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Cloud computing goes the super market way

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Deepa
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Angira Agrawal, AVP and head, Cloud, NEC India

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Indian companies wishing to adopt cloud computing services have much to cheer now. One wonders why and the reasons are - with the increased maturity and the number of global cloud service providers now entering India, Indian companies now have multiple options to shop for the most suitable cloud services, whenever they want and however they want.

That brings us to the question - is there a growing trend among companies, or departments of larger companies to buy select products and services off the cloud (well, literally!) the e-Commerce way? The answer is YES.

Having said that, the essence of e-Commerce seems to have touched upon every aspect of online shopping be it for ‘consumer' goods or services or ‘business' goods or services. In the realm of B2B purchases, we are witnessing a consumerization of IT, the cloud solutions that users have brought into the enterprise are changing the way IT organizations are responding to the demands of these users. The trademark benefits of an e-Commerce set-up such as comfort, variety, speed and convenience of buying have been extended to users wanting to purchase IT inventory. Companies are now empowered with a broad range of choices, and are able to rapidly choose the best options that meet their business needs.

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As consumerization of cloud computing has emerged in the enterprise, it has brought with it varying levels of confusion about the options and the needs they best meet. This provides an opportunity for providers offering cloud services especially the ones specializing in the ‘cloud aggregator or brokerage model' to step in and address this confusion, by providing customers a portfolio from which they can choose the best options that meet their needs. . These, of course keeping in mind the ‘ease of use' and the ‘budgets set by the customer'.

Given the economics of the cloud and the new business models emerging around the delivery of cloud-based services, organizations could create and deliver these new ICT services at a potentially lower cost compared with conventional approaches. However, many technological and business aspects of cloud are still evolving.

This however is a great challenge for the CIOs who are highly concerned with returns on investments, but at the same time provide the best and most secure mechanisms to manage and protect the corporate IT and business data. In this scenario, having an able and unbiased consultant who can understand the company's business needs and associated IT requirements; and then suggest the best options that meet the above, can definitely provide the CIO much needed business support.

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Better still, if the consultant can facilitate the acquisition and subsequent delivery of these chosen solutions. And this is what is known in the industry as the Cloud broker. A Cloud broker typically partner with the likes of telcos, cloud offering providers, etc. and bridges the gap between demand and supply. They understand customer requirements; they have a wide portfolio to offer the customer the best possible solution that can meet their requirements from a functionality, domain and pricing viewpoint.

The Cloud broker saves a CIO the time to liaise with multiple cloud vendors by being a seamless interface between the CIO and the various vendors.

An interesting finding as predicted by Gartner states that by end of 2012, 20 percent of businesses will not own any ICT assets. This means enterprise ICT budgets will either be shrunk or reallocated to more-strategic projects; enterprise IT staff will either be reduced or re-skilled to meet new business requirements, and/or asset distribution will have to change radically to meet the requirements of the new IT hardware/software usage points.

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When companies make such radical changes to their business models, it's imperative that they go in for the best cloud solutions that will help them improve the effectiveness and manage their IT assets.

In a nutshell, the cloud computing industry is constantly evolving and the year 2013 will see aggregators and brokers gain critical mass. These aggregators will become a one stop shop solution provider where the customer not only gets to choose from a basket of cloud applications but also is guaranteed ease of use through interoperability.

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