Retail, banking and logistics — top industries that need to shift to the Cloud
DataOne Asia President and CEO Cyril Rocke expects remarkable developments in cloud services in the Philippines in 2014.
Rocke sees new global players will emerge in cloud services this year and a broader market as more industries migrate to the Cloud.
He also anticipates formation of partnerships between traditional hardware vendors and new cloud providers. This CEO also believes there will be a creation of new services and business applications due to cloud adoption.
Emergence of new global players in cloud services
The emergence of new major cloud providers such as Google to compete with Amazon, Rackspace, and other players is expected. Rocke says he sees IT infrastructure being standardized globally and that more enterprises worldwide will continue to turn to the Cloud for their IT computing needs. “This is the major trend and I see that this is accelerating,” he says.
In the Philippines, cloud computing’s acceptance from enterprises is increasing faster than anticipated since last year. This 2014, Rocke expects cloud computing to gain an even wider recognition.
“I’m not saying that all the companies will go for it, but we see from a lot of different industries the demand and acceptance for Cloud.” He explains this is because companies are seeing more benefits beyond cost and performance.
Retail, banking and logistics to migrate to the Cloud
Rocke cites industries that need to adopt cloud technology are those that involve large amount of transactions such as companies in retail, logistics, and banking.
“If you’re a logistics company, there’s a lot of movement of goods to be delivered quickly, frequently, and precisely. Due to the nature of this industry, network security and speed of computing infrastructure are key because you need to scale or increase your capacity quickly on demand,” he explains.
During peak or holiday seasons, DataOne has clients requesting for an increase in capacity. “Being able to deliver that capacity very quickly shows our service is able to address the specific needs of those industries,” Rocke says.
Convergence between traditional hardware vendors and new emerging cloud providers
According to Rocke, the Cloud’s impact was already felt in 2013. Last year saw a drop in sales in large hardware manufacturing as enterprises were slowly migrating to the Cloud.
“At the same time, the large traditional hardware vendors like IBM, HP, Dell, and others are using various strategies to enter the Cloud. We see convergences between them and new emerging cloud providers,” Rocke says.
Although he expects a higher demand for data center services and cloud infrastructures in 2014, Rocke clarifies that it doesn’t mean needing larger data centers because a lot more computing power can now be delivered through the Cloud.
Creation of a wide range of new services and business applications
The wide acceptance of cloud computing technology is a major advancement. “It is becoming a standard and it opens new opportunities,” says Rocke.
For instance, the large amount of transaction data in the financial market over the past 10 years can now be provided as a service to conduct analytics. “So you can analyze what happens in the financial market and try to anticipate what’s coming because all the platforms are getting standardized,” he says.
He emphasizes that new services are being offered these days which we could never have imagined two or three years ago as then, it was very expensive to have data access. “Now, you can have access to your data at a very low cost with limited entry barriers,” reveals Rocke.
This CEO strongly believes the adoption of Cloud will open a lot of new services in many other unexpected areas.
“What we see is that a lot of other aspects of life can be automated from the internet like having an IP address for equipment to be able to locate them, anticipate their condition, and do preventive maintenance. This is probably something that will create more businesses to the industry, as I see it, in the short term,” he says.