Making every penny count

Given the increased economic uncertainty, many companies around the world now see their information technology (IT) budget flat or on the decline.

That's a big challenge for solution providers like Ajit Nair, EMC Corporation's senior director for global services in Southeast Asia.

Nair often meets clients whose IT budget is so tight that it's difficult to sell unless there is more smart leverage of the existing funds.

"It's necessary, especially considering that 70 per cent of the budget is used for maintenance, so only 25 to 30 per cent is left for business empowerment. In other words, IT people need more bang for their buck," says Nair.

In his opinion, it's time for further consolidation in every IT department. For example, software that competently shuts down servers at night should be considered and adopted.

Regarding the exponential growth rate of a wide range of applications and the advent of cloud computing, there is also room for leverage.

A number of regional telecom firms such as Singtel are now hosts of public clouds, so bandwidth and connectivity are crucial for delivering IT as a service.

The demand for this market is huge, as where you store data becomes less relevant as long as global connectivity is good and reliable.

In Southeast Asia, he says, the demand was relatively weak in the second quarter of this year when compared to the first quarter, but there is still some momentum based on a GDP growth projection of 3.5 to 4 per cent for this year and 2012.

According to Nair, global data is forecast to grow 50 times in the next decade. This means that many clients in the region are joining the bandwagon of private/public or hybrid clouds.

With less money to manage, a big portion of the IT budget is still needed to keep the lights on, so it's necessary to boost efficiency to stay competitive.

One example is that tape backups are still widespread in places like Thailand, where disc backups remain minimal. Now, it's time to upgrade those tapes, which have become more expensive and harder to find, into discs.

Another example is that it's time to boost efficiency in the journey to private clouds. In this context, outsourcing and the so-called managed services for remote offices are often recommended, so that enterprises can benefit from the industry's best practices.

Today's technology allows users to de-duplicate files and send only incremental changes to those files instead of the whole file to other users, thus removing massive redundancies in the eco-system.

At present, EMC's Global Services unit has a total of 14,000 service professionals and support experts worldwide, plus a network of alliances and partners.

For remote managed services, the global centers for best practice are located in Boston, the US, India and Ireland.

EMC also has industry experts in financial services, life science, the public sector and business markets.

In cloud and virtual data centre infrastructure, optimisation/consolidation as well as server virtualisation are the keys for increased efficiency.

In the area of security and risk management, the focus is on business continuity, disaster recovery and compliance.

Besides hardware failure, there are also other factors such as human error and connection problems that lead to security risks.

In the end, a secured system allows e-government, bank, telecom and other services to be delivered seamlessly via mobile devices once they are synced from anywhere in the world where there is a network connection.