Cloud as a Product - An option to consider

When everyone is talking about the SaaS, and everyone seems to be so much fascinated by it that it seems that whole world is moving towards this new offering. But we as well know that nothing works in isolation for long. I believe in time to come, we are going to see some sort of convergence of Cloud and Productization. The success of XaaS and adoption of Cloud by various organizations (big or small) will drive a new business model in future. We have to be aware that SaaS, PaaS, IaaS are definitely going to have adverse business impact on most IT service or infrastructure providers and they are not gong to sit with folded hands. I would not be surprised if we see following business models in future as a result of Cloud Adoption:

-  Cloud as a Product (CaaP) – As of now we have XaaS which are primarily elastic and chargeable on per use basis. However, as the usage increases and demand stabilizes, we will very well see Cloud being offered as a Product. What this essentially means that there will be business opportunities when a company want to move its IT infrastructure to a Cloud in some distant location, but would like to own the complete Infrastructure, which might include different levels of engagement by service providers. In other words, managed services over Cloud.

- IT services as a product (ITsaP) – As of today, a company purchases IT infrastructure and related licensing, which at times remains unutilized. As Cloud usage tends to grow, we might see the IT infrastructure providing companies to come up with a different pricing model. They can also start offering to turn CAPEX into OPEX and charge on usage basis. It does not mean that a company necessarily have to move to Cloud to take benefit of flexi pricing. Darwin’s law will follow and each one will have to adapt to survive.

- Use-based licensing by product companies like Oracle or IBM or BEA – As of now they are charging per blade which means people using public cloud can take benefit of flexi pricing. It is only a matter of time, when the licenses will be made available on usage basis which will increase the cost of service for Cloud providers. This will be essentially driven by point above that instead of fixed pricing, charging will be based on consumption which will drive-up the cost of services.

Cloud - the buzz word

Lot of buzz around 'cloud' these days. It is being touted as the next big thing and seems everyone is rushing towards it to grab their share of pie. For the uninitiated, cloud is anything where IT services are available as a 'service' rather than in a conventional mode. In other words instead of purchasing IT products, you pay for what you use. Crude analogy would be instead of purchasing a car, take it on lease. Lets look at some of the benefits which cloud claims to offer:

1. No upfront Investment - It helps in turning my CAPEX into OPEX. I need not invest into the IT infrastructure which comes at huge cost and rather I would be happy paying for it as per my usage. As most of us know, it is a IT is highly depreciating asset - be it software product or be it infrastructure.

2. Focus on Business - I do not have any expertise in managing IT. So if I set-up IT, I will have to spend lot of energy and time towards it. Cloud providers are taking away this pain and I can focus on my core business.

3. Save Space - I need to allocate premium real estate space for the infrastructure. With each passing year, IT assets depreciate while the cost of real estate goes up. In other words, my cost of ownership is increasing two-fold. I need not worry about this when moving my IT to a cloud.

4. Experts for job- I can be assured that an expert is managing my IT. Much better than a novice who is preparing his resume for next job while sitting in my office.

5. Data anywhere: I can access my data anytime anywhere if I have Internet connectivity. Recently we went on a trip and we all left our phone in the cab. Unfortunately, the cab driver number was in the phone and there was no mean to get the number. Fortunately, my friend had his address book stored on iCloud and he accessed his address book from a nearby café and called the guy. It was pretty simple.

Recent reports by Gartner suggests that in India, cloud services are expected to grow at CAGR of 33% till 2017. And the above benefits are the reasons for it. The fears around cloud have been Security, Reliability and Speed are being addressed by Telcos. As these concerns would be addressed, we would see more and more adoption. Cloud indeed provides a lot more than what is mentioned above and is the next big thing for IT revolution. It is no surprise that we see everyone moving towards cloud adoption. And over this adoption journey, there are bound to be lot of fall guys. What will be interesting to see how other services evolve with the challenges posed by cloud adoption....
 

Cloud - What it might mean for laptops?

One Device Fits All

Few years back if someone would have told me that we will see the end of laptop soon, I would have laughed at it. Laptop can be considered a natural descendent to desktop in terms of innovation. As laptop started providing more storage and RAM, and that too by occupying very little space, Desktop computer became thing of past. From big desktop machines to heavy laptops to light weight machines -they just kept on getting lighter and better. Next level of innovation was flexi screens, probably rollable screens as well. Laptop designers kept on doing away with once considered necessities like CD Drive, huge storage space etc all result of technical innovations like pen drive or portable hard disk. Continuous innovation did managed to impress the old timers like me who has grown up booting desktop through 4" floppy drive. However Gen 'Y' who is growing up on smartphones is giving it a miss. They are so used to working with smartphones that I doubt they will ever need laptop for their work.

I wrote an article few months back that this generational shift and preference for tabets and phablets will break WINTEL 'cartel' (if I may say). Little did I realized that this erosion is faster than I anticipated leading to its death and number of new technological breakthroughs are contributing big time. Key among them is evolution of Cloud. Everyone keeps on talking about it, but once its full potential is realized, I would not hesitate in chucking laptop on the ground. The biggest challenge for any cloud computing solution is reliability, security and speed. Even though I am a fan of dropbox, google drive etc but that is only to ensure availability of documents anytime, anywhere. I still have thick client installed and keep a local copy. The simple reason is ease of use and updating.

If technological breakthroughs are to go by, these challenges with Cloud computing will disappear very soon. Private clouds are the solution to security and cloud providers are investing heavily to pacify nerves here. Fibre optics have led to speeds unimaginable only couple of years back. A normal retail customer can get speed in excess of 15 MBps (in India) and in excess of 100MBps in matured markets which makes it indifferential to access data on cloud. The network connections are getting more and more reliable with 24*7 access QoS. Telcos are investing heavily to augment cloud computing and are coming up with special offerings for this solution which will make market more mature. With cloud access through Internet, it does away with need of VPN too.

If we take away the storage feature, there is very little ground left for smartphones to cover. Available RAM has already crossed 2GB and storage has already reached 64GB. Of course it is in high-end smartphone, but laptop does not come cheap either. In the excitement to make laptops lighter, one of the thing was to remove the burden of excess storage and providing it over cloud. That actually became its bane. If I can get a smartphone which has a port to connect to a screen and a keyboard, I would not require a laptop. And I don't think that day is quite far.

So what does it exactly mean? In simple terms, laptop could be thing of past. Users are comfortable with one device rather than carrying multiple devices performing similar functions. With dwindling user base, there would not be money to invest in innovations and it will be stucked at this level itself. No doubt, laptop manufacturers like Dell and Lenovo has seen the writing on the wall and are trying their hand at smartphones. It will be very sad to see a marvelous product dying but that's the crux of innovations and it will not be wrong to say that laptop has scored self-goal by pushing cloud computing forward!!!