ALBION NOTE ON CLOUD COMPUTING
Seminar on Cloud Computing: Opportunities & Challenges for SME’s

Cloud computing is the emerging paradigm where data and applications reside in the cyberspace allowing users to access these through any web connected device like computers and mobile. The success of cloud computing is derived from its four core characteristics Virtual presence; scalability; efficiency & Flexibility.
Whereas large enterprises do create and operate in their own private cloud, small and medium enterprises need not be left behind and can reap the same benefit by subscribing to the services from a public cloud.

The public cloud can be defined as the outsourcing model for computing, hardware and storage functions to a third party service provider, which hosts applications on cyberspace through linked services.

The Opportunities available to the SMEs by using the ‘Cloud Computing’ model are phenomenal: access to unlimited computing power & storage; using the high end computing resources without owning anything, effectively converting all the capex into opex; substantial reduction of office space and human resources; accessing the applications and data from anywhere and additionally contributing to the cause of green environment.

There are challenges too: Safety & Security of the data is the foremost concern of the SMBS when they migrate to the cloud computing model; ensuring the regularity and compliance requirement in an environment where the applications are running on an infrastructure located in an unknown location is another. Cloud Services providers, are ready to provide Service Level Agreements (SLA) with guaranteed Quality of Expectations (QOE), and Quality of Services (QoS) and answer all the Queries boggling the mind of SME’s who are willing to take a leap to cloud computing. State of the art technologies for backup, data security, disaster management and international best practices are available on this model, claim the cloud computing Service providers.

It is with this background, PHD Chambers conducted a seminar on this vital topic of cloud computing to create awareness to its members and provide them with an insight in to this new technology enabling them to avail of the opportunity to reap its benefits. Albion Infotel Private Limited was the lead sponsor and Knowledge partner in organizing the seminar held on the 28th September 2011 which was a grand success. Speakers from Albion Infotel, IBM, VMware, Wipro, Tata Telecom and Tandberg shared with the audience about technologies and industry standards on cloud computing available for SMEs. They had also showcased their products and services available at the kiosks setup outside the seminar hall.

25/04/2011
Amazon’s Trouble Raises Cloud Computing Doubts.

The black out at Amazon’s EC2 (Elastic Cloud Computing) data centre has cast a shadow over cloud computing, which has been hailed as a sturdy, reliable and inexpensive storage and network solution, especially for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that cannot afford their own large servers.

11/05/2011
To Cloud or not to Cloud???

Cloud computing is not the exclusive domain of large enterprise and the public sector. In fact, the SMB and mid market segment can hugely benefit by leveraging public cloud services that deliver IT services and applications that they need

14/06/2011
Learning From the Failures of Amazon Cloud.

Due to some serious failure in Amazon data centre in Northern Virginia in United States, Amazon Web Services (AWS) suffered a major outage in the last week of April, affecting thousands of websites that rely on AWS. Many start-ups and web companies — including some companies in India — who hosted their services in the US East region were affected due to this outage

27/06/2011
India is at the right place and time to contribute to innovation in cloud computing.

There was a time when ‘cloud’ was nothing more than the result of water droplets suspended above the surface of the Earth. Today, it is a sophisticated term for one of the most-sought-after technology propositions for businesses. For over a decade and a half, cloud technologies have been quietly transforming our private lives with free and paid online mail and storage services, and more recently with social networking services.

19/08/2011
How India Inc has been using brainstroming to hone strategy and spur innovation.

A few months ago, travel company Makemytrip had its first ‘Gold Mine’ meeting. Here, each business head was asked to come up with a couple of ideas, not related to his line of work, which would have the potential to generate a certain amount of revenue within a given period of time. This could be a new line of business, new product offering or simply a new approach to an existing process

25/08/2011
India’s Cloud Market to reach $4.5 billion by 2015.

There is a high chance that companies that are not adopting IT today and don’t have major investments in datacenters and server farms will directly move into the cloud model.

25/08/2011
Trends in Cloud Computing among Indian SMB’s.

Cloud computing is one of the most in-vogue discussion topic in the technology sector today – it is expected to have a tremendous game-changing impact on how IT is delivered in the future.
At an SMB level, the comprehensive AMI Syndicated Annual Research among India SMBs indicates that the adoption of SaaS (Software-as-a-Service), a key platform of Cloud Computing is still at a preliminary stage – close to one-in-ten PC-owning SMBs (businesses with less than 1,000 full-time employees) have adopted the same.