Dubai eGovernment is in discussions to offer public cloud services to small and medium businesses (SMB) to help them cut costs on initial deployment of the technology.
For an SMB to conduct business on the private cloud is an expensive proposition. The company will have to invest in building up its data centre and implementing the software required for starting up business on the cloud.
"The department wants to target the public cloud as they cannot afford implementing a data centre and also the high costs of technology. Most of the SMB sector wants to work on the public cloud unlike the public sector. Hence, the company will not have to use its infrastructure or make investments in this regard. Currently, discussions are on within the department and a particular time frame cannot be mentioned," said Matar Saeed AlHumairi, Director of infrastructure management in the Infrastructure Management Department of Dubai eGovernment.
Cloud computing is internet-based computing whereby shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand like the electricity grid. Private cloud (also called internal cloud or corporate cloud) is a marketing term for a proprietary computing architecture that provides hosted services to a limited number of people behind a firewall.
Public cloud or external cloud describes cloud computing in the traditional mainstream, whereby resources are provided from an off-site third-party provider who shares resources and bills on a utility computing basis.
With Dubai eGovernment providing public cloud computing services, the SMB will not have to invest in any software and hardware required to set up cloud environment.
Dubai eGovernment has only worked on the private cloud for its internal processes until today and does not plan to get onto the public cloud computing services presently. Therefore, this would be a first step for Dubai eGovernment to provide public cloud computing for the SMB sector.
AlHumairi also sees challenges in the adoption of public cloud computing services in Dubai.
"The market has to mature as there is a critical back office applications put on the public cloud. It is quite challenging for an SMB even to implement private cloud computing services as many a times multi-vendors are involved, which means multi-tenancy contracts. After-sales support can become an issue in such situations." AlHumairi added.
Dubai eGovernment has been working in the private cloud computing environment since 2000 and has almost 95 per cent of its internal applications and services on the cloud.
The department does not have immediate plans to get its internal processes on to the public cloud.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Nancy Sudheer
Quelle/Source: Emirates Business 24/7, 08.06.2010
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