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RComm's Cloud Computing Foray |
| Reliance Communications has taken a lead in leveraging Microsoft's virtualization technologies to deliver cloud computing for SMBs and large enterprises |
| Priya Kekre |
| Sunday, November 01, 2009 |
In a move that combines the power of virtualization technology and
cloud computing - Reliance Data Center (a part of Reliance
Communications) has announced the launch of “Reliance Cloud
Computing Services” - hosted infrastructure service for its
customers, based on Microsoft's platform. With this, Reliance will
provide enterprises and SMBs in India, access to a variety of
enterprise scale IT solutions, applications and services on the pay as
you go model. Various software applications (including mailing, sales
force automation, HR automation, logistics, supply chain, ERP, document
management, work flow automation, billing, CRM) and underlying IT
infrastructure like server computing, data storage and retrieval,
disaster recovery, application development platforms and security tools
will be offered by Reliance under this banner.
Microsoft’s virtualization and management technologies,
including the the recently launched Dynamic Data Centre Toolkit - a new
service to enable enterprises to lay the foundation of private clouds,
will help Reliance reduce the input costs involved in providing these
services. As a result, Reliance will be able to pass the cost benefits
to its customers. Furthermore, with “Reliance Cloud Computing
Services” available on the pay-as-you-go model, businesses
will be able to address their technology requirements without bearing
costs involved in procuring, deploying and maintaining additional IT
resources.
“Reliance Cloud Computing Services, targeted towards SMB as
well as enterprise customers will essentially involve creation of a
central computing plus data storage IT infrastructure at the data
centre, and then offering the same to multiple end customers as a
standardized packaged offerings, accessible through public Internet, on
a shared or virtual, pay on usage model," said
George Varghese, President & Head, Enterprise Business,
Reliance Communications.
According to Varghese, today, 35 million business owners in India spend
a mere 0.4 to 3% of their total revenues on IT. Despite increasing
capacity and technology requirements - high upfront costs involved in
procuring and deploying IT infrastructure, and overall need for cash
flows has been cited as a deterrent to technology penetration,
especially in case of SMBs in India. However, increasing awareness
around the relevance and advantage of hosted solutions is changing this
scenario. “Hosted IT offerings are a cost effective model for
provisioning processes, applications and services while making IT
management easier and more responsive to business needs. We believe
businesses have matured in their IT strategies and are now ready to
explore hosted infrastructure as an option not only for short term
scalability needs but also longer term requirements”, added
Varghese. In fact, according to a recent Gartner report - technology
adopters are expected to purchase 40% of their IT infrastructure
“as a service” by 2011.
Rajan Anandan – Managing Director, Microsoft India said,
“We believe that the world of technology will never be
only-cloud or only in-premise. The best customer value will be
delivered as a combination, and it will be through telcos and partners
with a large market reach and customer spread such as Reliance
Communications that this can be achieved. By combining the best of
software with the best of cloud-based services, Microsoft can deliver
more compelling solutions for businesses of all sizes.”
Using Microsoft’s Dynamic Data Centre toolkit (an end-to-end
guidance for leveraging virtualization infrastructure of Windows Server
2008 R2/ Hyper-V coupled with System Center to create managed services
and partner hosted cloud offerings), Reliance is taking the lead in
making cloud computing a reality for businesses in India.
“With this joint initiative, we can cut down on server sprawl
and related capital costs across Reliance data centers. We are geared
up to deliver what is arguably India’s largest cloud
infrastructure today”, added Varghese.After Windows Azure,
Microsoft now plans to address the IT as a service market through the
Dynamic Data Centre services which will lay the base for the private
cloud concept and also help enterprises better intergrate their public
and private cloud environments.
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