Cloud offers business benefits

Cloud offers business benefits

Cloud computing and virtualization offer a range of benefits for businesses when it comes to IT.

This is according to Zaher Haidar, regional pre-sales manager in Turkey for the EMC Corporation. EMC owns VMWare, a major player in virtualization technology. At the company’s fourth annual KSA Cloud Conference, Mr Haidar explained that IT infrastructure traditionally suffers from “a high level of complexity couples with a low-level of utilisation."

He added, “Analysis shows that around three quarters of our IT budgets are spent on maintaining existing hardware and software leaving only a small fraction to be spent on new service offerings.”

To tackle this, EMC encouraged businesses to look at the benefits and alternatives on offer with the cloud. This change can be phased to allow firms to deal with issues as they arise, but the goal, initially at least, should be to transfer the company’s IT services to the private cloud.

In the first phase, IT production applications are virtualized, which improves efficiency and lowers costs. Secondly, business product applications are virtualized, which can improve scalability and continuity, while also offering a better level of service. Finally, standardisation and automation enable companies to utilise IT-as-a-service.

EMC shared the fact that it has itself made the journey from physical to virtual IT infrastructure, eventually hosting its services on the private cloud. Making this change enabled the company to transform its IT services, while reducing costs. It also helped to free up resources, which could then be reallocated towards business innovations and competitive advantages.

Leased lines can help to bring a network up to scratch before a business switches to the cloud. While this can be a costly initial investment, once implemented the service can provide businesses with “a greater level of flexibility, scalability, availability and savings, both economic and environmental”.