Kerala ready to try OPDC, cloud services

Most SMBs and even larger enterprises feel that data centers are very capital intensive; they also believe that on-premise data centers are only for large organizations and cannot be built in a regular commercial environment.

NxtGen Datacenter & Cloud Services, one of India's leading data center services solution providers, went a long way in dispelling some of these myths during the Smart Infrastructure Forum in Kochi attended by both partners and enterprises.

Satish Vishwanathan, head products, NxtGen, emphasized on the advantages of an On-Premise Data Center (OPDC) to the assembled partners. OPDC is a plug and play self-contained data center on the organization's own premises without the associated capex. Reduced power consumption and cooling requirements and no AMCs help organizations achieve this and maintain a low opex as well.

NxtGen also elaborated on its offerings of Enterprise Cloud Services. Private clouds will also be offered along with OPDC for increased capacities for computing and storage. Both the solution partners and enterprises from Kochi who attended the Smart Infrastructure Forum were excited by the NxtGen offerings. Some of the partners expressed their interests to go with NxtGen in the near future.

Santhosh K of Datavision feels that OPDC could be the ideal solution for small to mid-sized banks across Kerala. "Many of these banks waste money by trying to deploy datacenters without any consulting and subsequently the expenses overshoot. As a consultant for partners, I would like to highlight to these banks the advantages of depoying an OPDC solution," he reiterates.

Deveesh of nDimension who boasts of a number of BPOs amongst his clients feels that there is emerging requirement amongst many of them for modular data center kind of solutions. "Especially those looking at migrating their offices to a new building will benefit from OPDC," he adds.

Sreekumar of AutoPower Solutions is confident of finding takers for both OPDC as well Enterprise Cloud Services (ECS) solutions amongst banks and hospitals, the sectors he primarily works with currently. Though an APC partner, Sreekumar is excited by the NxtGen & Emerson offering and is willing to push his clients for the same.

Ditto with Bimalnath V, CEO, UBM Autopower who though a power partner for APC for 10 years is so impressed with NxtGen that he has already bitten the bullet. "We have a branch in Bangalore and from there we are already working with NxtGen. Now we intend to partner NxtGen for the same in Kochi too."

The business values from OPDC and Enterprise Cloud Services particularly for both large enterprises as well as SMBs were also emphasized during a panel discussion attended by Satish Vishwanathan, head products, NxtGen, Manoj Sankar from Intel, Anil Roy SI, Deputy Director (IT) from Cochin Port Trust and Murali Krishnan from Cochin International Airport.

Each panelist expressed his own opinion on why the cloud adoption in India has not picked up as expected. While Roy feels security and cost factors are still perceived as bottlenecks by most organizations, Krishnan believes that enterprises are not willing to take risks but work with proven solutions only. "They are usually cautious about the reputation of the service provider itself and hesitate to embark on a partnership with a relatively new entrant," he adds.

 

Not that you can blame the enterprises since many service providers have personnel changing on a frequent basis and complaints are addressed only when escalated to the highest level, feels Krishnan. Roy emphasizes the need to verify how the SLAs are framed and from a government organization perspective how stringently the NIC guidelines are being followed.

Vishwanathan suggests solutions to challenges mentioned by Krishnan and Roy. "When you move to cloud, the biggest thing is to see the risk appetite the company has. The scenario around cloud is like what IT outsourcing was 15 years back; at that time organizations were hesitant to outsource what is considered hygiene today," he adds.

Re-emphasizing NxtGen's credibility, Vishwanathan adds that any service provider worth his salt will commit on what he delivers and that should be the minimum expectation from any organization. "If you have to go back to SLAs as redressal mechanisms, then there is some problem with the service provider." And organizations must focus on processes like ITIL to address such problems.

Sankar advised that there should be increased focus on the path to migration. While it is prudent not to move mission critical applications to an outside public cloud in the beginning, the future is to federate and automate IT processes. "Before electricity came, everybody was using their own power, but now everyone is comfortable with using distributed power. Likewise, the future is on using distributed computing and cloud is the harbinger to that future only, concludes Sankar.