Cloud – Remote Infrastructure Management Services help companies focus on business

As both SMEs and larger enterprises move towards cloud and managing infrastructure remotely, system integrators and service providers now have new opportunities to leverage in the cloud

Cloud technology is becoming increasing popular among enterprises, as a convenient solution to resolve some traditional issues of IT application, infrastructure management and budget issues.

Smaller enterprises have in fact leveraged cloud as the easier way of ensuring a robust infrastructure.   Google, Amazon, Microsoft offering cloud applications for SMEs have made life easier for startups.  The biggest benefit of these services is that the business data is safe in a super-redundant architecture, with strong infra management teams and backup policies.   This comfort enables small enterprises to focus on their businesses, saving precious time on infrastructure costs and administration headaches.

Cloud adoption has no doubt in anyone’s mind any more, and that includes small businesses and channel partners. As L Ashok, Managing Director, Futurenet Technologies says,” Cloud adoption is slowly growing and people are looking for web related workload solutions.  We have recently floated a new brand division ‘Tech on Cloud’, about a year ago. For this new product, the complete workload and architecture on is on the cloud. I would say that Cloud adoption is slowly growing and people are looking for web related workload solutions.

Even small companies in different verticals, not only channel partners for technology companies, are seeing the cloud as the next disruptive technology. As Ramesh YJ of Parivar Constructions says,”Small companies like mine are moving away from investing costs upfront.  Rather, they are leveraging service providers like Amazon or Google, have helped them invest their initial costs elsewhere.  And there are no hassles in running after your own administration manager, and no worries about cases of attrition.”

For the Indian market, this may just be the opportunity everyone is looking for.  Given that Indian startups are extremely adventurous and have a much higher risk taking ability, not to mention tech-savviness, this may just be the opportunity that will drive them into the upper league. And yes, the market in India is ripe for the cloud, even the SMB market.   So, it would not be wrong to say that industry vertical especially new age companies in the space of IT/ITES, E-commerce and Startups etc. are adopting cloud and RIM fast.

As L Ashok adds,” India economy is driven by SMEs and they will be the first one to jump on cloud. India will adopt cloud in a much bigger way and moving serious workload on cloud is profitable to the SMEs.”

With the cloud, there are many advantages that ultimately lead to much higher efficiencies and cost savings.  One of them is the efficiency of Remote Infrastructure Management Services (RIMS). Essentially what it means is that the once the IT infrastructure is on the cloud, it can be managed from any location, and no IT support teams need be on the standby.

Smaller enterprises, and channels SPs see the RIMS concept as a very good option for leveraging the cloud advantage for their size of companies. Says L Ashok,” We are expecting cloud to get adopted in a bigger way in the near future, especially with the options of RIMS and some other functionalities. Also, on the cloud, Business Continuity and back up is adopted more efficiently.”

Coming from a small business partner, this could be just the step they need to increase efficiencies and hence market share.

Adds Sanjay Agarwal, Director, Umbrella Infocare, a support service provider to cloud adoptions, “Cloud is replacing on-premise infrastructure slowly but I can say it is definitely picking up. The case of RIMS is stronger for Cloud as customers’ infrastructure is away from them. Profitability in RIM for partners like us will come with economies of scales. RIM needs lot of investments in terms of trained resources suited for RIM, internal IT infra and initial business lead time. As Umbrella we are already providing Remote support to couple of Large, Medium and Small customer on Virtualization, AWS, Microsoft technologies. In next Financial Year, we plan to expand in India and abroad for RIM services.”

However, all this euphoria may fall flat if the backend services and skills don’t match up with the market needs.  To remotely manage infrastructure, the cloud adoption needs to be flawless. There need to be certain benchmarks that would ensure zero inefficiencies. There also needs to be SLAs and regulations in place to ensure that vendors, however big, toe the line when it comes to service and support. Is that happening in the Indian market? “Yes,” says Ashok,”We work on concept of Bullet Proofing, which means availability of infrastructure to choose the right cloud vendors. This way customer is risk free on adopting the cloud. For my business I can say, we are getting a good support from Amazon Web Services our cloud partner.”

For channel partners who provide support to cloud vendors, the issue has no doubt in anyone’s mind about efficiencies. Amazon, for instance, has clear guidelines in place that give the best of class support to adopters. Says Sanjay Agarwal, “We provide consulting, Migration and support services to our principals’ clients.  We help them Adopt cloud, Integrate cloud with on-premise and Manage cloud thereafter. We have trained resources to do all that. Training internal resources is mix of own internal training and guidance by principal. We ensure regular training and required certifications. RIM support has to be very process driven and smooth functionality.  RIMS going to be a major thing for India, it is picking up in a much bigger way. It can offer clear security guaranteed to customers. We use open space source to ensure security to the customers.”

The biggest concern on cloud has been, without a doubt, security, is it seen as a threat to the adoption or to the acceptance of RIMs from service providers? In some ways, yes, but there are always tools to mitigate. Security on the cloud is in itself being taken very seriously, and hence, RIMS might not be an insecure deal after all.  Says Sanjay,” Security is always more a perception than reality. We have seen in last 20 years, all new technologies were always been questioned on Security but later accepted (e.g. e-mail, internet, Mobility and now Cloud). There are many tools available for secured VPN connectivity/tunnel for RIM support. Remote support consists of monitoring/call based support where security is hardly a concern. In most cases access policy is driven by customer.”

Given that there is clear understanding in the market on what’s needed to be done to leverage this new paradigm that can change the way business works, all seems to be well at the support front.  In fact it is a great new opportunity for service providers (Like Sanjay) to spread their wings.  He sees a great future in it, ”RIM is nothing but pooling and sharing of resources. It helps customers in getting best of technical resources at a fraction of costs. Thanks to it, 24X7 support and monitoring is possible at affordable price. We see huge business opportunity in domestic and international RIM Market in 2-3 years time. India’s economy is going to expand in 2-3 years and RIM will be way forward due to limited availability of experienced and trained technical resources.”

This, then is the crux – qualified providers who have competence in RIMS services to the cloud adopters.  While the cloud may be the next best thing since sliced bread, without adequate support, it may not go the line it is intended to, and both the support providers and adopters understand that extremely well.  This is evident from the opinion that Ashok shares,” Cloud requires qualified providers. Over the next year there’s going to be more business for the qualified providers who have the competence and skill set to address the area.”

Clearly here to stay, clearly a huge business support, RIMS seems to have the going set for it.