EMC's journey to the 'cloud': Making life easy for the user

MANILA, Philippines - Incentives for enterprises making the journey to the private “cloud” could be manifold — cost savings, access to information anytime and anywhere, savings in data center space, energy and infrastructure.

Yet a push in the opposite direction is holding back many companies. The questions often asked are: Is it reliable? Is it secure?

Against the backdrop of this ambivalence, infrastructure information company EMC recently reiterated its push for cloud computing, more specifically the private “cloud.”

Sal Fernando, chief architect of EMC Corp., said technology did not invent cloud computing, users requiring access to their information anytime, anywhere invented the “cloud.”

“This is a delicious time for technology, this is a delicious time for the world,” he said. “Now we are at the point where any device should be able to access the infrastructure you built to make your life easier.”

It is always the user, Fernando said. 

“Everything that we do has to do with information — storing it, protecting it, and now delivering it to the people who need it... If we can’t make a difference to the users, then what’s the point?” he asked.

“I was telling a group of CIOs (and) CEOs in Singapore and I’ve said that we’ve reduced computing infrastructure by a factor of 10, we increased service levels for infrastructure deployment from eight weeks to one hour and we are very proud of that. Yet the people who use the infrastructure that we built say their life hasn’t really become easier,” he added.

People still have to bring a very heavy notebook when they travel. Why can’t they use their iPad, their Android device, their phone?

“The reason why people are holding off on the cloud is because they didn’t know that they can build their own private cloud. They think moving to the cloud means they need to give all their family jewels, their data. The reason people want their own equipment is because they want control of their data. They want reliability and security,” Fernando said.

The fact is, storage in the Philippines grew 73 percent last year, according to EMC. Spending on servers also grew by as much as 40 percent. In terms of actual CPU storage, however, only 12 percent is being utilized and all the time it is just using up space and using energy. Moreover, for every dollar of technology one buys, $5 is needed to manage it.

“From a storage perspective, we find when we delve into the customer’s environment that for every 1TB of data, 70 percent were not accessed by anyone in the organization for the last six months,” he added.

Now, everyone is talking about the cloud — what it may possibly bring in terms of savings and convenience for the user.

To build that cloud, Fernando said, is very expensive using bandwidth, using infrastructure. What the vendors have actually done is look at how people use their computing environment and apply technology.

“There is no doubt we can save millions for organizations in terms of infrastructure and energy, storage, servers and real estate. There is also no doubt that we can improve security, there is no doubt we can replicate your data and that we have the best people to do that,” Fernando stressed.

But there is only one point: Making it easy for the user.

“We’re here today and there are a lot of people doing it. There is safety in numbers,” he said. “I now travel with a phone and laptop. They are always available, always on. What we are doing is make users feel that the information is local but all the information is actually somewhere in the cloud and protected with the technologies we have. Users must be able to access everything from anywhere, connect with any device, regardless of where the data center is.”

Fernando said EMC is hoping that enterprises that have already completed the journey to their own private cloud would be ready for the public cloud access. “Public cloud means you put all your data in someone’s data center and have access to all the data you need for your job,” he explained.

By his own prognosis, Fernando said the private and the public will morph into the best of both worlds, enabled by the consolidation of technology.

Ronnie Latinazo, EMC Philippines country manager, said they believe that the next big trend that is going to happen in the data center is that companies would be looking toward virtualizing their data center because there is a compelling business reason to do so.

“They would be compelled for their data centers to be more efficient and face challenges on how to bring down cost, improve service levels and provide more value to their company and end-users,” Latinazo said.