WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, Nov 25, 2011

For more than a decade, IT managers and advocates have been working tirelessly to enable solutions based on common standards and protocols that can be built, supported, swapped out and replaced, regardless of vendor. And they almost succeeded — until lately. Cloud computing may be erasing the gains we’ve made in terms of vendor dependence lock-in. Going with a cloud solution means buying into the specific protocols, standards and tools of the cloud vendor, making future migration costly and difficult. How is this so? Because standards are still being formed, and cloud computing is still too immature to reach the point where customers are demanding vendor independence. The problem is, when companies sit down to calculate the cost of using cloud computing services, they don’t factor in the costs of migrating off the system – expenses which could be prohibitive and unexpected.

Find out Why the Industry is taking a Step Backward at Cloud Computing's Vendor Lock-In Problem

Cloud Investing, Buffett-Style

For a way to invest in "cloud computing" without paying a stratospheric price, take a cue from Wall Street's newest tech enthusiast: Warren Buffett. Mr. Buffett, who has long avoided computing stocks while favoring railroads, soft drinks and insurance, announced this week that his Berkshire Hathaway has amassed a $10.7 billion stake in International Business Machines, making it the second-largest shareholder. Last year, the century-old tech giant announced a goal to boost yearly cloud-computing revenues by $3 billion by 2015, to $7 billion. That is a sliver relative to its current total revenues of $106 billion, but it is an important source of growth.

You Say Cloud Computing Cuts Costs - But Where?

Recent business surveys indicate a much higher level of understanding of cloud computing among business executives than in recent years, but still a majority of these executives still say cloud is not very "relevant" to their own situation. “That doesn’t surprise me,” said Daniel Wang, owner of Jexet Technologies. “Cloud IT solutions require a change in the business model, which a lot of business owners see as too high cost in terms of implementation.”

Three Myths about Cloud Computing

1. The first myth is that companies are abandoning their existing infrastructure in droves to adopt the new computing paradigm. The reality is that the majority of their IT infrastructure resources is in a traditional data center environment now and will be in three years. 
2. The second myth of cloud computing is the rise of the public cloud. Well, yes, lots of individuals and companies are using the public cloud for email, document sharing or other non-strategic tasks. But IT resources from the public cloud will only be 7% of the overall infrastructure, on average. 
3. The third myth of cloud computing is the most interesting: the key concerns. We all know about the security bugaboo surrounding the cloud and smart IT pros realize there are integration, governance and compliance challenges in adopting cloud architecture. What most people outside of the data center don't realize is the challenge of transforming existing applications to run in a cloud environment. 

Cloud computing to become an ‘urgent and compelling force’ in India

India has been highlighted as a location where cloud computing is set to boom over the years to come, as the country ramps up its investment in IT. Research body Gartner has revealed that there are several "urgent and compelling forces" that will come to prominence in the nation in the near future. One of these is cloud computing, which it said is still in the "early stages" but is sure to grow rapidly.


We hope these short sum-ups on cloud computing will help you to take a more knowledgeable approach towards moving to the cloud. Stay tuned for more sum-ups on in the forthcoming weeks.

Don’t forget to add your comments and suggestions. I will have more around the cloud a week later.

Santanu Das
Marketing Evangelist, WOLF Frameworks

NOTE: The views expressed above are purely personal and for informational purposes only. WOLF FRAMEWORKS INDIA PVT. LTD. MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, Nov 18, 2011

Cloud computing will reach mainstream adoption in the enterprise market by 2015 when key issues such as security, service availability and data sovereignty are expected to be ironed out. According to Simon Piff, associate vice president for enterprise infrastructure research at IDC Asia-Pacific, businesses today are still hesitant in utilizing cloud computing for much of their IT needs due to concerns over security, service reliability, data location and sovereignty, as well as vendor support. He further cited a poll conducted at an IDC cloud forum held in May, which revealed that 49.7 percent of respondents agreed that, by 2015, major public cloud providers would have addressed uptime concerns so effectively that reliability would be a non-issue in moving to the cloud.

Read More to find out how Cloud Computing will come of age by 2015

Why cloud computing will kill programming - and make us all developers

In this new cloud computing world, any element needed to build an application will already exist on the web somewhere, so all that will be needed is for someone to connect up this series of ready-made modules and APIs in order to create a new application. In this scenario, no coding is required, or at least not at the level that it is done today - we need architects, but can do without builders.

Cloud Computing - soon but not yet

Forty per cent of respondents to IBM’s global tech trends survey are yet to engage in cloud computing. However 75% say that in the next two years their organisations will build cloud infrastructure. New applications will be build for the cloud – activity in this area will outpace virtualisation says the report – the findings were 25% and 24% respectively. Twenty two per cent will invest in private cloud, 19% in enterprise and/or mission critical down to 11% who expect to buy out of the box cloud applications.

Implementing, serving, and using cloud storage

It’s important to recognise that cloud computing is not a new technology, but rather, a new business model that encompasses an existing set of technologies—such as server virtualization—that reduce the cost of using information technology (IT) resources. Cloud computing takes advantage of Web-based mechanisms that allow scalable, virtualised IT resources to be provided as a service over a network. The advantages of cloud storage and other cloud services include “pay as you go” (i.e., billing only for services consumed—no fixed costs), the perception of infinite capacity (elasticity), and the simplicity of use/management.

PAAS–All You Need To Know About [101]

The cloud appeals strongly to end users in startups and SMBs. Platforms as a Service is popular because of its ease of use and perception of a low entry cost. Contrary to orthodox solutions for small companies, they can now benefit from the availability of AIM capabilities over the cloud, which would give them quickly accessible, rapidly created custom-built applications deployed as a service in the cloud.

We hope these short sum-ups on cloud computing will help you to take a more knowledgeable approach towards moving to the cloud. Stay tuned for more sum-ups on in the forthcoming weeks.

Don’t forget to add your comments and suggestions. I will have more around the cloud a week later.


Santanu Das
Marketing Evangelist, WOLF Frameworks

NOTE: The views expressed above are purely personal and for informational purposes only. WOLF FRAMEWORKS INDIA PVT. LTD. MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

WOLF dominates the Cloud says Business World

"Everybody knows there is money to be made from the cloud, but nobody knows how."

This week's cover story on Business World details opportunities in Cloud Computing and how a few Indian tech entrepreneurs have grabbed the opportunity to build a viable business in the Cloud.

The story explores the S, P and I of the Cloud: SaaS, PaaS and IaaS and details how some Indian entrepreneurs have recognized and harnessed the potential of each segment  in their own way to get a quick start and build a business around the same.

The story also takes a keen look at Platform as a Service and its current landscape. Some excerpts:

"Platform-as-a-service is the catalyst for most innovations in SaaS. PaaS refers to an underlying chassis for software development, storage and hosting SaaS over the Internet. It facilitates operations without the cost of buying and configuring the hardware, middleware and software. PaaS has been dominated by players such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Wolf Frameworks and Salesforce."

Some thoughts on WOLF frameworks:

"Bangalore-based Wolf Frameworks has another model. It creates platforms for startups to build their own SaaS applications, much like a Microsoft or Google’s, but at an affordable price. “With our platform, small firms can create their own business apps without having to write technical code,” says its CEO Sunny Ghosh. Wolf also offers back up and storage. It has 80 customers that have 55,000 users. It charges on a per-user basis and offers 3 GB storage per head: the peak tariff is Rs 3,088 per month. Wolf has been in the business for six years and has clocked revenues of $1 million. “Our platform gets rid of any IT investment an SME has to make,” says Ghosh."

You can read the full story here or rush to your nearest newsstand to grab a copy.

WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, Nov 11, 2011

A rocky economic picture is likely to speed up the migration to cloud computing—again. In the 2008-2009 downturn, companies moved to software-as-a-service vendors. CFOs liked the ability to shift capital spending (build your own data centers and applications) to monthly expenses (subscribing to your software) and gave technology executives a shove to the cloud. Fast forward a few years and technology executives are mostly on the cloud computing bandwagon. In 2008, small and midsized businesses ran for the cloud. In 2011 and 2012, large enterprises are going to make the move.

Click here to find out why recession is not a worry for the cloud.

SMB cloud computing adoption nears 50 per cent

The latest Spiceworks survey shows enthusiasm for cloud is continuing to grow in the small and medium business space. Almost 50 per cent of small and medium businesses (SMBs) are using cloud computing, with even more adopting virtualization technologies. “Despite market fluctuations, 2011 proved to be a great year for disruptive technologies as SMBs increasingly adopted tablet computers, cloud services and virtualization technology,” said Jay Hallberg, co-founder and vice president of marketing for Spiceworks.

7 Poor Excuses for Not Measuring Cloud Computing Costs

Saugatuck Research recently attempted to shed some light on ways to measure the total cost of ownership, or TCO, of private cloud. Here is what people tend to get wrong when applying TCO metrics to their internal cloud efforts:

• TCO is not a useful metric 
• TCO is not a useful metric for cloud 
• TCO is not a useful metric for the “soft costs” of cloud 
• Cloud is too immature for TCO 
• Cloud IT has an obvious lower TCO than traditional IT 
• Lower potential TCO is a good reason to go to cloud 
• Cloud IT TCO is the same across the board 

Cloud computing turns from buzzword into business reality – but not yet in HR

While the cloud is exciting for the IT sector, HR directors, for the most part at least, have been slow to realise the benefits – or, in some cases, even define it. The famous catchphrase of wobble-board supremo Rolf Harris springs to mind: "Can you tell what it is yet?" A snap poll of readers on HR magazine's website last month found an overwhelming 91% of the HR professionals surveyed believe they are not using the cloud effectively in their organization.

Cloud-Computing Market Set To Burst

The selling points for cloud services are that it frees companies from having to spend big on technology support and nullifies geography as a barrier to in-house information, which can be plugged from the cloud as needed. The growth of the cloud market suggests companies are buying the pitch. The market for global cloud-computing services is projected to double from US$68.3 billion in 2010 to US$148.8 billion by 2014. Data suggests that 81 per cent of businesses globally are either evaluating, planning, implementing, or have already adopted a cloud strategy.

We hope these short sum-ups on cloud computing will help you to take a more knowledgeable approach towards moving to the cloud. Stay tuned for more sum-ups on in the forthcoming weeks.

Don’t forget to add your comments and suggestions. I will have more around the cloud a week later.

Santanu Das
Marketing Evangelist, WOLF Frameworks

NOTE: The views expressed above are purely personal and for informational purposes only. WOLF FRAMEWORKS INDIA PVT. LTD. MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

WOLF Weekly Cloud Sum-up, Nov 04, 2011

By now, it’s no secret that cloud computing will change the IT landscape immeasurably in the next 10 years. Much of the discussion to date has been somewhat narrow, focusing on cost-savings to the enterprise and the public versus private cloud debate. When viewed from a global perspective, however, the potential of cloud computing is far beyond server consolidation and virtualization. Cloud computing fundamentally shifts the benefits of the Open Source movement, fueling innovation from new sectors, and impacting our culture at large in ways that parallel how we have seen Twitter and Facebook up-end the status quo. Now imagine these changes in the context of the billions of citizens joining the digital economy in India, China or the Next-11.



Read more to find out how Cloud Computing Can Boost Developing Nations.

How do you transition from Traditional IT to Cloud Computing?

Here are a few ideas:

• Consult on the opportunity to move to the cloud versus in-house IT; 
• Consult in helping to figure out what is needed for the company to move to the cloud; 
• Consult on choosing the best cloud provider based on the company’s specific needs; 
• Assist integration with existing systems; 
• Help other company members adapt to the new technology; 
• Troubleshoot the remaining IT infrastructure that can’t yet be moved to the cloud; 
• Show the plan after the cloud transition is complete — and show where you bring in value once the company is operating more efficiently and saving money! 

Cloud computing platforms ‘are a huge advantage’

Businesses have been advised to take advantage of cloud computing platforms and applications wherever possible. Phil Wainewright, vice-chairman at Eurocloud, explained there are numerous ways to use the technology in order to drive down expenditure. "It's not just managed hosting, you're getting a complete application that is a complete service in the cloud," Mr Wainewright stated.

Gartner Symposium: IT Solution Providers Take on the Cloud

The omens all pointed upward at this year’s Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2011: Attendance was up by about 1,000, the vendor headcount increased by almost 100, and everywhere solution providers and consulting firms and vendors espoused the opportunities new technologies such as virtualization and cloud computing were transforming into signed contracts. In fact, 85 percent of attendees surveyed at random by Appiro said cloud computing will dramatically change the way IT works over the next five to 10 years. Thirty percent said they already have more than five applications in the cloud, while only 13 percent said they have no cloud-based applications, according to Appiro’s poll.

Cloud computing investment accelerates

Leading global banks and other members of the Open Data Center Alliance, a group of more than 300 companies representing over $100bn in annual IT spending, are adopting cloud computing much faster than previously thought. Members of the Alliance will triple their cloud deployment in the next two years according to a report published by the organization on Thursday. This adoption rate is five times faster than broad market forecasts for the $90bn cloud computing market and reflects growing confidence in the delivery of cloud services based on industry standards.

We hope these short sum-ups on cloud computing will help you to take a more knowledgeable approach towards moving to the cloud. Stay tuned for more sum-ups on in the forthcoming weeks.

Don’t forget to add your comments and suggestions. I will have more around the cloud a week later.


Santanu Das
Marketing Evangelist, WOLF Frameworks

NOTE: The views expressed above are purely personal and for informational purposes only. WOLF FRAMEWORKS INDIA PVT. LTD. MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Highlights from Bangalore IT.biz 2011 - Exploring the various facets of the Cloud

"India Innovates" was the the theme for the 14th edition of the Bangalore IT show, Bangalore IT.biz held between October 18 to 20th at the Lalit Ashok at Bangalore.

A meeting ground for ICT majors such as Infosys, Wipro, TCS, Intel, etc. and over 600 companies from Indian states as varied as Rajasthan and Bihar, the conferences and seminars focused on a wide spectrum of topics such as  Animation and Gaming, National GIS, Green Technology, Cloud Computing and Aadhaar, the ambitious project of UID.

Sunny Ghosh, CEO, WOLF Frameworks was a panelist at the session on Cloud Computing chaired by Mr.Narasimhan (Kishore) Mandyam. Details of the session panelists can be found here.

Insightful and interactive, the Cloud session saw a packed auditorium as the panelists delved into different facets of Cloud Computing. Staring with an attempt to define Cloud Computing and touching briefly on the history of the Cloud, the session went on to touch Cloud applicability domains - looking at the practical applications of the Cloud in enterprises and SMEs, by the government and consumers, etc.

The session also explored the various segments of the Cloud: SaaS, PaaS and IaaS,  their adoption, their ideal customer scenarios and how organizations could leverage the different segments for their benefit. Kishore also explored the value-proposition of the Cloud, asking each of the panelists why would a consumer buy/adopt their service. Moving on the session explored specific issues about Cloud Computing such as End-user experience, Trust/security and mobile-to-cloud.

Time constraints and a ringing lunch bell meant that the discussions between panelists and the audience carried on well past the designated time into the lunch session. But the flavor of the day was predominantly Cloud and seasoned with a high level of optimism.


We are proud to be a part of the Bangalore IT.biz 2011 and are particularly keen to see the direction that the Cloud will take in India.