When you last met your enterprise customer to learn about his procurement plans, did you come back disappointed when he told you that all purchase decisions are on old? If yes, then take heart. Most of your peers are going through the same phase.

In addition, technology also enables an organization to achieve the desired goals.

This development should not come as a surprise because enterprise customers across the board are looking at re-evaluating their IT budgets keeping in mind the company's strategies to meet their business goals with minimal fresh investment.

But like every dark cloud, this dismal atmosphere too has a silver lining. And the one to your rescue is none other than technology and that too something you probably were pushing for without really looking at how it can address their concerns besides up-scaling and automating their business processes.

The best part of this deal is that these technologies can enable an organization to achieve its desired goals without huge expenditure for new infrastructure. Hence, at a time when your customers are seeking help, as a solution provider you are in the best place to put all their concerns at rest.

So here are the five golden technologies that can assist an organization in meeting its desired objectives. To help you relate to them better, DQ Channels has also carried a SWOT analysis for each technology.

Cloud Computing
A lot is being written, said and discussed about cloud computing and it's no wonder that the technology gathered a fair amount of recognition among organizations big and small. This has also resulted in different definitions of cloud computing coming up. However, few know that cloud computing is not about providing racks and servers in a data center in a hosted model. It's also not about providing software as a service but rather it is about providing almost anything as a service.

Explained Vikas Arora, Group Director-Enterprise Services Division, Microsoft India, “Cloud computing is a homogeneous environment available for all to develop, create and share innovation across platforms and enable inter-operability in return. For us, cloud computing is special because of its core value proposition to offer software services at a drastically low cost bundled with multiple benefits for organizations such as faster time to market, scalability, flexibility of payment, customizability etc.”

Strengths: At a time when organizations are worried about their capex, cloud computing can effectively help them reduce capex and further focus on their core competencies. Hence, the biggest strength of cloud lies in the fact that services related to software, platform, and infrastructure can be delivered through the technology at minimal investments.

In addition, keeping pace with fast changing technology is something not every organization can afford. Cloud computing gives enterprises the option to keep abreast latest technology without making huge investments. They can thereby automate their business processes.

In a nutshell, cloud computing gives direct access to software and hardware with minimal or no upfront investments. This reduces the total cost of ownership (TCO) for an organization and enables them to increase their business productivity. It also brings in the capability to develop applications directly in an inter-operable environment as it is built on open standards.

Weaknesses: Standardization of applications and having an effective eco-system of partners in place are some of the challenges that are marring the spread of cloud computing as a technology. But vendors are working on this front and soon there will be a standard for making cloud computing more pervasive.

Opportunities: According to IDC, the current US economic woes will only drive more enterprises to consider cloud offerings. This will upscale the spending on IT cloud services which is expected to hit $42 billion by 2012.

An international CIO-targeted publication conducted a survey which revealed that 58 percent of enterprises surveyed believe that cloud computing is going to bring a radical shift in IT usage and 47 percent are already using cloud services actively.

Providing reliable, flexible, and cost-effective access to all the data stored in an organization is the biggest challenge being faced by these very enterprises today. Hence, as an SP one can look at driving efficiencies and innovation across the business for customers.

Concentrating on areas such as superior service management, providing visibility, control and automation across IT and business services are few of the areas where SPs can lay stress. Besides, cloud computing gives business the option to pay only for what you use and hence the SPs can effectively use the technology to ensure greater revenues for themselves.

Threats: Security remains the topmost concern when it comes to adopting cloud computing as a technology. A lot of companies are worried about the fact that moving applications on cloud can make them vulnerable and lead to data breaches.

Virtualization and Consolidation
Virtualization and consolidation allows companies to do more with less. So, instead of having separate servers for every single application (where one application does not interferes with another), businesses can opt for virtualization and consolidation to have a virtual server for several applications.

Vinod Krishnan, Regional Sales Manager, VMware India & SAARC added, “While the immediate benefit comes in the form of reduced power and cooling costs, the long-term benefit comes in the shape of reduced TCO and greater RoI.”

Elaborating further Subram Natarajan, Executive IT Consultant- Systems and Technology Group, IBM India/SA stated, “Virtualization and consolidation have become a success because they deliver core practical benefits that drive business value by decreasing IT costs and business risks and increasing operational efficiency and flexibility. Besides, virtualization and consolidation also helps in simplifying deployment and management, enhances overall business resilience and enables new forms of innovation.”

Added Natrajan of IBM, “Examining IT infrastructure often reveals systems that are not performing up to expectations. Symptoms could be: poor response times during peak periods, late orders, and late delivery of applications and poor service.”

A dynamic infrastructure based on virtualization capabilities can help lower costs by reducing complexity, improving utilization and easing management through a common management platform and efficient tooling. Virtualizing an infrastructure can help enable the flexible and dynamic delivery of shared IT resources as services.

Strengths: Opting for virtualization and consolidation solutions can help organizations to do more with fewer physical assets. Besides, it also reduces the energy demands of infrastructure while expanding capacity and enabling greater flexibility. Virtualization helps drastically reduce the number of software and hardware resources being deployed by an organization.

Power and physical space reduction, accelerated server provisions/consolidation ensures quick RoI. Simplified back-up and recovery, business continuity built into model, dynamic provisioning and transformation of physical IT infrastructure are other benefits that a customer stands to enjoy.

Weaknesses: The challenge being faced in this technology area is that the partner eco-system needs to be ramped up a little more. The other limitation comes in the form of adding workforce to ensure greater and smoother deployment and manageability.

Customers still perceive that adopting virtualization and consolidation implies large overheads and multiple servers. Changing this perception will take a lot of effort from a solution provider. They can ape VMware's strategy where the vendor is asking its customers to analyze their infrastructure and arrive at an architecture and it is only then does it help them migrate to virtual applications.

Opportunities: Since 1996, spend on IT Infrastructure maintenance has grown six times from 26 billion to 120 billion. In a distributed environment almost 85 percent of server capacity sits idle. 70 percent of IT budgets are spent on maint-aining current IT infrastructure.

The above data clearly emphasizes the increasing need for consolidation and virtualization in an IT environment. Solution providers need to work with their customers to design a strategy that helps them address higher service expectations, rising cost pressures and new risks and threats, while also laying a foundation for breakthrough productivity, accelerated value creation and the increased velocity needed to achieve the faster pace that business and society demand in today's time.

Threats: While the concept and technology has been around for quite some time now the threat comes in the form of lack of awareness and knowledge before it can be applied. Besides, asset management and problem management are the other challenges that emerge from the application of above technology that again demands effective training of the technical workforce at the partner level.

Service Oriented Architecture
Service oriented architecture (SOA) has been heralded as the best technology to increase business competitiveness by enabling strategic business flexibility and enhancing business control. Most vendors have been exhorting their partners to offer it to their customers citing examples of technology service providers who are now offering SOA-based consulting and solutions.

This has only added to the perplexity amongst partners on what SOA entails. Pallavi Kathuria, Director-Server Business Group, Microsoft India explains it simply. “SOA is a design approach to organizing existing IT assets such that the heterogeneous array of distributed, complex systems and applications can be transformed into a network of integrated, simplified and highly flexible resources,” she said.

Strengths: SOA can make business more agile and help organizations cope with rapid changes in the market place, thereby making businesses more competitive now and in the future. It can be deployed for SOA's sake or it can be deployed to optimize a business process.

The journey towards SOA can actually be started with minimal incremental costs. For example, most of Microsoft's products are already SOA-enabled, so all that is required to be done is to enable those capabilities and start using them. Also as an organization goes through the journey, each step becomes less expensive, as SOA promotes re-use of application components/modules which have been SOA enabled.

Weaknesses: While a well-planned and executed SOA undertaking can help organizations realize greater responsiveness in a changing market place, not all service oriented efforts have been successful. “SOA projects have limited success when they are driven from the bottom up by developers. Building SOA for the sake of SOA without reference to the business context is a project sans organizing principles and guidance, the result being a chaotic implementation that has no business relevance. On the other hand, taking a top-down mega-approach to SOA requires such enormous time investments that by the time the project is complete, the solution no longer maps to business needs,” clarified Kathuria of Microsoft.

Opportunities: Businesses can find value at every stage of the SOA continuum, from departmental projects to enterprise-wide initiatives. This led to IBM devising the Smart SOA approach where the vendor showed how its process can help companies lower costs and increase return on investment; to start out simple and leverage existing resources; for solutions and frameworks by industry that save time and cost in project development; to help business and IT use their skills and expertise effectively to improve business results. The value of Smart SOA is not nifty new technology, but guidance and solutions to bring you smarter business outcomes.

Threats: SOA again remains restricted to only the top of the enterprise class customers and there is need to take it to the mass level. This will not happen until and unless the vendors rid it of the jargon and make a simple business case on why even SMB customers can opt for it. And most importantly, take the solution providers along for this ride.

Unified Communications
Unified communication (UC) has existed but as a very confused paradigm for some time now. In the coming years, data, voice and video technology will play a vital role in driving businesses. ER Ashok Kumar, VP-Services, Cisco India and SAARC pointed out, “UC has the ability to connect organizations in real time using the existing network. Hence, organizations can connect with branches by adopting Virtual Private Network (VPN) technology, based on the pay per service model. In view of the downturn and even otherwise, UC technologies such as video and web conferencing/collaboration can help reduce travel expenses, and enable companies to become eco-friendly.”

Throwing more light on the technology, Sanjay Manchanda, Director, Microsoft Business Division, Microsoft India said, “UC solutions are assuming more significance among Indian companies which have a mushrooming mobile workforce and the increasing need for employee-friendly company policies like flexi-timings and work-from-home that creates the constant need to keep work force connected all the time.”

Strength: UC make use of software to bring voice, e-mail, instant messaging, and video conferencing together to enable companies to replace traditional phone and voice mail systems with solutions that integrate telephony with corporate messaging, calendaring, and directories. All this essentially leads to huge savings in terms of increased employee productivity and hence ensure greater TCO.

Weaknesses: The technology faces certain challenges that impede its growth in India. Costly IP phones, security issues, low awareness levels, regulatory restrictions, low broadband penetration in India, and quality of services are few of the challenges that are hindering its growth.

Opportunities: Combining phone and e-mail communications into a single solution is increasing employee productivity and decreasing the administrative workload for IT professionals. One of Microsoft's Indian customers, Lakshmi Vilas Bank, a nationalized bank based in Tamil Nadu could realize 40 percent savings on the telephone charges with the UC solution.

Hence UC certainly does offer scope for expansion and assured revenues. According to a recent IDC report in 2008, the total UC revenue in the Asia/Pacific (Excluding Japan) or APEJ region was $1.8 billion, including IP telephony (IPT) and UC applications. Of this, the APEJ UC applications revenue totalled $798.6 million.

Threats: The only threat for UC as a technology is apparent from the fact that not every customer is willing to adopt it. Hence a lot needs to be done in terms of generating awareness at SMB and SME levels.

Telepresence
Telepresence as a technology can prove beneficial for the financial health of your customer's organization since it allows companies to make huge savings as part of its travel costs. In view of the recession a number of large enterprises and now even smaller enterprises are looking at cutting down their overseas travel and even domestic travel and thereby resorting to telepresence to discuss their business strategies and review performances.

Strengths: The biggest benefit of adopting telepresence technology comes in the form of reduced travel overheads. Besides, your employee or branch may be situated at a remote location, but they can still connect with you merely by accessing the telepresence solutions. The high-definition video quality ensures that people get a feel of real time communication even while they are not physically present at the location.

Weaknesses: The one challenge and drawback that comes across when it comes to the adopting telepresence solutions is the fact that the cost of affording the solutions are too high and hence the technology gets restricted only to the large enterprises.

Opportunities: Since reducing overheads is the immediate agenda of the companies at the moment, telepresence is one area of expansion that SPs can look at in terms of assisting their customers. SPs can look at either offering the solution and the entire telepresence infrastructure on a rental model to SMBs or have large enterprises and governments further the entire solution as a whole.

Threats: The threat that this technology is encountering currently comes in the form of the fact that not many customers in India are willing to adopt the technology since it involves huge capex expenditure. Hence, an effective eco-system of partners needs to be built to ensure that the technology can be taken to mass level.

Conclusion
Solution providers can look at adopting each of these technologies both internally to really understand its benefits and then have a readymade business case to present to their customers. Besides, in the near future, IT will be delivered more as a service and hence customers will opt for utility vendors and partners.

While large enterprises were the early adopters of the above technologies, SMBs and SMEs have also started recognizing the advantages of adopting these to automate their businesses. Hence, now is the time for Solution Providers to take note of each of the above technologies to identify newer areas of expansion.

Puja Sharma
poojas@cybermedia.co.in

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