Gartner in its most recent press release press release announces the top 10 hot technologies for 2010. These are technologies which are going to have a significant impact on enterprises in the next 3 years. Leading the charts are cloud computing followed by reshaping/transforming datacenters, security/activity monitoring, virtualization and many more. Note that I’ve only mentioned technologies where NetEnrich is a player and is geared up to make a big impact by entering the market at the right time.

Security and monitoring have always been one of our primary areas of focus both for our enterprise customers and managed service partners. With investments in advanced monitoring tools and home grown technology, we are able to provide a range of monitoring and alerting services for all devices, applications and platforms. The most elemental benefit for datacenter service providers has been our ability to provide 100% security and complete transparency for audit controls. NetEnrich has also initiated Datacenter Transformation as a practice area to help service providers add a layer of hosted solutions over providing rackspace for devices.

Another right time move is NetEnrich’s entry into the world of cloud computing and virtualization. I guess at this point, everyone is riding the hype cycle on cloud-based services and now that Gartner rates it as no 1, there’s definitely going to be a bigger buzz about it. NetEnrich was already a player in this space with its offerings for managing a complex SaaS hosted environment for a hi-tech internet security provider. With this experience and more, it is ready to launch similar cloud based offerings for IT infrastructure, applications and platforms for customers hosted in datacenters. More to follow…

Although cloud computing is going through the initial evolutionary steps, analyst houses such as Forrester and Gartner predict a spurt in demand for cloud based services by as early as 2012. Clearly, businesses are evaluating the model and contemplating a shift without compromising basic security and regulatory constraints.

Cloud computing represents a convergence of several IT drivers and offers cost-effective solutions to key business demands. For example, clouds provide businesses with the agility required to move quickly in highly competitive business environments. This allows organizations to activate and retire resources as needed, dynamically update infrastructure elements, and move workloads to improve efficiency without having to worry about creating new infrastructures for each new application.

Organizations want to take advantage of several cost benefits provided by cloud computing. These include the price/performance offered by readily-available, commodity-grade computers, the ability to mitigate skyrocketing data center development and operational costs and utilizing a shared infrastructure rather than creating new platforms on an application-by-application basis

While enterprises gear up to demand services from the cloud, NetEnrich gears up to establish a robust value proposition to capture a share of this burgeoning market.

Cost Factor: NetEnrich’s whole shared ITaaS (IT as a Service) model from the cloud is definitely a lucrative alternative to traditional on-premise delivery. Enterprises today are expanding globally and vying for operational efficiency. There is a movement about doing more with less due to trimmed budgets and rising resource/maintenance costs. Our cloud based shared service delivery framework provides the much needed operational efficiency since the same resources are now shared by multiple clients without shortchanging the basic security, regulatory requirements, compliance issues, functionalities and critical enterprise considerations.

Trust Factor: Why would you choose a particular vendor and what are our strengths and weaknesses? Do we even have a long term road map so you know you’re betting on the right long-term strategy for your business? NetEnrich has had an eloquent history in delivering world class enterprise solutions to large enterprise customers. Our technology has been a unique differentiator and our backbone to provide advanced functionalities and is now geared up to offer similar services ‘from the cloud’. The Virtual Private Management Gateway appliance is installed in the customer’s premises to ensure complete security and transparency during service delivery.

Industry analysts including Gartner and Forrester are early proponents of cloud computing and its potential. Several trends are emerging that will enable enterprises to make good use of cloud computing, such as shared, virtualized and automated IT architectures. However, the introduction of cloud-enabled application platforms will certainly accelerate cloud adoption among businesses of all sizes.

Clearly, there seems to be a lot of buzz about cloud computing lately: What it is and what it is not. Another technology fad or probably an entirely new exciting paradigm in IT service delivery. Whatever the definition may be, I think we need to demystify the terminology and understand that the world of IT delivery is moving away from the conventional on-premise model. Cloud computing opens up an entirely new IT delivery path which provides a wholly new alternative to acquiring software, platforms and IT infrastructure as your business grows. Services are now accessed over the web and accessed on demand from any location.

Gartner defines cloud computing as “a style of computing in which massively scalable IT-related capabilities are provided ‘as a service’ using Internet technologies to multiple external customers.” Beyond the Gartner definition, clouds are marked by self-service interfaces that let customers acquire resources at any time and get rid of them the instant they are no longer needed.

Public vs. Private Cloud

A public cloud is a service that anyone can tap into with a network connection and a credit card. Public clouds are shared infrastructures with pay-as-you-go economics and are easily accessible, multitenant virtualized infrastructures that are managed via a self-service portal.

A private cloud attempts to mimic the delivery models of public cloud vendors but does so entirely within the firewall for the benefit of an enterprise’s users. A private cloud would be highly virtualized, stringing together mass quantities of IT infrastructure into one or a few easily managed logical resource pools.

To give you an idea about the growth magnitude of cloud services, here are some statistics:

By 2011, early technology adopters will forgo capital expenditures and instead purchase 40 percent of their IT infrastructure as a service,” states Gartner Group. “Increased high-speed bandwidth makes it practical to locate infrastructure at other sites and still receive the same response times.

By 2013, 12 percent of world software market will be Internet based forms of SaaS and cloud computing, according to Merrill Lynch.

Some of the most immediate and obvious benefits of cloud based services are low start up costs, low costs for sporadic use, ease of management, complete scalability, device and location independence and rapid incremental innovation.

Despite these immediate advantages, the cloud phenomenon is still new and not time tested. There are some concerns about the reliability and security of data and about the limitations of service offerings from the cloud. Is it the best fit for your business processes? What is the total cost of ownership pattern? What are the various security risks associated when transiting to a cloud based network? And how can NetEnrich help?