Managed IT on the Cloud

Cloud Computing seems to be the next big thing on the Web. With tech world

going gaga over this concept, there are so many interpretations available for

defining Cloud Computing. So what does the term Cloud mean?

Web-based email services such as Gmail or Yahoo are among the earliest

popular forms of Cloud Computing. So, if we use Flickr to store photos, Facebook

to connect with friends and Gmail to send mail, we're already storing our data

in the Cloud and the service we are using here is also cloud-based. This

essentially means that you can do computing/processing over the Internet. The

technology per se is not new and is there since the days of grid computing or

SaaS, but now it has become much more advanced and is available for end users as

a managed service.

When we say Manged Cloud Services, it does not mean an entity, rather an

enabler for a lot of other existing managed services. While a vendor offers

manged services in the cloud, it basically provides you a cloud infrastructure

at the backend. For instance, a VDI or a mail/Web hosting platform can give

immense benefits if it is run over a cloud architecture. Not only this, today

even security service providers are using cloud at the backed for analyzing

threats, and even scanning individual client machines to reduce the load at the

client level. You will read more about this in the security section of this

story. With such kind of a infrastructure, a vendor can not only provide

infrastructure but also provide processing or computing power at an OpEx model.

We might argue here that, even in case of a hosted server on the Internet, the

processing happens at the cloud (in the hosted server). What's the difference

then? Well! In that case, the maximum computing power which a vendor can provide

to the client is dependent on the computing power of the leased server. If the

client requires to go beyond that, either he needs to get a different server

with more power or needs to add a new server to its pool. However, there is a

demerit in the traditional managed hosting model. For instance, if you require

'x' amount of processing power for 28 days, '2x' for 1 day and '3x' for just two

days. For such a scenario, you need to provision for the max consumption

irrespective of its duration and likewise for 2x processing power, though its

duration is very small you have to pay accordingly. However, in a Cloud

Computing model, you can just get dynamic computing power with a upper and lower

limit and be billed depending on your utilization. This not only gives you a

good way to save costs but at the same time, gives you the additional head room

in case you want to scale suddenly.

Elastic Computing Platform (ECP) model of Enomaly is able to bridge computing tasks between your internal and externalCloud Computing providers.	Amazon EC2 is a simple Web service interface that allows you to obtain and configure capacity, both up and down, as your computing requirements change.

From an Indian standpoint, two kinds of companies can benefit by going the

Managed way over the cloud. One of them is new breed of startups that have

extremely innovative ideas riveting on IT. Companies of this nature may not

necessarily have a detailed idea of how much IT they need, thus it makes a lot

of sense for them to embrace the Cloud to get computing power as and when they

need. An ideal example here would be mobile VAS application providers, where

during the first few months the provider may not have an idea of the scale and

reach of the product in terms of customer adoption. So going the cloud way will

prove cost-effective for them.

The other segment that can effectively embrace the Cloud are enterprises that

use the Cloud for 'internal' purposes. For instance, an enterprise in the

testing and development stages of a product or service can utilize the Cloud to

test its maximum capacity before deciding on the scope of compute power

requirement. At this stage, the enterprise can choose to move away to an

individually owned physical server setup or continue with the cloud

infrastructure. In short, Indian startups and larger companies with R&D focus

can save tremendous costs by using Managed IT on the Cloud.

India, like many other markets worldwide, has been quite cautious in shifting

very secure applications and information to virtualized environments. Hence, it

followed the worldwide trend of starting with porting of Disaster Recovery and

moving on to less critical applications. But according to a new entrant in India

called Netmagic, this trend is evolving to accommodate mission critical and IT

applications related to the core business on Cloud environments, and during

troubled times like these, it makes so much more sense to pay for the IT you use

and not invest without a clear business roadmap.

Managed IT in a Cloud is ideal for such scenarios.

Anindya Roy and Vishnu Anand

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