast to reach $55.5 billion in 2014, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.4 percent. This rapid growth rate is over five times the projected rate of growth for traditional IT products (five percent). These figures further illustrates that public IT cloud services are crossing the chasm with modest revenue, but very fast growth.

For QuantM, cloud computing is critically important for two key reasons-market growth and leadership disruption. The cloud model will propel IT market growth and help the industry to more rapidly penetrate small and medium-sized businesses. According to Pawan Khurana, CEO of QuantM Net Technologies, the company wants every business to understand the benefits of cloud computing and the mature services that it delivers so that they can save money without giving up speed, reliability, flexibility, and performance and to be able to get up and running with the services quickly and easily. The benefits of the QuantM cloud capability will be particularly relevant in today's economic climate and the company wants its clients to be able to take advantage of QuantM Qloud offerings.

“Here, we would like to mention that it is a major achievement for a tier-2 SI to have its own datacenter with respect to its offerings, as it provides more depth and reliability on their own IT infrastructure. It also helps capturing the business need of high-volume high margin segments,” Khurana said. Moreover, with its own datacenter, a SI leverages the liberty of designing the offerings, create various flavors in collaboration with different applications and software, build the cloud in offering mode, deploy the applications, build the fulfillment models, prepare the menu card, and nurture the infrastructure. Besides, the SI can package the offering, build the reseller, and target the industry vertical rather than depending on any other partner's competency.

“It is very important to understand the role of an SI in Qloud play. Cloud is eventually nothing else but a delivery model. The core technology and feature/functionality is going to regain its position as the top most decision making criteria for any application or solution. This will bring to forefront the skills of an SI who can collaborate with multiple technology vendors established as well as emerging players and create a bouquet of offerings for its customers. This bouquet will consist of three parts-finished services being offered by the SI as a reseller, SI's own set of offerings created using cloud as delivery platform, and ISV offerings hosted on SI's cloud,” opined Khurana.

QuantM today is moving in the direction of being that Qloud player. With a rich heritage of providing enterprise class IT infrastructure solutions for last 16 years to its customer, QuantM is well positioned to be a strong player in this emerging business opportunity. The company's primary focus is on the SMB segment. It is currently collaborating on Qloud computing initiatives with select mix industry verticals from manufacturing, telecom ISV, universities, Internet-based enterprises retail, including global organizations preferring to outsource/setting up IT infrastructure in India.

“With respect to the SMB segment, which we intend to cater, this sector has serious concerns about the maturity of cloud computing offerings, specifically around security, availability, cost monitoring/management, integration, and standards. QuantM intends to address these concerns through a well planned and architected set of solutions using a secure and tested delivery framework which customers can trust,” Khurana asserted. Meanwhile, the company's first objective is to launch and take these solutions to the markets and establish itself. It is also open to forming strategic marketing/delivery alliances with other players if it adds value to its business and helps the company deliver more comprehensive bouquet of solutions to its customers.

NIVEDAN PRAKASH

(nivedanp@cybermedia.co.in)