Clouds on the Horizon?

PetaVault from Netmagic

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 points 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 adds. 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 for organizations.

Its a cloud based services 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 enterprises whether small or large, they will not be
required to invest in capex, but only pay a monthly fee per compressed data
stored in the vault, informs Sharad Sanghi, MD & CEO, Netmagic Solutions.

Zeniths First Cloud to India

Zenith InfoTech, an IT product development company announced global launch
of its unique cloud computing platformPROUD that provides a single
infrastructure for all business computing needs. According to Zenith InfoTech,
PROUDs 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 claims.
According to Zenith Infotechs 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 itis installed at the customers 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, says
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 customers premise and
not on any third-party data centers with access through the Internet, says
Saraf.

Presently, about fifty 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
adds. 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
concludes.

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 service providers in cloud hosting services are still in the nascent stage in their approach to embracing the technology and delivering to customers Sumeet Sabharwal, MD, Naviste India

India: a Smaller Market

Despite huge buzz aboutcloud computing, real adoption of the technology in
the Indian market is roughly around 5%. Furthermore, level of adoption in these
companies is at an early stage. Speaking to CIOL, Sumeet Sabharwal, managing
director, NaviSite India, says that Indian market is much smaller as far as
cloud adoption is concerned. He says, Globally the market for hosting is worth
$12 mn, and is growing by 27% CAGR. In this part, cloud is an even smaller
component of that, though growing at a considerably faster rate. He adds,
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, sixteen data centers, and offices
in the US, the UK and India. Its India chapter started in 2005 named NaviSite
India, 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 says, 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 adds that since this process involves a shift
internal to an outsourced paradigm, service providers need to help their
customers overcome the fear of security through education. He says, 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 in real-time.

Pankaj Maru/CMN & Akanksha Prasad/CIOL

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