Asia Cloud Forum created

The Asia Cloud Forum, an online media portal, has been created to represent the interests of enterprise users, governments, telcos, vendors, policy makers and others with a stake in the development of cloud computing in Asia.

Cloud transforming BCM: where the buck stops

Natural disasters such as the floods that hit Thailand and the earthquake and tsunami that ravaged Japan last year underlined how companies, businesses and the economy are increasingly dependent on their infocomm systems to operate smoothly and reliably.

“Therefore, it is imperative to ensure that these systems continue to function, or recover rapidly, especially at times of disaster," said Khoong Hock Yun, assistant chief executive of the Infrastructure & Services Development Group at the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore in his keynote address at the recent Singapore Computer Society (SCS) seminar on 'Innovative Practices in Business Continuity Management (BCM) & Cloud'.

“Avoiding or alleviating losses from [both natural and human-induced disasters] can be achieved with proper planning, surveillance and appropriate mitigation measures, including training of manpower," Khoong added. “Hence, it is crucial for companies and businesses to have plans, policies, measures and practices for disaster recovery and business continuity."

However, those natural disasters also highlight the fact that not all business continuity issues are caused by IT. “It is the CIO, and the IT department, that seems to be getting the most attention - and therefore the most responsibility, for potential disasters that the organisation may face," said Chak Kong Soon, president of the Singapore Computer Society (SCS).

Read full article at: www.asiacloudforum.com/content/cloud-transforming-bcm-where-buck-stops

Demand surge hastens Equinix expansion in Sydney, Jakarta

Customer demand as a result of increased data usage and a rise in the number of companies transitioning to cloud has driven Equinix Inc to open phase two of its Sydney SY3 International Business Exchange (IBX) data centre (SY3-II) six months ahead of schedule.

SY3-II is located south of Sydney and provides approximately 1000 cabinets across 22,927 square feet. Once the third and final phase of SY3 is completed, the IBX will provide 72,850 square feet and capacity for 3000 cabinets.

A recent Forrester report states that 36% of Australian organisations are currently leveraging cloud-based services, an increase from 22% in 2010 and 14% in 2009.

“Australian companies increasingly need to consider and adopt cloud services in an effort to move at least part of their IT into a data centre," said the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, who officially opened the facility with Equinix Australia's managing director, Tony Simonsen. “On an international scale, companies wanting to do business in Australia can experience latency issues so we are seeing many of those making the decision to deploy at onshore data centres in Australia."

Read full article at: www.asiacloudforum.com/content/demand-surge-hastens-equinix-expansion-sydney-jakarta

Cloud economics: can cloud really save IT costs?

Is cloud computing necessarily a cheaper way to run business workloads than traditional compute?

At the CIO Executive Summit 2012 held in Hong Kong last month, a Fujitsu executive suggested that “a unit of cloud is no less expensive than a unit of traditional compute power".

This can be a puzzling statement. Don't cloud vendors, and occasionally, some CIOs, speak about the dramatic cost savings that the cloud brings due to the economies of scale?

In separate interviews with Asia Cloud Forum, four senior executives at Fujitsu, Savvis, Rackspace Hosting and IBM shared their thoughts on the topic of cloud economics. The vendor representatives are: Cameron McNaught, senior vice president, cloud and strategic solutions, global business group, Fujitsu; Mark Smith, managing director, Asia, Savvis; Mark Randall, interim managing director for Rackspace Hosting Asia Pacific; and Matt Wang, vice president, China development Laboratories, IBM China.

Read full article at: www.asiacloudforum.com/content/cloud-economics-can-cloud-really-save-it-costs

PLDT partners NEC Philippines for cloud solutions

Philippine telco PLDT has partnered with NEC Philippines, Inc to enhance its portfolio of cloud services with the launch of its own cloud infrastructure.

PLDT's infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offers computing resources such as virtual data centres and machines in a cloud network that can simply be accessed and managed from any web browser. This solution allows for rapid deployment as well as immediate scaling when the number of users increases, paying only for actual usage while still enjoying control of these computing resources.

NEC Philippines will provide and maintain the cloud computing infrastructure for PLDT's IaaS offering. This implementation at PLDT is the first cloud project for NEC in the Philippines. PLDT's public cloud service is envisioned to help accelerate the adoption of cloud computing technology locally.

For the first 9 months of 2012, PLDT's total broadband subscribers hit 3.2 million with aggregate revenue contribution from broadband and internet services of 17.6 billion pesos (US$427 million), 30% higher than for the same period last year.

Read full article at: www.asiacloudforum.com/content/pldt-partners-nec-philippines-cloud-solutions

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