Cloud computing : Sharing Gyan

IT veteran, Suresh Ramani set up Techgyan in Mumbai in 2001. The company
planned to venture out into the hardware distribution business and on the side,
worked with Microsoft's software division. Later, as the company started making
profits, they began offering Microsoft solutions.

The SMBs remained as the main target for Techgyan from the inception of the
company and slowly it went on to expand it by offering services to any business
with between five and 300 PCs, which was earlier restricted to 100.

Techgyan currently offers MS solutions including Windows Small Medium
Business Server, MS Exchange and Essential Business Server. The company has also
built expertise in Messaging solutions and collaborating solutions of Microsoft.
The company is more focused on providing horizontal solutions than vertical
focused solutions.

Suresh Ramani CEO, Techgyan Mumbai

For Ramani, there were lots of reasons why he decided to take on cloud
computing. “Basically when I read about cloud computing, I found lots of
advantages in investing in the service, in terms of technology and costs.
Primarily, this does not require any investment as our mail boxes could be in
Microsoft's server safely and we could go on adding however much we needed
according to our need,” he said.

He says that the problems of upgrade and update would be eliminated when
working in cloud. “Moreover, the reliability of the our data is better than what
we could have ourselves, as there are many more data centers and I need not
worry even if there is a downtime in one data center. More than anything, the
concept is totally green, as it doesn't needs more hardwares to run on it and we
can contribute to the social cause by saving energy and emitting less heat.”

Currently, the company is offering services like domain name registration,
web development, e-mail solutions, document sharing to name a few over cloud
from Microsoft. These applications are provided on a smaller scale and Techgyan
is planning to provide Office Live Meeting service. “This service requires a
server and since it is being hosted by Microsoft, we don't need that. We are
currently using this service within our organization and would be offering it
shortly to large enterprises,” Ramani informed.

He suggested a few reasons why a company should invest in cloud-based
services. “The primary thing is the transformation of capital expenditure to
operational.

Secondly, the company needs to pay only for their usage and thirdly, they
need not invest in their administration and business development costs. Also,
there is no need for anti-virus or any security spending and above everything,
the concept is green.”

SNAP INTERVIEW
		Moorthy Uppaluri General Manager-DPE Microsoft India		Ponani Gopalakrishnan VP-India Software Lab, IBM		Andrew Knott VP-APAC Salesforce.com
Who are going to be the drivers of cloud computing concept?	We see SMBs as the early adopters of this technology. Larger enterprises are also beginning to look at the benefit of SaaS and are considering using service/hosted models for non-mission critical applications.		At a time when organizations of all sizes are facing extreme data overload, skyrocketing energy costs, increasingly complex regulatory requirements and competition from more nimble economies, cloud computing is emerging as a significant shift across all industries		The cloud computing model is driven by the 35 million small and medium businesses in India who are looking for easy to use, reliable and scalable applications to enable good business growth
Which verticals would be using the cloud path effectively?	We do not believe cloud computing or software as a service is specific to any verticals		All verticals have particular need for cloud computing and they are doing so effectively		Cloud computing has witnessed quick adoption by product and service companies in the banking, finance and healthcare verticals. Other verticals like IT, BPO, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, government and education are also embracing this model

The company that has been focusing on the SMB segment for last eight years
and is planning to offer solutions for the large enterprises shortly by offering
email and collaboration services.

Ramani does not feel that there is a challenge involved with providing the
cloud computing services as everything is being looked after by the vendor
directly in terms of maintenance and security, which are the major concerns for
any enterprise.

Currently, the company receives around 30 percent of his revenues from cloud
computing, as it has just started to provide the technology from January 2009.
The company plans to increase it to about 50 percent in the near future.

NR Sethuraman

sethuramannr@cybermedia.co.in