Cloud cover protects information
IT executive Pramut Sriwichien urges companies to update and protect their computer systems against the possibility of future crises such as floods
Pramut Sriwichien, country manager of Symantec (Thailand) Ltd, urges companies to prepare their IT systems for the worst.
The advice follows the country’s massive flooding over the past few weeks, which has resulted in the shutdown of over 1,000 factories in Ayutthaya, Pathum Thani and other provinces.
Due to the discharge of water from major dams in northern and upper-central provinces of Thailand, at least six industrial estates have been inundated, swamping these factories.
Among the hardest-hit are Rojana industrial estate, High-tech (Bang Wa) industrial estate and Bang Pa-in industrial estate in Ayutthaya province.
In addition, Nava Nakorn industrial estate and Bangkadee industrial estate in Pathum Thani are also inundated.
Altogether, 600,000 workers are temporarily out of work.
Among the affected factories are those owned and operated by Honda Automobiles, Western Digital (hard disk drives) and other big names in the automotive, electronics, electrical appliance, food, chemical and other industries.
Altogether, these factories account for nearly 20 per cent of Thailand’s industrial production capacity.
Once the floods are over, it will likely take another three to six months to complete the business recovery process.
The unprecedented flooding, the worst in more than five decades, has prompted IT managers to ponder new options to manage their data centres.
One alternative is to store corporate data in the “cloud”.
How does this work?
According to Pramut, large multinational companies such as Honda, whose factories in the Rojana industrial park in Ayutthaya have been flooded, would have their own physical data centres on site.
In addition, there would be backup data centres somewhere else. This could be in Bangkok or other cities, so that the critical data at the Rojana facilities could still be recovered despite the damage caused by massive flooding.
For smaller and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), another option is to use the service provider’s cloud computing facilities to house their data centres. This way, there is no need to set up on-site physical data centres, as the SMEs can virtually access the data centres in the cloud instantly.
In this case, there is no concern about natural disasters disabling their data centres.
Storing data in the cloud also helps lower an SME’s IT investment cost on data centres.
Pramut says Symantec Storage and Availability management, for example, can help enterprises to manage their data centres, e-mail archiving, file system software, provide core storage management, as well as backup and recovery.
According to a recent Gartner study, the worldwide cloud services market is poised for strong growth through 2014, when worldwide cloud services revenue is projected to reach US$148.8 billion.
The adoption of cloud computing and cloud services among business enterprises has been increasingly rapidly over the past few years.
A Gartner executive also says more IT managers are thinking strategically about cloud service deployments, while the more-progressive firms are thinking through what their IT operations will look like in a world of increasing cloud service leverage.
Gartner estimates that, over the course of the next five years, enterprises will spend $112 billion cumulatively on software as a service, platform as a service, and infrastructure as a service, combined.
