Cloud Computing

DIGITAL EDGE

They say that SMEs (small and medium enterprises) are India’s budding stars, and in no way are their business matrix less criti-

cal than those of large enterprises. Their numbers run in millions and their operation zones crisscross continents. In the unfold-

ing sagas of their growth and expansion, the role of IT tools & applications has proved to be crucial. A good number of them

get nicely capable IT infrastructure. However, this quest makes SMEs evaluate the option of embracing ‘blade-server-centric’ IT

set-ups. Digital Edge makes an endeavour to unravel the reasons behind the growing adoption of blades by India’s SMEs.

BY DIGITAL EDGE BUREAU

BLADE SERVERS FOR SMES

GROWING

ADOPTION

Just have a glance over some facts related with SMEs (small

and medium enterprises) in India: there’re over 12 million

SME units in the country which contribute 45 per cent of the

total national industrial outputs and 40 per cent of exports; they

create a million jobs every year and produce more than 8000 qual-

ity products for domestic & international markets; and presently

they contribute 17 per cent of GDP, which is expected to touch

the mark of 22 per cent by the end of 2012.

Yes, SMEs are at various evolutionary stages, but in no way are

they small in their aspirations. They’re budding stars, which wear

twinkles in their eyes, eyes full of dreams and eagerness to excel.

The evolutionary journey of theirs may not necessarily be starting

at swanky offices, well-partitioned and air-conditioned; rather,

most of the times, they get conceived in bedrooms, and deep cor-

ners of their drawing rooms. And, from those familial ambience,

they land in the rapid corridors of corporate world. This is more

or less the same story proudly remembered by today’s SME stocks

teeming in million in India. Cutting across economic sectors, and

OCTOBER 201130

Cloud Computing

DIGITAL EDGE OCTOBER 2011 31

The rise of Indian SMEs has

something to do with the

aspiring entrepreneurial

spirit humming in the Indian

expanses for ages; it has

something to do with the

unshackling of this great

nation from the subjugating

yokes of British colonial rule;

it has something to do with

the spread of literacy and

knowledge; it has something

to do with the emergence of

the great Indian middle-class;

it has something to do with

the economic liberalization

and free international trade

regimes; it has something to

do with the improving

national infrastructure; it has

something to do with the

intervention of machinery

and better industrial produc-

tion means; and it has some-

thing to do with the growing

adoption of Information

Technology (IT).

Harsh Chitale, CEO

HCL Infosystems Ltd

Vinay Sinha, Director

Enterprise Business, AMD India

R. Ravichandran, Director—Sales

Intel South Asia

business verticals, India’s millions SMEs

not only address the growing domestic

markets for goods and services, but also

cater to the global markets of Far-East,

South-East Asia, Middle-East, Central-

Asia, Africa, Europe and Americas.

Like other parts of the world, India, too,

look at the small and medium businesses

from the prism of ‘supply-chain’ of large

enterprises where they (SMEs) bring in

their intermediate products, and services

expertise. A vivid example is that of auto-

component manufactureres who supply

motor-parts to national and international

vehicle makers. There exist hundreds of

verticals and sub-verticals for which SMEs

work like indispensable elements in the

wider ‘supply-chain’ of big companies. But

then, a good chunk of SMEs runs their

independent businesses, offering finished

goods and end-to-end services for local as

well as international markets. The utensil

and souvenir makers of Moradabad, for

instance, take their masterpieces directly to

consumers in India and beyond. So are the

cases with garment and leather goods

manufacturers who quite often reach out to

customers directly.

In a very terse mien, Harsh Chitale, CEO,

HCL Infosystems Ltd, recounts, “The rise

of Indian SMEs has something to do with

the aspiring entrepreneurial spirit hum-

ming in the Indian expanses for ages; it

has something to do with the spread of lit-

eracy and knowledge; it has something to

do with the unshackling of this great

nation from the subjugating yokes of

British colonial rule; it has something to

do with the emergence of the great Indian

middle-class; it has something to do with

the economic liberalization and free inter-

national trade regimes; it has something to

do with the improving national infrastruc-

ture; it has something to do with the inter-

vention of machinery and better industrial

production means; and it has something to

do with the growing adoption of

Information Technology (IT).”

For Chitale, the CEO of India’s one of the

largest IT companies, the last clause of his

definitional continuum of SMEs, which

reads, “it has something to do with the

growing adoption of Information

Technology (IT)”, is truly value loaded. It

tries to explain the contemporary thrust

applied on IT by progressive SMEs in

India. The destiny of SMEs is being

designed by the gush of bits traversing

over information superhighway.

The game changer

For SMEs, IT is a credible business

enabler, which ultimately serves and satis-

fies their end-customers. Without reliable

and scalable IT capability, SMEs may not

think to sustain their operations. Those

SMEs, which are at the lower rung of evo-

lutionary pyramid, may content with basic

LAN resources (including NAS or unified

storage devices) where entry-level servers

connect with clients, and possibly, some

imaging & printing systems. They are the

ones, who deploy Tally and Tally-like

Accounting Software. This is quite possi-

ble that some of them also subscribe to

integrated business applications available

on ‘cloud’ including ‘Ramco OnDemand’

and ‘SAP BusinessByDesign’. This is also

likely that they subscribe to mail servers

on clouds—after all, they need a good

Blades bring with it a great

deal of opportunity for us.

Our processors are very

much optimized to work in

the blade environment

Blade servers offer an opti-

mal solution for those busi-

nesses which are start-ups

and look at expanding their

IT horizons over a period of

3-5 years

Cloud Computing

DIGITAL EDGEOCTOBER 201132

number of ‘e-mail ids’ for their respective

employees.

But, as Indian SMEs keep on growing rap-

idly—in terms of headcounts, geographical

expanse as well as product & solutions

portfolio—they need to have robust, reli-

able and scalable datacentre capabilities.

Yes, they can subscribe to some of the

available cloud services like SaaS (Software

as a Service) and CaaS (Communications as

a Service), the basic datacentre capability

for running on-premises mail servers,

application servers, and database servers

has always been desired. So, it’s very clear

that SMEs do intend to deploy decent dat-

acentre footprints, having scalable and reli-

able servers, storage, networking and secu-

rity resources.

Of all the vital components of datacentres,

the server part holds a unique position as

it largely defines the nature, scale and

overall capacity of any worthwhile data-

centre. A huge focus is being shed on the

selection of right servers, which could

credibly sustain the growing business real-

ities of SMEs. In fact, their business

processes and operational dynamics are by

Of blades and SMEs

In an interaction with Digital Edge, Mehul

Doshi, Country Manager Enterprise

Servers at Fujitsu India Pvt. Ltd, said,

“The adoption of blade servers are not con-

fined to large enterprises. Today, SMEs

show equal interest in blades. Every quar-

ter, we watch our blade systems heading

for datacentres run by SMEs.”

For SMEs, which have been evolving with

amazing pace, the challenge does not lie in

handling the present business expediencies

alone, they’re equally concerned about

no means less challenging than those of

large enterprises.

Ever since IT has begun to be adopted on

large scale by SMEs, tower servers and

rack-mounted servers have played major

roles. However, the server technologies as a

whole have also been evolving throughout

the period, and today blade servers have

turned into trusted darlings of datacentres.

Companies including HP, IBM, Dell,

Fujitsu, Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems,

and NEC have intensified their operations

on blades targeted at SMEs.

their ability to manage business growth

and diversifications in coming times.

Whether it is service oriented SMEs or

manufactured driven ones, they all have

to ramp up the respective headcounts. For

them, the very management of human

resources brings a plethora of challenges.

Issues like ‘recruitment’, ‘performance

review (appraisal)’, ‘promotion’, ‘team

composition’, ‘leaves management’,

‘employee benefits’, ‘relieving’, and

‘retrenchment’ demand quick and intelli-

gent management. For this purpose,

SMEs increasingly go for specialized HR

management software applications includ-

ing the famous PeopleSoft.

For handling internal resources including

finance & accounting, some SMEs have

been deploying ERP or ERP-like blended

business applications for quite sometimes,

while others evaluating the feasibility for

doing so. Also, for handling issues like

sales & marketing (including business

leads), and customer services & retention,

CRM application is widely implemented. If

SMEs are in the realm of manufacturing

then applications like SCM and PLM are

quite relevant. And if SMEs are banking or

even non-banking financial institutions,

then CBS (core banking software) applica-

tion automatically comes into the picture.

The business intelligence (corporate per-

formance management) application is

already a hot topic with SMEs. Last but

not least, every enterprise software appli-

cation requires database which is provided

companies like Oracle and Microsoft.

As most of the SMEs aspire to expand their

existing reach to customers, which make

them establish their multiple locations, they

need robust and scalable networking provi-

sions. Naturally, scalable and reliable

switches and routers are required. The

The SME units look for scalable and

reliable IT platforms, which could nego-

tiate the future growth of their busi-

nesses. Here comes the relevance, and

suitability of blade servers for SMEs

The market is witnessing more of inte-

grated solutions. We’ve been watching

more deals which involve servers, stor-

age, networking, and backup resources

Blade systems answer many of the

questions which perturb SMEs regard-

ing their growth and overall opera-

tional sequences

Faisal Paul

Head-Marketing & Solution Alliance

ESSN, HP Enterprise Business India

Leo Joseph

Vice President - System x, STG

IBM India & SA

Satyen Vyas

Director, Medium Business

CSMB Division, Dell India

Blades don’t come in isolation,

they appear in confederacy of com-

pute, storage and networking

which make the quest for creating

a datacentre-in-a-box easy

Abhilesh Guleria

Head, IT Platforms & Multimedia Product Group

NEC India

Cloud Computing

DIGITAL EDGE OCTOBER 2011 33

From management point of view, vir-

tualized blade systems are easy to

manage—a fact which gives huge

impetus to the prevalence of them

(blades) among SMEs

The adoption of blade servers is not

confined to large enterprises alone.

Today, SMEs show equal interest in

blades. Blades deliver efficiently and

cost-effectively

As blade servers contain all of the

essential components, which are

needed in a small datacenter, it

becomes easier for SMEs to scale up

whenever the needs come in

At Wipro, we have been witnessing

growing numbers of SMEs who go

for blade systems. They’re getting

increasingly aware of the efficacies

of blades

security related issues make SMEs deploy

effective security measures. Not to mention,

they all need specialized storage solutions.

Now, for handling so many integrated

applications, the disparate, and rigid IT

infrastructure may not desirably fit. Mind

you, SMEs have limited budgets. So, even

if the exiting information systems are

tweaked into running multitude of busi-

ness applications, the TCO (total cost of

ownership) factor may look scary. But, the

coming of blade servers and associated IT

ecosystems has changed the datacentre

games of SMEs.

“The SME units eagerly look for scalable

and reliable IT platforms, which can nego-

tiate the future growth of their business.

And here comes the relevance, and ulti-

mate suitability of blade servers for

SMEs”, said Faisal Paul, Head-Marketing

& Solution Alliances, ESSN, HP

Enterprise Business India.

There may be some instances where

newly established SMEs directly jump

over to the blade option. So, whatever the

case may be, SMEs increasingly go for

the adoption of blade platform. “Blade

systems answer many of the questions

which perturb SMEs regarding their

growth and overall operational

sequences”, viewed Satyen Vyas, Director,

Medium Business, CSMB Division, Dell

India Pvt Ltd.

Corroborated Ashok Tripathy, VP

& Business Head, Wipro Systems &

Technologies, “At Wipro, we have been

witnessing growing numbers of SMEs

who instinctively go for blade systems.

They’re getting increasingly aware of the

efficacies of blades.”

Advantage Blades

While, scalability and reliability are the

basic attributes of blades, there is an array

of positives which make the relevance of

them further heightened. The modularity,

compactness and smaller form factor of

blades enable solution providers to inte-

grate datacentre vitals in a highly con-

densed fashion—servers, storage (SAN and

unified storage), networking and security

appliances congregate tightly.

“Blades don’t come in isolation, they

appear in confederacy of compute, storage

and networking which easily make the

quest for creating a datacentre-in-a-box”,

said Abhilesh Guleria, Head, IT Platforms

& Multimedia Product Group, NEC India.

“The market is witnessing more of inte-

grated solutions. We’ve been watching

more deals which involve servers, storage,

networking, and backup resources”, said

Leo Joseph, Vice President-System X,

STG, IBM India & South Asia. In similar

vein, Kapil Sood, Vice President, Systems

Business, Oracle India Pvt Ltd, said, “As

blade servers contain all of the essential

components that are needed in a small dat-

acenter, it becomes easy for SMEs to scale

up whenever the needs come in.”

In the case of blade systems, the mechan-

ical solidarity among cardinal components

in-a-box is full of merit, but the ability of

blades to work in virtualized environment,

seamlessly, is the top on the puddings. In

conservative sense of the term, virtualiza-

tion is an effort to utilize the compute,

storage, networking and security

resources optimally.

Today, virtually every new datacentre

comes up virtualized. The existing data-

centres having legacy systems have either

been upgraded and virtualized or have

actively planned to do so.

Ostensibly, virtualization is a mechanism

for doing away with any unnecessary pur-

chase of servers, storage, networking and

security devices as it (virtualization) helps

extract the most of their potentials.

Therefore, the intervention of virtualiza-

tion has a direct bearing on TCO. For

SMEs, virtualization of datacentre

resources is very helpful.

And, blade systems, are highly optimized

for receiving virtualization treatment. The

other important characteristic of blade

servers is the ease of datacentre manage-

ment. “Management of virtualized datacen-

tres is highly challenging as the handling

of virtual servers, virtual storage, virtual

Rajesh Rege

Sr. VP, Data Centre—India & SAARC

Cisco Systems

Mehul Doshi

Country Manager, Enterprise Servers

Fujitsu India

Kapil Sood

VP, Systems Business

Oracle India

Ashok Tripathy

VP & Business Head

Wipro Systems & Technologies

Cloud Computing

DIGITAL EDGEOCTOBER 201134

switches, and virtual security appliances

simultaneously requires easy and efficient

mechanism. From the management point

of view, virtualized blade systems are easy

to manage”, said Rajesh Rege, Sr. Vice

President Data Centre—India & SAARC,

Cisco Systems.

Ready blade ecosystem

In making blade servers compact, energy

wise efficient and cloud-compatible, the

entire component ecosystem plays its big

role. If we talk of processors, companies

like Intel and AMD have immensely con-

tributed in making blade servers so much

consolidated, and efficient. This is to be

reminded that blades which specifically

address the typical compute needs of data-

centres being run by SME entities are

heavily dominated by x86 servers.

Barring some special instances where,

SMEs deploy blades powered by RISC-

based processors, x86 is the most preferred

compute technology.“Blades bring with it a

great deal of opportunity for us. Our

processors are very much optimized to

work in the blade environment”, said R.

Ravichandran, Director—Sales, Intel

South Asia. The Xeon Series of Intel

processors have seen the maximum deploy-

ments in the blade systems. “In terms of

performance and energy-efficiency, Intel

products deliver the best. There is no

doubt about this”, added Ravichandran.

While, AMD, which has experienced rapid

market growth the world over including

India, has accelerated its operations around

tapping the growing market of blade

servers. “Blade servers offer an optimal

solution for those businesses which are

start-ups and look at expanding their hori-

zons over a period of 3-5 years (as the ROI

for investments in blade technologies usu-

ally pays off after the 1st year or so)’, said

Vinay Sinha, Director, Enterprise Business,

AMD India.

On the other hand, storage companies like

WD (Western Digital) and Seagate have

expanded their 2.5” enterprise HDD (hard

disk drive) product portfolio. For them

blade servers come with big promise.

At the same time, server vendors have

started inducting SSDs (solid-state drives)

into blade servers on a large scale as SSDs

support almost instantaneous booting of

the systems. Companies like WD, Seagate,

SanDisk and Kingston are some of the

leading players in this space. “For blade

systems, Kingston comes with a wide

range of enterprise SSDs”, said Nidhi

Sethi, Sales Director, Flash Products,

Kingston Technology, India.

Moreover, any talks of blade servers would

be incomplete if virtualization aspect is not

discussed. For virtualization software com-

panies such as accelerated, Citrix, Oracle,

and Microsoft, blade servers offer huge

business opportunity. Those SMEs which

deploy blades, invariably deployed virtual-

ization software. “Implementing server vir-

tualisation allows SMEs to reduce the

amount of physical servers that they have

and, therefore, free up physical space.

Having virtualised servers allow SMEs to

deploy new or enhanced business services,

so that they can easily roll out new appli-

cations to employees”, said Kaushal Veluri-

Director-Channels & Alliances, Citrix

Systems India.

As Indian SMEs have started adopting more

of blade servers, modular and mobile data-

centre infrastructure solutions provider like

Elliptical Mobile Solutions (EMS) has inten-

sified its operations in the country.

The micro-modular datacentre enclosures

which have got inbuilt cooling & air condi-

tioning facilities, can house blade servers,

storage, networking gears, security appli-

ances and power-backups. The company

targets hailing from state co-operative soci-

eties, regional rural banks, film production

houses, on-field oil exploration companies,

media houses, manufacturing units, hospi-

tality and academic institutions.

Interestingly, Sharad Srivastava run

‘Grassroots Channels’ has taken the

responsibility for establishing the US-based

‘Elliptical Mobile Solutions’ in this part of

the world.

Implementing server virtualisation

allows SMEs to reduce the amount of

physical servers that they have, and

therefore, free up physical space

Kaushal Veluri

Director-Channels & Alliances

Citrix Systems India

For blade systems, Kingston comes

with a wide range of enterprise SSDs.

In India, we’ve started witnessing

growing demands for enterprise SSDs.

Good for us!

Nidhi Sethi

Sales Director, Flash Products

Kingston Technology, India

Posing with self-contained portable datacentre: (L-R) Don Kennedy of Elliptical

Mobile Solutions (EMS); and Sharad Srivastava of Grassroots Channels