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March - 2015 issue

Eliminating Cloud Apprehensions

By Vignesh Anantharaj

Email connectivity, VoIP, file sharing, web meetings and a robust IT infrastructure have forever been the backbone of many SMEs. For many years, small companies bore the brunt of having to deal with poor tech choices. They either had the option of using software designed for large companies that were downright expensive or cheap software choices that lacked functionality. Today, the cloud is leveling the playing field. One of the main criteria for companies to adopt the best solution is the need to be self-aware. Unless the staff is experienced and are capable of optimizing investments in the big market systems, it is a very practical idea to consider a different, personalized approach.
Many companies today struggle to assess disparate opinions; i.e when and where to use public, private or hybrid cloud solutions. The steps to be take to enable the progressive switch to cloud, and the modernization of their IT environment legacy as part of that journey is proving to be the reason for many sleepless nights for CIOs. According to a survey conducted by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) on behalf of iland, 86 percent of Singapore respondents reported they experienced at least one unexpected obstacle with their Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider, and downtime, performance, support and pricing topped the list of issues.
This ultimately leads to the demand on IT and business to work together even more closely to ensure cloud adoption is not counter-productive — enabling business units to self-provision cloud service, while IT divisions take care of related risks factors, integration issues and service-level considerations.
During the many interactions during the course of this issue, a director posed a very interesting argument- whether the application should modify itself according to the nature of the cloud or the cloud should transform to suit the requirements of the application?! Thoughts such as these form the building blocks of tomorrow’s success stories. Recognizing such companies who want to take the leap and change the landscape of the cloud in THE APAC region is what we have tried to showcase in this month’s “10 most promising APAC cloud companies”. The list ranges from the most sought after cloud security providers to all in one business management cloud platform providers in the APAC region.
Do let us know what you think.

Vignesh Anantharaj
Managing Editor
vignesh@cioreview.in