Suntel in the News

Cloud computing to enhance business efficiency

An interview with Ranjith Fernando – Head of Corporate Solutions, Suntel Ltd.

Q: The term "cloud computing" is used in a variety of different ways to describe a variety of different things. How would you define cloud computing?
A: I believe cloud computing is defined as a pool of abstracted, highly scalable, and managed computing infrastructure capable of running customer end applications and is billed or charged by consumption. Therefore I think it has five primary attributes:

• Dynamic Computing Infrastructure - This is the foundation for the cloud and should include a standardized, scalable, secure, and highly available physical infrastructure. It also must be virtualized with server, storage, and network virtualization.
• Self-Service Based Usage Model - Interacting with the cloud requires a self-service oriented approach. Self-service clouds must be intuitive and easy to use. The capabilities should include the ability to upload, build, deploy, schedule, manage, and report on the users' business services, so they can manage the lifecycle of those services.
• Minimally or Self Managed - In order for an IT team or a service provider to efficiently provide a cloud for its constituents, they must leverage a technology platform that is self managed. Best-of-breed clouds enable self-management via software automation, leveraging pe: text/plain
  
  

  An interview with Ranjith Fernando – Head of Corporate Solutions, Suntel Ltd.
  
  Q: The term "cloud computing" is used in a variety of different ways to describe a variety of different things. How would you define cloud computing?
  A: I believe cloud computing is defined as a pool of abstracted, highly scalable, and managed computing infrastructure capable of running customer end applications and is billed or charged by consumption. Therefore I think it has five primary attributes:

  • Dynamic Computing Infrastructure - This is the foundation for the cloud and should include a standardized, scalable, secure, and highly available physical infrastructure. It also must be virtualized with server, storage, and network virtualization.
  • Self-Service Based Usage Model - Interacting with the cloud requires a self-service oriented approach. Self-service clouds must be intuitive and easy to use. The capabilities should include the ability to upload, build, deploy, schedule, manage, and report on the users' business services, so they can manage the lifecycle of those services.
  • Minimally or Self Managed - In order for an IT team or a service provider to efficiently provide a cloud for its constituents, they must leverage a technology platform that is self managed. Best-of-breed clouds enable self-management via software automation, leveraging the following capabilities:
  • Deployment and recovery of business services and their computing resources (in the cloud)
  • Self-service scheduling and reserving resource capacity
  • Configuration, management, and reporting of resource capacity allocations
  • Access control and policies for usage of resources by the consumer.
  • Business Service Centric - Cloud computing must be business service centric. This is in stark contrast to more traditional system- or server-centric models. In most cases, users of the cloud generally want to run some business service or application for a specific, timely purpose; they don't want to get bogged down in the system and network administration of the environment. They would prefer to quickly and easily access a dedicated instance of an entire business service-such as selecting to instantiate an ERP system in the cloud (even if it is a complex multi-server networked environment).
  • Consumption Based Charging or Billing - Finally, cloud computing is usage-driven. Consumers pay for only what resources they use and therefore are charged or billed on a consumption-based model. Cloud computing platforms must provide mechanisms to capture usage information that enables chargeback reporting and/or integration with billing systems.

  Q: what would you say are the top three challenges to organizations seeking to embrace the cloud computing model?
  
  The top challenges are that most organizations face when organizations seek to embrace the cloud computing model is the lack of expertise, tools, and processes to implement, operate, and maintain a cloud computing infrastructure.
  Tools - Most data center automation tools are not equipped to automate and manage resources in a dynamic computing infrastructure - they don't comprehend the transient nature of servers and the associated networks and storage elements. They don’t have the ability to automate capacity management, enable self-service, or the instantiation of entire business services.
  Expertise - Most organizations do not have deep expertise in understanding the requirements of a cloud computing environment, the deep knowledge of the technologies required, and experience with those technologies. Most organizations are learning and have mastered some pieces of the puzzle, but no one I have come across has a comprehensive understanding and the full expertise necessary.
  Processes and best Practices - Most IT processes and best practices have been built around static physical infrastructures and the business services that have been implemented on them. Many of these processes breakdown when business services are instantiated, recovered, moved, and re-instantiated on the same resources within the cloud infrastructure. These processes were not designed to work in such a high change environment.
  
  Q: Are the chief advantages of Cloud computing in your view most readily applicable to the large enterprise user, or to SMBs, or both?
  
  A: There are compelling reasons for both large and medium-sized enterprises to be interested in cloud computing. For medium-sized companies, the main reason that they are looking at cloud computing is, it is faster and cheaper to get started. Medium-sized companies may not have sophisticated IT departments nor the money to invest in upfront capital expenses, so using a public cloud provider may be very attractive.
  For larger companies, using an external cloud vendor may enable small teams or departments to get a new application or a development/test environments running in minutes instead of months. The self-service aspect of public clouds means that small teams can avoid a long lead time for IT departments to approve project requests, procure servers, find room for them in the data center, install software, configure software, etc.
  Also, some applications have a limited lifespan of a few weeks or months, perhaps for a marketing campaign, event or special project. Pay-for-use and being able to return IT resources to the pool is perfect for these situations.
  Some enterprises, especially larger ones with economies of scale, are implementing "private clouds" for their own exclusive use. Large enterprises are interested in building their own private cloud to get the agility, efficiency and quality of service advantages of cloud computing, while mitigating concerns about public clouds, such as security, compliance, performance, reliability, vendor lock-in and long-term costs.

  Q: Do the current economic conditions bode well for this market, or hurt the chances for growth?
  A: Clients are looking for technologies that help them save money in the long run, and cloud computing is certainly one model that would do just that. In addition, analyst firm IDC forecasts that the use of cloud-based services will increase in 2010 because of, the economic conditions.

  Q: In your view, please describe the future of the cloud computing space.
  A: Cloud computing has already had a huge impact in the Web 2.0 consumer space. In the coming years we will see businesses adopting cloud computing - not only to become more efficient, but also to take part in a growing global ecosystem of innovative new services that will link entire industries, like smart power grids and secure online medical record networks.

  Q: As the head of sales for a leading telecommunications company in Sri Lanka how would the Sri Lankan companies benefit?

  A: Today globally we are faced with a situation where operating margins are becoming thinner by the day. This calls for an organization to be agile and to off load unneccsary non yield giving investments. In effect we find many Sri Lankan companies increasingly talking about hosting the infrastructure out Side Company where they do not have to focus on the non core activity of the company. On the other hand ROI on such investments are not visible. This makes an CIO of a company increasingly difficult to justify in terms of investments.
  The concept of cloud computing where you do not invest on hardware and racks of servers instead host your applications or draw resources from a cloud or internet. This is a pay as you earn model which suits the pressures of modern days specially in terms of finances.
  Cloud computing is here to stay and Sri Lanka not being very far in terms of telecommunication developments will follow suit very quickly. It is our responsibility as a telecommunication company servicing high end corporates to bring these concepts and introduce to corporate world.