Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), the third component of cloud computing, has finally entered India Inc with HP and Sify Technologies jointly announcing an agreement to power Sify's
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on-demand cloud computing services using HP's converged infrastructure.
The Sify and
HP cloud computing service will include software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service
(PaaS). It will also allow Sify to provide demand-based computing services on a pay-per-use or
flexible contract model. Currently, Sify has data centers in Bengaluru, Chennai and
Navi Mumbai, where these HP
cloud computing services will be hosted. To enable these services, the blade system matrix, a
product of HP's converged infrastructure, pools together Sify's IT resources into an automated and
virtualized resource pool. Specific application templates have been developed to automatically
provision resources for new business requirements. The blade system matrix can be accessed through
a portal with a user name and password. From here, users can see the Sify-HP
cloud computing services they have availed of, the current status, or make required
changes.
Coming to the Sify-HP
cloud computing service's pricing part, there are multiple layers which customers can choose
from. Packaged flavors which come with a certain amount of compute, storage and data transfer
capacity are part of the service. Payment options are monthly, quarterly and annual schedules at
the moment.
There are four tiers in storage, ranging from performance to economy. The performance tier is
priced at Rs 1,500 per GB; this tier is ideal for very large enterprises. For the economy tier, the
price is around Rs 30,000 per annum. It's possible for users to shift across tiers as per the
requirement.
Buyers can opt for bandwidth as per their data transfer requirements. The data transfer rate per
gigabyte is priced at Rs 1,500 per annum. When it comes to application licensing, customers opt for
their own OS license, otherwise it can be provided through the Sify-HP
cloud computing service.
Now the question remains as to how Sify
and HP plan to assure its customers of security, the most vital concern when it comes to cloud
computing? To start with, the companies claim to have very stringent SLAs right from the point of
identification of the security threat to the risk mitigation. According to these claims, it will be
able to find the threat within 15 minutes and mitigate it within 30 minutes. An SLA has been
provided even for data disposal. Sify
and HP's cloud computing service also has SAS70 Type 1 and SAS70 Type 2 certification, along
with ISO 27001.
As part of the agreement, HP and Sify will also leverage their networks to promote these cloud
computing services to the SMB segment. In addition, Sify will leverage HP's network of ISV partners
to offer applications on the cloud model.