CLOUDFX: Addressing Challenges in Cloud Migration and Paving the Way for IT Transformation

1. | |March 2015
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CompanyoftheMonth CIO INSIGHTS VIEWPOINT
CloudFX:
Addressing Challenges
in Cloud Migration
and Paving the Way
for IT Transformation
CloudFX:
Addressing Challenges
in Cloud Migration
and Paving the Way
for IT Transformation
SINGAPORE CLoUD SPECIAL
Damian Crotty,
President & CEO

2. | |March 2015
10CIOReview | |March 2015
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According
to Gartner, the
global spending on
public cloud services is
expected to grow to $210 billion in 2016. This study clearly heralds the
revolutionary impact of Cloud on the IT world as the adoption rate is slated to
grow smoothly year on year. The hype around cloud services is partly the result of
several vendors touting their latest and brightest cloud based solutions that are aimed to
turn businesses into more agile and streamlined processess. But this hype has been followed by
its own myriad of challenges. Organizations are challenged when it comes to articulating how their
needs and requirements will be served once they migrate to the cloud. To many organizations, cloud is
an entirely new platform and the respective IT teams expect strong and flexible cloud infrastructures that
can support complete IT operations while delivering exceptional service quality to the businesses. However,
there is a big gap existing between what the cloud service vendors provide in terms of IT transformation
and what the organizations expect regarding financial and business growth via cloud technology enablements.
Migration to the cloud seems to be plain sailing but in reality cloud migration brings all kinds of business
and operational challenges to the organizations, which cloud vendors are gradually failing to address. It is
an imperative requirement for an enterprise strategy for cloud computing to identify business problems with
existing applications that cloud platform can potentially address and provide key reasons why cloud is the right
strategic option. However, many global IT vendors today are tied to legacy strategy and products for migrating
applications to cloud due to which they lack in real-time agility. This pitfall is exacerbated by the lack of specialist
skills and knowledge to guide clients, thus leaving them inept of creating value and executing on the changing
requirements of the Enterprise. Without necessary support and appropriate skilled resource required to navigate
IT transformation journey to the Cloud, enterprises go through sharp downturns.
CloudFX: Addressing
Challenges in Cloud Migration
and Paving the Way for IT
Transformation
Cover Story
By Karishma B
Damian Crotty,
President & CEO

3. | |March 2015
12CIOReview | |March 2015
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CloudFX, strategically
headquartered in Singapore, has a
good handle on the multifaceted
nature of Cloud Computing from
the vendor’s technologies that enable
it, to the support of the world’s
largest Enterprises with their Cloud
transformation initiatives; be it in the
areas of Strategic Advisory or large
scale Infrastructure consolidations.
“The industry has many companies
which can talk about the ‘What’ and
the ‘Why’ of Cloud Computing, but
CloudFX is without peer in defining
and executing of the ‘How’ of Cloud
Computing, thereby accelerating the
realization of benefits and enabling
our customers to do what they do
best, i.e. executing on their business
priorities, supported by an infinitely
agile, scalable, flexible and transparent
IT environment underpinning success
and growth”, asserts Damian Crotty,
President & CEO, CloudFX.
Under the dexterous tutelage of
Damian Crotty, a seasoned veteran
executive in the IT industry who holds
a more than clear understanding of the
cloud computing environment, the
company has created a demonstrable
track record of executing flawless
IT transformations in various Asian
companies with its multi-vendor cloud
platforms – including Cloud Consult,
Cloud Select Cloud Service Brokerage
(CSB) and Cloud DMS platforms and
services. Since its inception in 2009,
CloudFX has been focused on
delivering measurable financial
outcomes with sustainable
business capabilities that
transcends the technology
domain and positively impacts
technology services in an
innovative and quantifiable
way. “The most important
part of positioning is our
ability to understand
exactly where our clients
are on the journey,
determine what’s next,
quantifying the benefits of
that next step and enabling it through
our services and product divisions,
where each of these elements are
separated from branded technologies
and focused intently around the clients
wants, needs and requirements”, says
Damian.
Intermediating between Cloud Service
ProvidersandInternalBusinessUnits
While high demand for flexibility and
agility with cloud services prove to be
a challenge for many cloud providers,
Cloud Select- a ITaaS Cloud Service
Automation and Management
platform, serves as an aggregation,
integration and customization
point for Cloud services. Cloud
Select’s unique feature of liberating
Enterprise IT from expensive cloud
services, thereby providing service
flexibility, automation, agility and cost
transparency makes it stand out from
cloud based platforms. “This platform
delivers the Hybrid Cloud in less than
60 days,” quips Damian. With the help
of Cloud Select, Cloud FX constantly
intermediates between cloud service
providers and internal business
units and concurrently orchestrates
IT services around the
strategic needs and
requirements of
each business
unit. “We couple
this with the complete elimination,
transaction and administration
(payments, governance, data
movement, customization and
enrichment) from a large group of
disparate providers via advanced,
purpose built Cloud Service
Management control panels,”
articulates Damian.
Today when organizations are
keen to move their existing legacy
application to the cloud environment
because of high cost of maintenance
involved in integrating applications
with modern tools and services,
Cloud Select embarks on "Anything
as a Service” strategy including (IaaS,
PaaS, and SaaS) to deliver Cloud
service innovation and cost advantages
to their business with additional value-
added services based on compliance,
configuration, performance
monitoring, capacity management,
security, agility and availability,
full stack provisioning and change
management.Increasingly,IThonchos
are turning to cloud solutions to fast-
track their organizations’ journey of
IT transformation. However, they
struggle to navigate through the steps
that they have to take to enable the
progressive switch to cloud and
the modernization of their
IT environment as part of
that journey. Addressing
these quagmires, Cloud
Select provides an optimized
starting point for enterprises
that are ready to fast-
track their journey of
IT transformation
with cloud
offerings. “Cloud
Select offers
50 percent +
reduction in IT
capital expense, a
10X improvement in IT
Service Levels particularly
in the area of Workload
provisioning and availability and
granularity in consumption and cost
transparency around the use of all
IT services within the Enterprise,
in short, it’s the most revolutionary
Enterprise technology to come to
market that enables true scaled out
Enterprise quality IT as a Service
with the management sophistication,
robustness and service quality”, adds
Damian. Furthermore, this platform
has multiple identities and can serve
as a business process automation
platform, an on-demand service
request management platform,
an Enterprise class Service
automation platform, an intranet
/ internet E-Commerce based
Cloud service aggregation
platform, thus enabling multi-
supplier management, advanced
business intelligence functionality,
full scale Enterprise service
management and single integrated
billing capabilities.
ThreeStagesofaTransformativeApproach
IT transformation is aimed to
trim down the exorbitant cost of
underutilizedITinfrastructureandturn
into elastic and scalable “IT as a service”
model. Adhering to this, CloudFX
follows a model with three stages
of IT transformation which enables
it to provide a measurable, phased
and pragmatic approach to its clients
for sustainable IT transformation.
Further, with its unwavering focus
on delivering complete value to
its customers, CloudFX enables
transformation, builds capability,
unlocks business value and offers
improved business results and
competitive advantage. The fervent
team of technologists at CloudFX with
extensive understanding of complex
and demanding environments has
successfully developed advanced IP
Methodology and process, not just
to streamline engagement process,
but also to deliver consistent positive
customer outcomes in highly complex
and demanding environments. “Using
virtualization,world-classtoolsandour
own IP, we automate service delivery
and accelerate benefits realization. We
have virtualized over 258,000 servers,
12,000 TB of storage and more than
550,000 client devices in the past
few years alone”, explains Damian.
Encompassing the entire spectrum of
services ranging from Infrastructure,
virtualization, Cloud Service
automation, cloud orchestration,
cloud managed services and Cloud
brokerage services, CloudFX ensures
long-term strategic client success in
the world of Cloud.
StreamliningtheCloudJourney
CloudFX is constantly focused
on aligning its investments
towards the future of IT.
Believing without a clutch
in Multi-provider service
aggregation, IT service
automation and service
management of virtual service
as core principles underpinning
Enterprise IT, the company envisions
of delivering great results for its
strategic partners and customers
and solving acute challenges for
Enterprises around the world.
CloudFX fosters a strong belief that
an open and heterogeneous platform
and secure multi-tenancies enable
rapid integration and management
of multi-provider cloud service
offerings through a single central
appliance whilst supporting tight
alignment with business needs and IT
requirements. The company had made
a conscious choice to remain vendor
agnostic and then proceeds to lead
and support its clients with impartial
advice. With local offices in Indonesia,
Malaysia, Thailand and Australia
and across APJ, the company is
poised for exponential growth in
the years to come. Moving ahead
with a positive outlook, CloudFX
continues to provide its unflinching
support to its customers and
harness new technology revolutions
as it becomes a phenomenon.
Cloud Select
offers 50 percent
+ reduction
in IT capital
expense, a 10X
improvement in
IT Service Levels
particularly
in Workload
provisioning
Damian Crotty,
President & CEO