Clouds on the horizon?

PetaVault from Netmagic Solutions, a carrier-neutral managed IT services
provider, has now added a new offering of PetaVault services. PetaVault is a
fully automated electronic data vaulting service that compresses, de-duplicates,
encrypts, and backs up critical data into high availability storage environment
with quick recovery and high security.

C Kajwadkar, Chief Architect and VP, Netmagic Solutions pointed out that this
electronic data storage eliminates tapes completely along with any data loss and
restoration as data is transferred electronically with secure encryption.
“Therefore, the datavault helps electronically store data in safe and secure
manner via encryption,” he added. Moreover, as data is stored in a compressed
manner with encryption, it reduces storage needs of organizations, protects
against unauthorized data access, and also offers quick access, restorations and
retrievals. Hence, datavault offers physical security as well as protection
against unauthorized access. Overall, the services aim to reduce data storage
and backup costs and help in management.

“It's a cloud-based service with pay per usage model depending on the data
volumes per month . The services can be accessed over the Internet or through a
leased line. Here for any enterpris whether small or large, will not be required
to invest in capex, but only pay a monthly fee per compressed data stored in the
vault,” informed Sharad Sanghi, MD & CEO, Netmagic Solutions.

Zenith's First Cloud to India

Zenith InfoTech, an IT product development company announced global launch
of its unique cloud computing platform-PROUD that provides a single
infrastructure for all business computing needs. According to Zenith InfoTech,
PROUD's conception and development is one of the highly ambitious product
development initiative ever undertaken by an Indian IT company. PROUD, the
private cloud computing system, will bring in a paradigm shift on how IT
infrastructure will be purchased, used and managed, the company claimed.
According to Zenith Infotech's CEO, Akash Saraf, building PROUD took more than
four years with a team of over 250 computer scientists working over 2,00,000 man
hours in Belgium, Germany, Mumbai, and Bengaluru, with a total investment of Rs
175 crore. The company has fully developed the technology with the hardware as
well as the software for this product.

This new private cloud is a single centralized computing system which does
not use shared resources but it is installed at the customer's premise. This
aims to help customers in overcoming the need of buying computing, networks and
hardware separately. Hence, it brings down the management of all devices and
hardware.

It allows the entire IT infrastructure to turn into virtual machines
including desktops, servers, firewalls, routers, and VoIP systems. Also, PROUD
allows businesses to run their existing software and applications without any
modification and yet reap the benefits of cloud computing.

For businesses, PROUD offers flexibility of using both commercial and open
source software through a unique concept called virtual appliances. A single
unit, which supports twenty users, costs around Rs 3 lakh including desktops and
servers.

“In terms of features, it offers high availability, instant failover,
continuous backups, predictive failure monitoring, and granular capacity
management. With PROUD, customers can add more capacity when needed without
undergoing expensive rip and replace cycles that allow higher scalability,” said
Zenith. “For small and large companies, private cloud offers great value to
their businesses. One of the key benefits is the security of critical data and
application, as this private cloud is installed at the customer's premise and
not on any third-party data centers with access through the Internet,” said
Saraf.

“Within five years from now, IT departments will either be cloud consumers or cloud operators” Akash Saraf CEO, Zenith Infotech	“The datavault helps electronically store data in safe and secure manner via encryption” C Kajwadkar, Chief Architect and VP, Netmagic Solutions	“The SPs in cloud hosting services are still in the nascent stage in their approach to embracing the technology” Sumeet Sabharwal, MD, Naviste India

“Presently, about 50 beta-customers are using PROUD platform in the US and we
expect about 3,500 customers base in India in next two to three years,” he
added. While, for global market he has a target of nearly 20,000 customers
within the next two years.

“Cloud Computing is the classic disruptive technology. Within five years from
now, IT departments will either be cloud consumers or cloud operators,” Saraf
concluded.

Despite huge buzz aboutcloud computing, real adoption of the technology in
the Indian market is roughly around five percent. Furthermore, level of adoption
in these companies is at an early stage. Sumeet Sabharwal, MD, NaviSite India,
said that Indian market is much smaller as far as cloud adoption is concerned.
He said, “Globally the market for hosting is worth $12 million, and is growing
by 27 percent CAGR. In this part, cloud is an even smaller component of that,
though growing at a considerably faster rate.” He added, “Right now many
companies would be at the first or the second level of implementation/adoption
where they follow the hybrid model, with some of their infrastructure on cloud
and rest being kept as dedicated infrastructure in the hosted model.” NaviSite
has been in managed services since it was established in 1997. The company has
around 1,500 customers, 16 datacenters, and offices in the US, the UK and India.
Its India chapter started in 2005 named NaviSite India is based in New Delhi.
Talking about the major factors, he explains that lack of maturity among service
providers and also the fear among enterprises are the roadblocks. He said, “The
service providers in hosting services are still in the nascent stage in their
approach when it comes to embracing the technology and delivering to customers.
They are not as mature as their global counterparts and cannot provide that
degree of automation, where they can sign up and scale up efficiently.” He added
that since this process involves a shift from internal to an outsourced
paradigm, service providers need to help their customers overcome the fear of
security through education.  He said, “The service providers can segregate
the data as per the customers to make them feel secure and important.” If
segmented into levels, the entire journey of cloud adoption can be covered in
five levels, where first level starts with a suit of infrastructure piece, where
a company gets a CPU, computation capability, and storage on-demand model. This
further moves to cloud hosting for blogs, email services, and moving
applications to cloud. The third level is said to have achieved when
applications are adopted through SaaS and then it further expands to on-demand
ERP collaboration and billing. At the last level, a company becomes a truly
on-demand enterprise with everything coming from the cloud, where it scales it
up and down by virtue of cloud.

Pankaj Maru,
Akanksha Prasad

(Sorce: DQ)