"OpenStack has emerged as a really important component for cloud

OpenStack has emerged as a really important component for cloud services

To ensure growth while conducting their businesses in a smart and cost-effective way, SMEs have no choice but to resort to the cloud, which provides them the perfect growth path, says Rajesh Awasthi,

director, Cloud Service Providers, NetApp

India, Marketing & Services.

The cloud is the most fascinating emerging trend in the technology world. The Indian market for cloud services in 2012 amounts to about $183 million as per the Asia Cloud Forum. India is one of the major markets for cloud services providers across the globe, not merely because of the pace at which this technology is being adopted but also because of the number of SMEs operating in the country. Yes, small and medium enterprises have a great role to play in the cloud revolution in India. To ensure growth while conducting their businesses in a smart and costeffective way, SMEs have no choice but to adopt the cloud. It provides them the perfect growth path, says Rajesh Awasthi. And, of course, this revolution would not have been possible without open source technology. Cloud services providers across the world overwhelmingly depend on open source technologies like OpenStack. Diksha P Gupta from the editorial team spoke with Awasthi about the major trends driving the cloud revolution in India.

Trends driving the cloud revolution in India

Awasthi has watched cloud computing evolve in India. Throwing light on the subject, he says, “You have to look at the adoption of cloud technology from two to three different angles. First is how people are utilising the existing technology within their data centres, which is also known

Rajesh Awasthi,

director, Cloud Service Providers, NetApp India, Marketing & Services

as the private cloud. There are companies building their own private clouds, which cater to their in-house or group requirements. Second is the Public Cloud Services. These are cloud services providers like Tata Communications, BSNL Reliance Communications, Bharti Airtel, HCL Infosystems, etc. These companies deliver IT as a service to the end user. Going a step ahead, what we started witnessing was that there were a large number of companies looking at the areas in which they could utilise the public cloud services from service providers and the areas where it made more sense to use the technologies within their own data centres—to bring about more efficiency within their own data centres for creating their own private clouds. Third area is where people are talking of creating a hybrid cloud in which their production system is on their private cloud. And as the data ages, they push it to the public cloud services. This may include archival data that they may need to keep for compliance purposes over a longer period.”

The hybrid cloud is one of the fastest emerging models today, where, depending on the requirements of the application, the data resides within the data centre in a private cloud environment and when it ages, gets moved onto a public cloud service. Also, large enterprises in India don't place their sales force automation applications within their own data centre. They use salesforce.com or SFDC, as it is called. A large number of companies in India are deploying it for their own sales forces. Ramco Systems, which is dominant in the ERP systems deployment space today, is also a cloud-enabled company. A mid-sized company looking at an ERP solution need not set up its own data centre and deploy an application within it. The solution can be hosted with Ramco and the latter will deliver it as a service to the end customer. So ERP as a service is being delivered too.

The cloud revolution in India is more need-based. Awasthi highlights what drives this trend: 1. With respect to the storage area or IT infrastructure, one of the trends is for cloud services providers to deploy a shared IT-as-a-service environment, which would be delivered in a secured multi-tenant way to its end customers. So, they are not placing physically independent systems at the disposal of each customer but deploying a single environment in which they put in technologies that help to create a secure multitenancy environment. The cloud services companies are working on creating those environments. Indian companies are ready to look at this option when they deploy their business applications within their data centre or cloud services arena. 2. The second area where there is a lot of enthusiasm is in disaster recovery or business continuity. Today, businesses are heavily dependant on IT. Instead of setting their own data centre in a different seismic zone, companies are adopting Disaster Recovery as People are talking of creating a hybrid cloud in which their production system is on their private cloud. And as the data ages, they push it to the public cloud services. This may include archival data that they may need to keep for compliance purposes over a longer period.

a Service (DRaaS) with the service provider offering different SLAs (service-level agreement). 3. The third area gaining traction is businesses going in for off-site back-up for long-term archival solutions.

For example, telecom companies have to keep CDRs (call detail records) for several years as per the regulations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. For this, telcos are looking towards cloud services providers rather than keeping the data in their own data centres. Similar solutions are needed in the banking sector. Banks are supposed to keep the details of transactions of each customer for a period of threefour years—so an archival solution with the cloud services providers would be ideal.

4. Businesses are also going to cloud services providers for their big data solution requirements. This requirement falls into three broad categories, which are termed as the 'A-B-C' of big data. 'Analytical' solutions and high 'Bandwidth' solutions (required in the case of high-performance computing) comprise the first two requirements. In high Bandwidth area, NetApp has joined hands with open source vendors like Luster to create distributed a file system, to be deployed in a high-performance computing environment. The 'C' in the

‘ABC’ stands for large 'content' repositories. Projects like the UID or NPR, that need to deploy huge solutions that manage the data of one billion people, including their finger prints and iris scans, have to be stored in a single location. This data will be utilised by banks, security agencies and other branches of the government. So, managing and securing that kind of a content repository, which will continue to grow over a period of time, is extremely important. That's where Hadoop-based solutions play a crucial role.

I have seen a large number of telecom service providers as well as cloud services providers that look at open source based stacks to deploy cloud solutions. There is an alliance in the industry called the 'OpenStack', which does joint work in creating cloud environments using open source technologies. So, within India too, we have seen cloud service providers deploying solutions based on the open stack.

Open source technology has an important role to play

Since data is growing at an exponential rate, the next stage would be where customers require high bandwidth solutions, both from the compute side as well as from the storage perspective. Those requirements may be for a specific period of time. Awasthi says, “One has to see whether one wants to fulfill those requirements from within one's own data centre or look at cloud services providers. That's where we are trying to work and provide solutions with the help of open source technology."

Hadoop will be the winner!

Hadoop has emerged as a really important component. As the size of the content repository increases, the requirement would be to scale the data storage across multiple systems and create a single distributed file system across all those storage systems. That is where the beauty of the Hadoop solution comes in, which brings in the HDFS file system over and above the different storage systems that are deployed by the customer. Awasthi says, “We have an example of how a Hadoop— based solution has helped NetApp in customer services. NetApp offers continuous monitoring of NetApp storage systems deployed at the customer site using'Auto support'. where we take direct feeds from all the systems which are enabled with 'Auto support'. This is done to give pro-active support to customers by doing predictive analysis on near online data received from various customers' systems. That's a huge volume of data, because we have multiple systems deployed across the world and each one of them is generating alerts or the other at any given point in time. When that information comes to our 'Auto Support' system, it creates a huge repository. Earlier it used to take months to create a report from a system on the huge data repository. Recently, we replaced our storage solution with our own Hadoop-based E-series solution at the back-end. The same work that used to take months is now done in a couple of hours or days. That is the benefit of open source technology—something we see within our own internal IT system. I am sure it wouldn't be different in any other business. For example, if a retail chain wants information about customer behaviour from various branches spread across the country, it’s a major task to co-relate the vast data that is received from different sources. If the corelation has to be done in a specified time to make a quick business decision, Hadoop plays a major role.”

There are no security related fears in adopting open source technology either. In fact, the cloud services providers are happily adopting open source technologies because they help cut costs. Awasthi says, “I have seen a large number of telecom service providers as well as cloud services providers that look at open source based stacks to deploy cloud solutions. There is an alliance in the industry called the 'OpenStack', which does joint work in creating cloud environments using open source technologies. So, within India too, we have seen cloud service providers deploying solutions based on the open stack. People are more receptive to these kinds of solutions, provided they add value to their end customers. They are ready to implement these solutions in their infrastructure. Because in the end, the customer looks at what is the service level agreement (SLA) that the cloud service provider is ready to sign. They are least bothered about what technology is being used. Cloud services providers are looking at the way open source is spreading across data centres, and they find this to be a financially beneficial solution that can be deployed, while giving the customers the desired SLAs.”