At a recently held round table discussion in Delhi, the IT major talked about its offerings in the area of Cloud computing and the spiraling growth that it expected from the same. By Pupul Dutta
IBM said that it expected to generate about $7 billion in Cloud revenues by 2015. The company, in a round table conference held in Delhi, talked about the growing popularity of Cloud solutions and how CIOs across verticals were under pressure to support businesses with IT solutions that were not only innovative but also delivered instant results. The company is in the process of setting up a data center in Australia to serve the Asia Pacific region.
Last year, IBM had announced $38 million investment in a new Cloud computing data center in Singapore, which would provide businesses in India with solutions and services to harness the potential of this technology.
IBM offers a SmartCloud service for developers. Ready to use business solutions vary from CRM to HRMS. “All these solutions that run on IBM’s platform can easily be enabled and deployed within a matter of weeks if not days,” said G Dharanibalan, Executive, Offerings Management and Cloud Services, Global Technology Services, IBM India & South Asia.
Talking about Cloud computing and its benefits, Dharanibalan said that, apart from lowering the cost of IT, it provides access to new markets and enabled new business models and outcomes thereby driving fundamental innovation for a lasting advantage in the marketplace.
According to Dharanibalan, IBM’s SmartCloud would lower IT operating and capital cost.
Under the SmartCloud offering, IBM provides SaaS, IaaS and PaaS. “Large ISVs and VARs or distributors who aspire to become Cloud service providers can contract with IBM to start up their Cloud services by paying a nominal royalty and launch their own branded SmartCloud Enterprise equivalent solution,” he explained.
IBM also announced its managed security and backup solutions that boast of an SLO of 99.8% backup success rate. Dharanibalan added, “We offer pay as you use pricing model with no long term architectural investment.”
Despite numerous benefits of cost efficiency and elastic storage, there remain serious challenges in the adoption of Cloud technology. In a survey conducted by IDC, about 21% of respondents flagged data security as a major concern. Another 11% of the respondents have a fear of getting locked-in with a single Cloud services provider while 9% of the respondents found stringent regulatory requirements to be a hassle.
Nirupam Chaudhuri, Research Manager- Software & Services, IDC India, asserted that increased Cloud adoption would also require changes in the channel sales. “Hardware margins have been reducing for resellers. This needs to be offset by offering more services,” he said.
“The most common reason for the low adoption of the Cloud, especially the public Cloud, are the inconsistent service levels that are being offered by service providers. Cloud solution providers need to focus on security, privacy, reliability and control,” added Chaudhury. For certain industries, regulations mandate that data must be stored in the country.
Chaudhury felt that IaaS had the best growth prospects through 2015. “There is strong interest in virtual private Cloud from the CIO community,” he concluded.
