Krishnakishore B.V. puts it succinctly — “when it comes to the ‘cloud', it takes time for customers to understand what one can do with it. For instance, he says, his company's software testing arm can do both: testing of cloud-based applications, as well as cloud-based testing of applications! “There's a world of difference.”

(Cloud computing refers to the provision of computing resources on demand via a network. It's akin to electricity and water, on tap — literally. Typically, it does not matter to the end-user where exactly his provider hosts the data and computes with it. In this instance, a testing provider can test applications that are meant to go on the cloud, but can also provide testing of normal-world applications through the cloud.)

Krishnakishore, Program Director – Cloud Business Solutions at MindTree, dons two hats: he is a client who uses Microsoft's cloud offering, the Azure platform; he also sells solutions to his clients based on the same software.

Familiarity is the biggest factor in determining why you would go with Microsoft technology, especially if you are an IT vendor, but possibly even if you are a client. Says Krishnakishore, “I can have programmers with a mere year's experience in .Net technology hit the ground running with Azure. Even fresh graduates can be easily trained.” His division in MindTree bet on Microsoft's Azure after evaluating similar offerings from others. “We compared features, pricing… the works. All things being equal, familiarity with Microsoft technologies and our long-standing relationship with the company helped in the choice.” MindTree also has a business unit that offers Microsoft solutions, different from the cloud-based ones that Krishnakishore's team of 18 works on. The company also has a unit that caters to clients' Amazon offerings.

But first, MindTree had to be convinced that applications on the cloud delivered true value. What better way to evaluate that than implement an Azure-based solution for itself? The Cloud Business Solutions team came up with at least 30 areas that lent themselves to a cloud offering. It shortlisted six and will work on three in the near future — of these, the Learning Management System is already up and running, while work is on with the Trade Promotion Management solution.

Says Krishnakishore, “We had two options — one was to build a centre of excellence, offer a proof of concept and then tell the world we know this well; which is what most of us in the industry do. Here, we decided to build a large application for ourselves and then tell the world that we know how to do it.”

LMS, he says of the specific solution, is not just e-learning. It manages classroom learning, external learning — including from books and e-learning.”

So how do employees, who are the target audience, keep coming back to learning — which isn't really like entertainment? “Peer pressure. In most instances where you want everyone to come on board, it's helpful if the younger ones log on; the senior ones follow suit. If you tie this into your yearly appraisals, then it works even better.”

Stickiness with social media also helps. “Why do people spend so much time on Facebook and GTalk? It's because of the interactivity.” So, Krishnakishore's team has tied in Twitter to the LMS. When someone posts a query or makes a comment on the learning site, a Twitter user could see it and respond to that.

Benefits from hosting the application on the cloud are evident. Scale is the obvious benefit. It does not matter how many want to log on. Resources are available on tap (at a price, of course). Now, the target audience for the LMS in MindTree is nearly all of their employee base – 10,000 people.

For clients, Krishnakishore's team had targeted those where the number of users would be predictable. “For example, in employee learning, you have a fair idea of how many would log on. Likewise, an insurance company could target agents and easily estimate how many would sign on.” Ironically, his first customer happened to be an online stock trading provider offering the learning system to its customers. “You never know how many would log on, even if they signed up.” Being on the cloud makes this better manageable than if the cloud were missing.

Azure's one year in India

So, why was eWorld meeting with MindTree? Microsoft put us onto Krishnakishore to understand his learnings from the cloud environment. And, the context was that Azure finished its first year in India in March this year.

S. Somasegar, Senior Vice-President, Developer Division, Microsoft Corporation, told eWorld that the cloud, “…is going to be one of the most significant technology shifts that we are, or, at least I am going to see in my lifetime. For all the hoopla and noise you hear about cloud computing, I think we as an Industry and the world are barely scratching the surface now. The potential for change is huge in terms of value.”

He acknowledges that clients clamouring for the cloud will not happen overnight. “Clients have started thinking about the cloud. They want a certain level of customisation; they want a level of control. They care about data security, about piracy, and they need time and experience before they are willing to bet their enterprise on the public cloud.”

Azure is an important play for Microsoft in the public cloud. (A private cloud is one that the end user client owns, manages and uses on his own. A public cloud is where a service provider offers hardware, software, networking and manages these resources for a per-use fee. Because there are multiple tenants on the cloud, scaling is cheaper.)

Private cloud, says Somasegar, gives you customisation and control, while the public cloud gives you massive scale. For a provider such as Microsoft, there are differences in the way it would address the two worlds: “The Windows server has been a successful product in the server-data centre world. The one big difference from a design point in Windows Azure is that we wanted it to be able to run on tens of thousands of servers and more, as opposed to Windows running on one.”

At the end of its first year, Azure has 31,000-32,000 applications that people have built and deployed around the world. Significantly, 25 per cent — or about 8,500 — of those applications have come from India.

Says Somasegar, “The developer base here is pretty strong. Second, developers in India seem to be more excited about being on the leading edge of technology.” And, he points out, this is not just one vertical or industry for which these applications have been made. In India, Azure counts about 1,300 customers. “This is just Azure. If you talk about the cloud, Microsoft has 40 million customers across the world.” The latter includes all online services such as Windows Live and Hotmail.

He estimates that 80 per cent of business customers around the world are evaluating the cloud today. “The next three years are probably transformational years, in terms of hockey-stick adoption for cloud.”

So much for platforms on the cloud. For software as a service, Microsoft is beta testing its Office 365 package. Here, online for a per-use fee, you get to use Word, Excel and all the Office tools you are used to on your computer. “It gives you all the client-side applications that you can run on your desktop, but also gives you the ability to marry the power of Office to a set of back-end services, such as Exchange online and SharePoint online.” Office 365, he says, should ship later this calendar.

One of the most dramatic points that Somasegar made to eWorld that afternoon was on software piracy. He argues that people find it difficult to see ‘extra value' in a CD or similar media and hence are unwilling to pay for it. If overall costs are brought down through per-use pricing, and the client sees value – you get only what you pay for – then, opportunities to bring down piracy rates around the world are immense. “In this world where software is delivered as a service, you pay only for what you use. Because you think there is real value, you are more open to paying for it.” So, where then, is the need to pirate software, he asks.

>bharatk@thehindu.co.in

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