Telecom Past Conference - Cloud Computing Summit 2010

Cloud Computing Summit 2010 - 26th November 2010, Novotel Hyderabad Airport Hotel, India





“Everything as a Service – First ever Cloud Computing Summit in India with full Business Opportunity & Supply Chain”


Key Themes Discussed at this Conference :

• Current trends of Cloud Computing environment and how can you take advantage of the global market?
• Discovering technologies and strategies for successful Cloud Computing  management
• Analyzing the successes and challenges of Cloud Computing  in Asian market
• Evaluating the impact of Cloud Computing  in the telecommunications world
• Software-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service, Infrastructure-as-a-Service present and future outlook
• Witness to the Cloud industries leading service providers, facilitators, integrators and end-users view on the most dynamic business model
• Experience the success stories and lessons on how they have implemented and integrated a Cloud / SaaS solution into their working practices
• Discover why Cloud Computing  is perfect for SME’s
• Infrastructure, Deployment , Integration & Monetizing the Cloud business
• Learn from the industry leaders and emerging players offering to Cloud and SaaS space
• Avoiding potential pitfalls in Cloud Computing  and to improve your clients relationships
• Explore innovative strategies for outsourcing
• Working with limited budget to ensure on time study completion
• Motivating and managing Cloud Computing  project teams to improve timeline and progress
• Optimising Cloud Computing  operation effectiveness for successful ROI
• Next generation of Cloud Computing  – How big will the market be?

Key Speakers :

• Srikanth Karnakota, Director - Cloud Strategy, Microsoft
• Rajdeep Dua, India - Country Head - Lead Developer Relations, Google
• Shyaam Sunder, Chief Knowledge Officer, Ramco Systems
• R Ravichandran, Director, Intel
• Binu Raj. Sr. Director Engineering, Yahoo
• Anil Nama, Vice President – Solutions & Innovations, CtrlS
• ReddyRaja  AnnaReddy, Director of Cloud Computing & SaaS, Imaginea
• Mani Doraisamy, Co-Founder & CTO, Orange Scapes
• Uttam Kumar, Head - New Technology Innovation, Aircel
• Ashwin Jaiswal, Head IT - Telecom, Media & Ent. Practice & IT Consulting, Reliance
• Pranay Mishra, CTO – Vice President, MTS
• Andy Karandikar, Marketing Head, Red Hat South Asia
• Amit Saha, Global Head of Data Quality and Integration, Novartis
• Lakshmi Narayan Rao, Marketing Director - Global Channel Programs,Jamcracker
• Raghavan VSR Madabhushi, Vice President, BodhTree
• M V Madhu, Managing Director, Wilshire Software Technologies
• Ajay Porus, Organizer and Director, Cloud Security Alliance Hyderabad Chapter, Security Analyst, ProMindsConsulting
• Rehan Allahwala, CEO, Didx.net
• Niranjan Hanasoge, Vice-Chairman, IEEE (Computer Society), Software Eng,Google
• Ramesh Loganathan, VP (Products) & Center Head, Progress Software

Conference Summary :


Cloud Computing Summit 2010
INTRODUCTION:

The foggy clouds, insecure by the incessant talks about them everywhere, conspired to make their presence felt with their overwhelming presence, delaying the flights of the speakers who had boarded the flight to atend “Cloud Computing Summit” on 26th November at Novotel Hyderabad.  The organizers, however undeterred by the clouds, shuffled the slots and organized the conference without any hitch.

Examining the Cloud Computing Market

09:40 AM Morning Keynote Address: Google Cloud Offerings

The conference began on a resouding note with Rajdeep Dua, Country Head-Lead Developer Relations, Google, presenting on the Google App Engine offerings.  He elaborated about the PaaS offering, with its autoscaling and other features, along with support offered to both Python and Web Java languages. He also presented Google Storage and Google Big Query features. 

Big Query has the ability to run sequalized queries over peta bytes of data. Google storage offers 100 GBs of data storage space, as compared to Amazon’s 5 GB of storage space offering. He also talked at length about Google Prediction API, with its use cases ranging from Web Trends detection, finding spam etc.  Some of the offerings that were showcased, he pointed out, had limited preview, restricted to US alone.

Chair person Address

The summit then got its most needed energy and pizzazz when Laxmi Narayan Rao, Marketing Director,  Global Channel Program, Jam Cracker enlivened the proceedings as the Chairperson of the morning sessions, with full spirits. He threw some interesting facts on the present scenario in Cloud computing. Cloud computing found its unlikely support through governments, when Madhya Pradesh lent its computing servers to Jammu and Kashmir. He gave some interesting observations on usage of Facebook as a CRM tool. He also pointed out, something that would interest people willing to embark their careers, that the Top 10 hottest jobs of 2009, were non-existent five years ago. 

10:10 - ERP - Cloud Connect

Shyaam Sunder, Chief Knowledge Officer, Ramco Systems, presented his session on ERP Cloud offerings. He talked passionately about the future potential of the Cloud. I enjoyed his energetic session. He started out with the ubiquity of networks around our lives and talked about how Governments across the world are beginning to adopt towards Cloud computing to reduce costs of computing. California’s Government’s initiatives to bring in Cloud computing in their day-to-day transactions were also mentioned. 

He highlighted the egalitarian nature of the Cloud, which offers everyone an unprecedented opportunity to build their own application without worrying about capital costs.Laxmi Narayan Rao chipped in and mentioned aboutThe Roar of the Cloud Challenge, in its FB page’s words, an ambitious Cloud Applications industry initiative led by WOLF Frameworks and Jamcracker, powered by One Billion Minds to discover and support the best next generation SaaS application ideas in India.

Shyaam Sunder talked about ERP brought about a new lease of life to the Indian ERP Market, which was once considered doomed in the early 2000s by several experts. He focussed on the timecriticality aspect andmultitenancy behavoior in Cloud computing, very crucial in the case of ERP on Demand. He beautifully brought out the shift that has happened from time-dependency to time-criticality. He also talked about the evolution of Cloud computing and how cloud computing emerged, in its inchoate state, picking up several technologies, notably from SOA Architecture. He illustrated the use of ERP systems through one of his clients, ITC IBD – International Business Division. He categorically stated that IT can do only two things.  It can process voluminous data and connect people. He also highlighted on the security aspects, one of the most devious issues when it comes to Cloud computing Adoption in India, and highlighted Ramco ERP System’s SAS Type II certification. He also pointed out that the major challenge often lies in metadata conceptualization.

Revolutionizing Indian IT by Leap-frogging to the Cloud

After ERP Cloud Connect, it was the turn of Microsoft with its Cloud strategy. Mr. Srikanth Karnakota, Director - Cloud Strategy, Microsoft made an energetic presentation about the potential of Cloud with more focus on the Indian SMB segment.

He pointed out that from his experience he had observed that the business proposition plays a major role in the Indian market as compared to the Cloud paradigm in the case of adoption of Cloud computing in India.

 He stated that the Independent software vendors often face the problem of lower margins and revenues. He suggested that System Integrators should look at focusing on specific verticals and capitalize on them to grow non-linearly. He pointed out the example of Mahindra Satyam with its strong focus on Media and Entertainment sector. He also stressed upon the necessity of choice in the case of platform companies. 

He also brought about the difference between Virtualization and Cloud Computing. He iterated that Virutalization is only an incremental step in the evolution towards cloud computing. Often it is the first step.

Panel Discussion: Forecasting future Cloud based services & applications in telecommunications market

An interesting panel discussion on the Cloud Computing and its potential in the telecommunication markets ensued. Pranay Mishra, CTO - Vice President, MTS moderated the session. The panelists included Uttam Kumar, Head - New Technology Innovation, Aircel, Ashwin Jaiswal, Head IT- Telecom, Media, Ent. Practice & IT Consulting, Binu Raj,Sr. Director, Engineering - Yahoo and Laxmi Narayan Rao of JamCracker.

The traditional question of dumb pipes surfaced again in the debate. While Network Intelligence has been going rounds in technology circles, it is not finding its adequate use with several companies being reluctant to collaborate and share. The panelists shared the sentiment that the major shift in connectivity would bring about powerful apps in lesser powerful phones, thus bringing out an seamless experience for all users, powered by ubiquitous connectivity.

Laxmi Narayan Rao brought about an interesting analogy and compared the adoption of Cloud Computing with the advent of Net-banking in India. He pointed out the current insecure attitude towards Cloud Computing, similar to the way people perceived Net-banking few years ago, would gradually phase out with gradual acceptance amongst the industry. However, the audience was quick to spot the flaw in this analogy, as the net banking with its strict governmental regulations cannot be compared in this case with the Cloud computing, as often in this case, there exists a tripartite agreement between the parties. 

Few of the audience also brought about the issue of liability and indemnification of the data. The panelists noted that these security issues and regulations are being evolved everyday with advancements in the industry. One of the panelists compared the Blackberry imbroglio with its legal complications in India and brought about the strict regulations in Singapore which allow the monitoring of data that are transmitted through the secure networks. One of the panelists pointed out that as SSL encryption is not possible in Blackberry, which turned out to be the major area of concern in the government regulatory issue. 

Often, the aggregator and the last mile provider are the most vulnerable players in the entire chain when it comes to the security issues. Binu Raj from Yahoo candidly admitted that he had a team inside Yahoo which was called as the paranoid team, whose responsibility was to look sceptically at the major developments happening in the technological front and look at the security issues that would creep up  with every emerging technology coming to the fore.  

Panel Discussion: Infrastructure, Deployment & Integration strategies

The summit then took up the most awaited part where the panel members discussed the implementation challenges faced by players when it comes to adopting Cloud Computing in the Indian market. The panelists included Srikanth Karnakota, Director - Cloud Strategy, Microsoft, Mani Doraisamy, Co-Founder & CTO, Orange Scapes, Raghavan VSR Madabhushi, Vice President, Bodhtree, ReddyRaja  AnnaReddy, Director of Cloud Computing & SaaS, Imaginea

Some of the key takeaways which emerged out of the discussion were:

a) Risks are not posed by technology per se, but by persons and processes involved in the adoption and implementation of technology

b) Laxmi Narayan Rao talked about Green perspective of Cloud Computing.  He talked about the advantages in the green IT paradigm and explained it in the context with the legacy IT systems. 

c) Data insecurity often amplifies and grows exponentially. Hence it is critical to understand the security aspects of Cloud computing. 

d) CIOs have been late in adopting new technology due to the perceived loss of control. Support services have also not been adequately developed in this sector, which explains most of the reluctance in moving towards the Cloud.

e) Evolving nature of regulations were discussed. In UK, regulations have been imposed which state that the data should reside physically in one of the systems within the continent. Since data often resides across continents, a decision taken based on cost considerations, regulations are in evolving, nascent state as the data moves across continents.

f) Amit Saha, Global Head of Data Quality and Integration,Novartis spoke brilliantly and added the pharmaceutical industry perspective and beautifully explained the criticality of the voluminous data that are generated every day through the sophisticated life-saving instruments that are plugged through the patients.  He candidly admitted the necessary conservative attitude towards new technology owing to the immense risk involved. 

Redefining the Infrastructure landscape – A Ctrl S perspective

The focus of the summit then shifted towards the security and infrastructure aspects of Cloud Computing. It was covered by Anil Nama, Vice President- Solutions and Innovations, CtrlS. 

Anil focussed on the Network Infrastructure and talked at length about Tier IV infrastructure and the need to build it from scratch. Tier IV data has been considered to be more robust and less prone to failures. He posed a critical question of responsibility for security when the convergence of multiple layers at the last mile.  

 He also talked about various certifications such as 1) ISO 20000 2) ISO 27001 3) BS 259999 that are often mandated by clients to be complied with for mitigating the risks posed by technology and a host of other vulnerabilities. He further added that these certifications become an added service layer for the organization.  He addressed Identity Federation and its importance in the security context. 

He elaborated on the need for setting up ITIL in place, addressing the specific challenges it imposed on Cloud Security. He also talked about the security evaluation through seven levels of EAL Certification and especially, the seventh level( EAL 7) which addresses the issues of Cloud Security. While addressing the security layers, he stressed on the need to focus on the different layers of security, viz., 1) Information Assurance 2) Physical 3) Communication Security 4) Operations Security 5) System Safety/Rehabilitation.

Open Source Software availability for "Cloud Computing (IaaS)"

MV Madhu, Managing Director, Wilshire Software in his session talked about four major players which are prominent in the Open Source space.

1) Cloud.com 

2) Open Nebula

• Elastic Host can be used via remote

• Only a small part of EC2 API implemented since Open Nebula Beta

3) Eucalyptus

• Fully API compatible to Amazon EC2

• Includes Walrus, S3 Compatible Storage Device Service

 4) Open QRM

• Single Management Console

• Support for Multiple Virtualization technology

• No Vendor Lock-ins

He personally favored Cloud.com due to its advantages such as 1) Hypervisor Independence 2) Virtual Resource Management features. Audience also pointed out the lack of support available in Open Source, which prompted them towards proprietary technology. 

Unlocking Value through Virtualization & Cloud

The next session on Open Source Cloud was delivered by Sukanta Basak, Sr. Solutions Architect, RedHat India. He talked about the convergence of various laws such as Metcalfe's Law, Kryder's Law and Fiber Law which are driving the Cloud Computing phenomenon. He also talked about the evolutionary shift happening from Virtualization to Private Cloud to Public Cloud. He explained in detail about Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization. He added another perspective in the difference between Virtualization and Cloud where the former consists of Hardware abstraction and the latter involves resource abstraction.  He also talked about the necessity of Abstraction Layer to manage scale.

Technical Impact & User Experience Issues

Introduction of Cloud Security Alliance Globally and in India

Ajay Porus, Organizer and Director, Cloud Security Alliance, Hyderabad Chapter gave a brilliant talk on the Security related aspects of Cloud Computing. He talked about the need to establish Cloud CERT (Emergency Response Team) as a part of the Disaster Recovery Team. He also talked about the Cloud Security Alliance and the various initiatives that are being taken as a part of the Alliance.

 Cloud Security Alliance has its offices across Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Bangalore, with each office specializing in one technology. While CSA Chennai focussed on Virtualization while CSA Bangalore focussed on Compliance issues. He introduced Cloud Controls Matrix, which helps in assessing the security risk of cloud providers. 

Some of the other interesting initiatives that were introduced by Ajay Porus were

• Trusted Cloud Initiative – Series of best practices that have been adopted in the industry along with training, research and certification to provide secure, interoperable identity in the cloud.

• Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge issued by CSA to assess security specialists on their cloud security competency.

He offered a bird-eye view of the cloud specific security aspects ranging from insecure APIs, Traffic Hijacking, Nefarious Use of cloud services and the importance of information life cycle management. He gave a brief overview about PCI Compliance, which can be implemented by the user himself and European Data Protection Act.


Conference Testimonials :


"It is very informative and also a platform to track the solutions for any issues related to cloud" - Veerabhadra Rao Mallavarapu, Senior Team Leader, Persistent Systems & Solutions.


This Summit overall is very informative and knowledgible regarding Cloud
 - Rajesh Pola, Senior Systems Administrator, CA Technologies.


It is a good experience to be a part of Cloud Computing Summit 2010 - 
Pratab Chandra Sahu, Senior Linux Engineer, Gridlabs Networks.


It is an Informative Conference about the new Innovations & Developments in Cloud Computing - Thirendra Kumar, Independent Professional.


Very Useful, first of its kind - Balaji, CEO, ProMinds.


Usefull / learnt something new - Vijay Kumar, Software Engineer, CA Technologies


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