Jatin Sahni, VP of large enterprise & business solutions marketing for Du, opens up on the future of Cloud technology in the Middle East.
There is a big opportunity for forward-thinking refining companies to use IT more effectively as a strategic differentiator. One aspect of the industry’s IT opportunity is to make greater use of the same types of data integration and data warehousing solutions and application architectures that many other industries use.
Because of the lack of legacy data integration and data warehousing architecture in the sector, there is an opportunity to leap-frog past generations of data warehousing approaches and take these straight to the cloud. A strong case can be made for cloud-based data warehousing.
Because of the rapid scalability made possible by cloud-based models, along with the potentially cheaper alternative it provides, data warehousing seems like a natural fit for the cloud.
According to Amazon’s research, the typical on-premises data warehouse costs anywhere from $19,000-$25,000 per terabyte per year to license and maintain. However, the alternative of using a cloud-based data warehouse service would cost less than $1,000 per terabyte per year.
This radically alters the economics of enterprise data warehousing with a new subscription-based data integration service that extends to data warehouse in the cloud.
Enterprises in the refining sector have already started to investigate cloud for a variety of reasons: it can be used to lower IT costs; it is also an effective way to boost IT efficiency; and it will help boost innovation.
Enterprise IT executives now understand the new logic that cloud computing offers. Some of the characteristics of ‘cloud logic’ include making it easy for customers to buy the service online; enabling simple and automated online provisioning; and evolving the service iteratively based on actual user behaviour data.
These essential characteristics of cloud are what distinguish it from other hosted ICT services models. The requirements of on-demand self-service place some considerable demands on the cloud infrastructure.
There is a need for online customer portals for ordering services, automation of enablement processes, and end-to-end management of the entire infrastructure, including compute, storage, security, and the network.
The requirement for measured service and rapid elasticity means highly flexible provisioning and billing, which corresponds to the real-time resources consumed and allows service providers to offer creative and differentiated billing models.
It is common to see cloud computing services with no setup charges or fixed contract terms. Broad and fast network access is a key aspect of cloud computing, which not only means standard networking options such as the public Internet, but also enterprise-grade networking technologies such as managed MPLS VPN and carrier Ethernet.
Telcos are also in a unique position to provide business-grade cloud computing services combining both private IP networking and cloud computing platforms with quality of service (QoS) guarantees and end-to-end SLAs. This is an important component of a bigger picture: to provide a more integrated portfolio of managed networking and managed IT solutions, backed up by end-to-end SLAs and access to professional services.
Data warehousing cloud infrastructures such as these will help to lower the cost through managed services and automated tasks such as provisioning and configuring, but cheaper does not necessarily mean easier. Companies still need to address a critical need for sound data integration, which accounts for the bulk expenditure on these types of projects.
Providing data access via the cloud negates this somewhat. However, enterprises still need to invest in the skills and expertise to effectively integrate data, regardless of whether it resides on-premise or in the cloud.
Vendors in this segment such as Vertica say that as a new alternative to traditional, in-house data analytics infrastructure, the cloud will transform the economics of BI and open up many new possibilities.
Lines of business will have the flexibility to fund more data mart projects. Organisations will be able to conduct more short-term ad-hoc analysis. Data warehousing will increase within medium-size businesses. The analytic SaaS market will develop faster. New BI technology adoption will accelerate.
In line with global economic conditions and outlook, the refining sector is taking cautious approach to IT spending in 2013, with nearly 40 per cent of respondents saying they expect a slight increase in IT spending and more than one-quarter expecting a significant increase. One area they are advised to invest in is the cloud.
In Numbers
– $25,000 According to Amazon’s research, the typical on-premises data warehouse costs anywhere from $19,000-$25,000 per terabyte per year
