Proactive approach

With a target to generate €500 million (US$724 million) from cloud computing opportunities in 2015, Orange Business Services is tailoring its offerings to match the requirements of all kinds of corporates. Flexibility appears to be the name of the game in the burgeoning cloud computing market, and Rudolf Sarah, regional Cloud director for Orange Business Services, highlights the direction things are taking in the field

Sarah says that while the benefits from cloud computing are there to be seen, it is an intricate job putting all the various parts in place

Cloud computing is a technology that was born on the web, with a great amount of adherence between IT and the network. The web is the easiest and most ubiquitous network to access, and as such lends itself quite easily to hosted and cloud computing applications.

However, companies have been concerned with the idea of placing sensitive data on the web for fear of it being accessed and viewed by unwarranted third-parties. Specialist cloud computing brokers, as well as business solutions provider such as Orange Business Services have thus been involved in the development of highly secure, highly flexible cloud computing products.

“Companies are often looking for one partner, and the offer of security on the Net,” says Rudolf Sarah. “Issues with compliance also arise, and while the benefits from cloud computing are there to be seen, it is an intricate job putting all the various parts in place.”

The pieces required for the successful delivery of cloud computing services can be divided into the infrastructure layer, the platform, and the applications; which ultimately build to the offer of hosted computing services in which companies pay only for the computing process they use.

Orange Business Services tested its cloud services internally between 2006-2008, and now offers industry leading solutions in partnership with EMC (for data storage), VM Ware (for virtualisation), Cisco Systems (for servers). Some corporates are interested in a private cloud, while other are happy to share in a public cloud, and others prefer a hybrid model of access to both a private as well as public cloud.

“While the cloud broker model is meant to simplify the use of cloud-based services for corporates, it is often far from that,” Sarah says. “It is difficult to manage some of these relationships, and Orange has been proactive about this having established VPN Galerie, the world’s first hub linking VPN customers to the world of cloud services via trusted network gateways.”

With Business VPN Galerie, cloud services become virtually part of the customer’s VPN, allowing enterprises to seamlessly benefit from the advantages of the Orange Business Services cloud-ready network: end-to-end management and support, reliability, performance and security. Customers can keep their existing user access methods and corporate security policies.

Sarah says cloud is having a significant impact on communication and collaboration applications, particularly with reference to unified communications, with corporates standing to benefit substantially from a return on investment standpoint from well-implemented unified communications strategies.

On the platform layer of cloud, what is required in some cases is the extension of hosting all the way to the operating system level. On the applications level, Software as a Service (SaaS) is the demanded offering, with applications such as hosted email in the cloud being popular.

Sarah believes that cloud services will offer the opportunity for the current disconnect between CIOs (chief operating officers) and chief marketing officers (CMOs) to be bridged. According to Sarah, CIOs are driven by the desire to simplify complexities, while CMOs love choice, resulting in a division in strategic focus.

“The new title for CIOs in progressive corporates is ‘chief productivity officer’, and what cloud helps to do is commoditise IT,” Sarah explains. “The flexibility it offers gives the CMO the choices he likes, while its cost-saving and ability to limit complexity is in line with the CIO’s objectives.”