Heads in the Cloud: Early adopters speak

By Eden Estopace | Nov 29, 2011

In the IT landscape of 2011, talk of the 'cloud' is in every horizon -- in government, in education and healthcare, in large enterprises and SMBs. It's the year for the great vendor push for the new platform. But what do early adopters have to say about the new IT service delivery model?

Zuellig Pharma, a pharmaceutical distribution company with presence in over 15 countries in Asia-Pacific with over 10,000 employees and over $10 billion in revenues, was one of the early adopters of the cloud and for good reason.

"Fifteen percent of all branded products in Asia come through Zuellig Pharma. So, we are a critical part of Asia's healthcare delivery system. Our systems have to be secure, reliable and readily available. Those were the three key points for our business. We deal with hospitals, doctors, pharmacies and even patients and all those data must be secure," said Chris Holton, IT Director, ISG, Zuellig Pharma Asia-Pacific, at the Asia Cloud Conference held recently in Manila.

He said the company has ERP system in the cloud, email, online ordering and reporting systems, or a healthy combination of public, private and hybrid cloud deployments.

"We like to be called pioneers in cloud computing but when we first started this, it may not be even called cloud computing," he said. "It's a challenge that none of us can avoid. In a business organization, what do users want? They want to do anything, at anytime, in any way and on any device, especially their own. What do we want in the IT department? We want predictability, stability. We want things to work… Every year, my boss cooks my budget," he added.

Can the 'cloud' iron out these dichotomies and deliver better efficiencies? Holton is of the belief it can, but not all applications can be moved to the cloud, or at least not right away. These includes applications in transition, applications that are ancient and fragile to be moved to a virtualized environment, or any application at all before the company fully understands the licensing agreements involved in moving to a virtualized environment.

"If you are upgrading your applications, finish it first. We found out that our online ordering system is too old to move to a virtualized environment. So we have to upgrade it," he shared. "And before you can move to the cloud, make sure your partner is right. Understand that they are better than you. They have 24-hour systems. They’ve got the infrastructure and the network built in and they are obsessed about making IT productive. But don't just believe everything. Understand how they can help you. Understand how the jurisdiction where your data is going to be, because the government has the right to access that data. But most importantly, understand your business. I think a partner can give you a better service if you understand your business."