Wowed by Cloud

EMC Corp, provider of information infrastructure solutions, says it is excited that the government is investing heavily in research. “We have been waiting for this moment for the last 60 years and it is here and but,” says Manoj Chugh, President - EMC India and SAARC. And the good news is the government is thinking ahead and looking at technologies of the future, says the company. The government is realising the significance of cloud computing and is using the ‘cloud' word in every breath, says Chugh, who was in Bangalore in connection with the EMC Forum 2010. eWorld catches up with Chugh as he takes us through the journey to the cloud, how the government is pro-active in this space and what lies ahead. Excerpts from the interview:

New way of computing

Cloud is a new way of computing, it is not a physical product. It helps one leverage IT resources and deliver IT as a service efficiently. We are seeing tremendous excitement in the Indian market in terms of articulating data centre strategies around cloud infrastructure. Actually, a live example would be when this morning we got everyone with voting meters out at the EMC Forum. One of the questions we asked while the poll was around virtualisation, which is a key enabling innovation in the journey of an organisation to the cloud. And 100 per cent of 197 people who voted said they were virtualising their existing infrastructure. About 75 per cent of people said they had virtualised around 35 per cent of their infrastructure already. Everyone who has deployed virtualisation is on the journey to the cloud.

The first step is to consolidate all information assets by deploying network storage research — this is our business. Every customer who uses network storage is in the process of consolidating assets and is consequently already on the journey to the cloud. We offer two kinds of opportunities — both to service providers and organisations wanting to implement cloud computing to set up their private cloud. Clients come to EMC for storage, security solutions and data de-duplication technologies to manage a lot of information efficiently. EMC wants to help organisations move to the cloud.

The second step is virtualisation

The second step is virtualisation. Now many times clients don't realise that they are already on the journey to the cloud. Because they have implemented technologies just as network storage and virtualisation that allow them to move forward in the journey. Like as not what they have not done is bring business-critical applications on to virtualisation. In broad outline 40 per cent said they have got critical applications running on the cloud and 60 per cent said they have got test and development applications running.

Organisations will have to deploy cloud computing for managing growth of IT. Most of the IT assets are in accordance with-utilised. The IT executives we spoke to say their desktops are used, on an average, by no more than 10 per cent. Their servers, on average, are used no more than 20 per cent. If you have to use your assets better, cloud computing allows that. The investment made in IT will give quicker and better return.

All government leaders, when they are talking about setting up new infrastructure, are all breathing the word cloud nearly synonymously. Our leadership is recognising the importance of the cloud in delivering IT. A lot of government projects, going forward, will be based upon cloud computing technologies. Our technologies have been chosen in five large state data centres in the country — Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra and West Bengal. We are working with system integration partners to deploy these technologies.

We are excited about e-governance projects. We are very pleased that the government is investing significantly in research. We have been waiting for this moment for the last 60 years and it is here and nevertheless. Historically the government sector has been a single-digit contributor to the storage industry's revenues. We hope that with all the large e-governance projects and UID, the government pie will become bigger and in double digits by the current financial year.