"The overall economics and the new wave of cloud-based service delivery are key drivers and motivation for cloud adoption," says Suresh Sambandam, CEO & Founder, Orangescape.  SecuritySince cybercrime is on the march, security is a concern in the cloud model. What is holding IT managers back is the fear about security.

"Cloud computing security is the topmost concern and vendors of all hues are trying their best to come up with ways to make it completely secure," says Ravishankar of Nevales Networks.  

"It is important for the cloud service providers to educate the customers on cloud computing services, security and data ownership. A close dialogue with customers will play a critical role in addressing the real concerns over the security, performance and reliability of cloud computing and will help the industry to grow," says Amit Nath, Country Manager India and SAARC, Trend Micro. 

Virtualization is indispensable for transitioning legacy applications to new cloud infrastructures and a critical security enabler in a cloud environment. "Cloud computing is secure and we ensure every bit of it. You won't need to sacrifice security, control or compliance on your journey to the cloud. VMware solutions offer unique introspection capabilities that help to identify hard-to-detect problems and enable comprehensive security controls," says Ganesan Arumugam, Director -Partners, VMware India.

"While Cloud offers a very attractive proposition by way of superior RoI, there is always an underlying fear of security," says Laxmi Narayan Rao of Jamcracker.  

It is important that organizations choose the right cloud vendor to partner in their Cloud initiatives. A good Cloud partner can help an organization leverage their current IT investments, make an optimal shift to the Cloud whilst enjoying Enterprise level service performance guarantees with stringent clauses for failure. 

"Issues regarding security, even though it is mostly a matter of perception, continue to surface. Also the connectivity issues and proximity of cloud datacenters in India geography continues to put challenges on performance. Despite these challenges, the enquiries on cloud solutions have increased five fold which only shows the uptake of cloud adoption," says Suresh of Orangescape. 

Achieving security in a private cloud environment is about striking a balance in between trust and control. Building trust with public cloud services providers and maintaining certain control of security policies will allow enterprises to enjoy the full benefit in public cloud service with peace of mind. To get there is not the sole responsibility of a CIO. Public cloud services providers are also actively engaged with their customers to bring security control and management back to enterprises. In Asia, the public cloud services market is still at its infant stage. Thus, the trust level between enterprises and providers remains minimal. "But over time, with strengthened trust and relationship, enterprises can work closer with their providers to build cloud security or ultimately rely on the providers to execute their security policies," says Rana Gupta, Business Head, SafeNet India and SAARC.  

Hybrid cloud

When it comes to the cloud, Jamcracker immediately comes to mind. A pioneer in the Cloud Computing domain, the company offers the platform that is used by hundreds of service providers, cloud providers and enterprises around the world to enable, deliver and manage private and public cloud services. "Companies such as Telstra, Telus, Eircom, AB&T, Cisco, BroadSoft, Nokia Siemens Networks, DHL and many others are unifying cloud services with Jamcracker," informs Laxmi Narayan Rao.   

There is no reason to disbelieve that public cloud computing offers some compelling benefits, namely, no initial hardware investments, pay-as-you-go fees, and quick time to value. However, these are offset by worries about security, loss of data control, and vendor lock-in. On the other hand, though ironclad security and control are offered by private clouds, the scale and economics restrict most of the SMBs from venturing into private cloud landscape. In such a scenario, the hybrid cloud comes to the rescue of those willing to have the taste of cloud. In the hybrid cloud domain, the solutions provide the flexibility and affordability of the public cloud with the security and peace of mind of a private cloud. Adding hybrid cloud solutions can stand in good stead for the channel partners to grow their businesses among SMBs that want the best of the public and private clouds.  

It is the combination of public and private models that is particularly appealing to SMEs.

The Jamcracker Services Delivery Network (JSDN) is a multi-tiered and multi-tenant cloud aggregation, delivery and management platform. The JSDN Enterprise solution enables IT to centralize the procurement, provisioning, billing, security, administration and user support of private and public cloud services. With JSDN Enterprise, IT organizations can unify public and private cloud services.  “This makes it extremely easy for organizations to enjoy the cost advantage of a Public Cloud whilst having the security assurance of a private cloud for industry core apps and sensitive data," says Laxmi Narayan Rao.  

Taking a step in the direction of improving its position in the hybrid cloud architecture, last year IBM acquired Cast Iron Systems which enable IT organizations to create hybrid cloud environments. "IBM's acquisition of Cast Iron Systems recognizes the key to getting more IT enterprises to move to the cloud - the integration of cloud and SAAS with on-premise systems."

"Creating such hybrid environments is considered by many to be a key in enabling more movement to cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service (SAAS) by enterprise customers because those large organizations are unlikely to move their entire infrastructure to the cloud. Instead, IT organizations and IT solution providers must integrate on-premise infrastructure with the cloud," says Mudiam.  

It is incumbent upon the channel partners to have a clear picture of what the hybrid cloud is and is not. In general sense, the public cloud consists of shared services offered on public networks and available to all interested customers. Salesforce, Google and Amazon are among the major players in the public cloud landscape. Private cloud services are shared, but access to them is restricted to a defined set of users. Services delivered in the hybrid cloud encompass components of both public and private cloud models. 

"Hybrid cloud normally means that some services, applications or data are internally hosted by the enterprise. As we are targeting SMEs, the normal scenario is that they don't have local applications, data hosted. The scenario that might occur is that they have desktop applications," says Ravishankar.  

Not to be left behind in offering hybrid cloud infrastructure, Oracle has a complete portfolio of Middleware products which will help in integrating Public and Private Clouds. This integration can be data based or process based. "In addition, Oracle Identity Management has comprehensive products for Identity propagation and federation which will be essential in Hybrid Cloud environments," says Dhruv Singhal, Sales Consulting Director, Oracle India.  

Advantages for SMEs

One of the benefits of the cloud computing model for SMEs is its low barrier to entry. Risks are limited because contracts with service providers are generally covered by service level agreements. These contracts can be cancelled at any time. 

For the channel community, this means only more opportunities, as the cloud will increase the penetration of IT services in the country. The market opportunity will be huge and no single vendor would be able to address it. Channels can themselves look to become cloud computing service providers for SMBs and niche verticals partnering with ISVs who can then deliver specific applications on the cloud.  

Proponents of cloud computing are of the firm belief that the cloud technology has the potential of simplifying business processes for SMEs. Coupled with that, the technology adds value to software applications and lowers costs by moving the focus of IT applications outside the limits of traditional businesses. 

Cloud computing is expected to help SMEs offer more cost-effective services to their customers, improving efficiencies in the process. 

Finally...

SMEs have been the most aggressive segment to adopt cloud services. Since their IT needs are less complex and they have fewer legacy applications, and less IT support compared to those of big enterprises, SMEs are often willing to outsource the delivery and operation of IT to third parties, ensuring that they focus on running their businesses. According to a research by McKinsey, SMEs with fewer than 250 employees are more than twice as likely as big enterprises to adopt cloud services.

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