Indian IT sector - tighten the belt

Are we moving towards another recession?

The global economic developments after Standard & Poor's (S&P) downgraded the U.S. credit rating, point towards the advent of a global economic meltdown. S&P for the first-time downgraded its long-term sovereign credit rating on the U.S. from 'AAA' to 'AA+' and kept a negative outlook.

The debt ceiling could not prevent the S&P downgrading. The historical downgrading also worsened the word economy which is already on the brink of a recession driven by the weakened U.S. financial recovery and the debt-ridden European economy.

While the debt crisis is likely to hit banking, manufacturing, real-estate and pharmaceutical sectors in the U.S., the crisis is said to cause impact to IT Sector and sectors depending on exports.

It will also result in less capital flow to the Indian economy and capital markets may face more volatility head.

Indian IT sector has also started tightening the belt and getting ready to respond to this unprecedented situation.

-Cheers

Enterprise-class cloud-based data protection : Vaultize

Vaultize  from Anoosmar Tech is an enterprise-class cloud-based data protection that not only provide all the benefits of a typical cloud-based backup over traditional on-premise backup, but also provides numerous other benefits making it superior to any plain cloud-based backup solution.

Vaultize provides flexibility to enterprises in terms of deployment and how to store their data.

·         Cloud — they can choose to deploy Vaultize ―as-is— with no or little modifications — using the secure, scalable and reliable Vaultize cloud

·         Cloud option

·         Cloud Provider — they can choose cloud provider (e.g. AWS, Rackspace) which can be different from Vaultize’s preferred provider

·         Cloud Location — they can choose geographical location of cloud storage from many locations

·         Cloud Storage — they can choose to completely control storage whether it is in Vaultize cloud or cloud of its own

·         Virtual Private Cloud — they can choose to a deployment where the server and storage are dedicated to them and are completely isolated from other customers by making a virtual private cloud

·         On-premise/Hybrid

·         Private Cloud — they can choose to deploy Vaultize within a private cloud that would combine the benefits of high-speed on-premise backup with the advanced features of Vaultize

·         Appliance — they can choose to deploy Vaultize appliance to backup the data which otherwise cannot be moved to cloud for compliance to regulations or legal requirements.

Vaultize pricing is very simple: you pay just a flat fee per GB of backup storage.

·         NO Tier-based charging

·         NO Licensing cost — No additional fee for every device/user in your organization

·         NO Quota per user

-Cheers

Key cloud roadblock – Fear of Change

Key findings from a Study  –

Key cloud roadblock –  Fear of Change

·         Fear of change tends to be underestimated when companies decide to mix things up and take new approaches to tried-and-true ways of doing things. It's not just changing what people do all day in terms of how they use software, like moving to SaaS, but it's also about infrastructure and about application developers and how they think about developing an application.

·         Additional cloud roadblocks

o   Up-front costs

o    Security

Justification for cloud implementation on the other hand still remains the same-

·         Cost reduction

·         Increased flexibility/scalability

·         Reduced complexity

Again as discussed earlier in previous blog- Majority have virtualized their cloud servers, but few have implemented the Core management, Automation and Orchestration or Self-service functionality to use the cloud to its full potential.

-Cheers

High and automated Virtulization is same as Private Cloud?

Many companies have  implemented virtualization in various shapes and forms into existing computing environment.

They have followed the path of standardization of environments, Consolidating servers and datacenters, implementing Virtual servers for Development and Test and DR environments, implementing Virtualization for Production as P2V etc.  are all benefits of having virtualization.

Some also run highly virtualized IT with automation provided by system management solutions. One can imagine that many have already reaped the benefits of virtualization including increased utilization of servers, power savings, reduced server footprint, etc.

The question now comes up - “Is High Virtualization the same as Private Cloud?” or “We are already running a highly virtualized computing today, do we still need private cloud?”

And in many scenarios the answer is  still YES. And it really depends on if the attributes delivered by private cloud are in place already or still needed. This point is that virtualization and private cloud are not the same! There is no question that virtualization is an enabler.

Private cloud is a cloud dedicated to an organization. On premises or hosted by a 3^rd party, private cloud must exhibit the characteristics of cloud computing -  else it is not the CLOUD.  

Specifically, private cloud is expected to deliver 3 key attributes: Automation, Elasticity, and Self-service to differentiate itself from a highly virtualized or automated environment.

You will notice that I do not include ubiquitous access and pay-as-you-go model as key attributes for Private Cloud. These two are not considered as essential due to: for private cloud IT may want more control, instead of allowing ubiquitous access; and the pay-as-you-go or charge-back model simply may not be feasible to implement in an organization.

Without having virtualization in place, cloud will be more a concept than an implementable solution. Nonetheless, without self-service and automatic deployment, it may become cost-prohibitive to implement private cloud. These 3 key attributes convert a virtualization solution into a cloud setting.

-Cheers

IT Companies redraw strategy -

Cognizant –

The U.S. environment post-resolution of debt crisis may push the IT (information technology) companies to look at productivity and investment with a sense of purpose, seriousness and long-term outlook.

The situation as it was evolving would force clients to look for options that give them more for less. Clients invariably worked hard to drive efficiency when chips were down. Still, they needed to support their businesses. Consequently, he felt, clients had to necessarily invest in IT. The challenge lay in discovering - what else can be offered to them. Cognizant had to stay invested in creating newer capacities and offer innovative solutions if it were to increase its business prospects. In this context, it is justified the position taken by Cognizant to keep the operating margin within a 19-20 per cent band and reinvest the balance money.

The emerging environment in the wake of developments especially in the U.S. would force IT companies to work relentlessly on ways to become nimbler, flexible and adaptable. Cognizant would have to expend its energies on re-working utilization levels with newly-defined bench strength, fine-tuning the hiring process and driving resource efficiency in delivery models.

On the rising concerns across the globe over protecting local jobs - IT companies had to make adjustments on this score. Cognizant had gone in for campus recruitments in the U.S. and Europe. We are hiring in every geographical location. We want to be a local service provider to local clients.

Infosys Senior executives –

Maintained their revenue outlook, saying full-year fiscal revenues could grow 18-20 percent to between $7.13 billion and $7.25 billion, which analysts and investors had expected to be higher.

The economic environment is still volatile. All the large markets are seeing problems like high unemployment and inflation, low growth and huge fiscal deficits.
Clients have become cautious, as the sovereign (debt) crisis in Europe has become bigger.

-Cheers

PS: Cheper, Better, Faster...!