Magazine: The cloud is growing

The cloud is basically turning the most modern info-communication capabilities into public utilities – says Péter Budai, cloud and enterprise business group lead at Microsoft Hungary. Broadband internet connection is the pipeline and the cloud service provider is the power plant where the energy is produced. These days a company doesn’t need expensive hardware or software – which is rapidly becoming obsolete – to have an efficient business management system or a high-capacity data centre. Mr Budai opines that cloud services offer a large number of advantages. By using Microsoft’s cloud solutions costs aren’t simply cut but they also become easier to plan with. Services are flexible and they can be tailored to user needs. As for data security, Microsoft has more than 100 data centres with more than 600,000 servers, and the company invests USD 4.5 billion in data centres a year. Another great advantage of cloud services is that subscribers only have to pay for services they are actually using. In addition to this, they don’t have to invest in building costly systems such as a big data processing solution – it is enough to use the service available in the cloud. T-Systems Hungary CEO Tibor Rékasi told Trade magazin that irrespective of company size and profile, cloud services offer the same advantages: reducing investment and operating costs. For example they can be really useful for startups: they often don’t know what kind of IT infrastructure they will need and thanks to the cloud, their changing needs can be satisfied flexibly. The CEO reckons that a further advantage of the cloud is that such high-level data centres make up the infrastructural background, which would be nigh impossible to build even for large companies. However, users have to pay special attention to choose service providers that offer Hungarian-language support and it is also best if users can report errors to a customer service that isn’t located in a distant country. Mr Rékasi is of the opinion that one of cloud services’ biggest advantages is that they are easy to parameter: this way resources are always in line with the current needs of the user company, as parameters can be modified monthly, weekly or even daily, depending on the contract signed. As data security issues are key when using cloud-based services, T-Systems Hungary developed the instantSecurity service, which includes DDoS protection, managed border protection and log analysis capacity. Márk Arató, communications lead at SAP Hungary informed us that there is no sector or company size that couldn’t profit from using cloud services. His experience is that those enterprises start to use them, which wish to simplify their business procedure and to remain flexible. All they have to do is pay a monthly subscription fee to preserve the freedom of reacting to the changes in the world around them. His advice is to use an integrated system and to choose a service provider that has put the best practices of a given sector into its solutions, ensuring the competitiveness of the services’ users. Cloud-based technology makes it possible to use specialised services online. Virtual Call Center offers contact centre services and business development manager Péter Málhai told our magazine that the number of their customers service teams ranges from 5 to 150. This means that from SMEs to multinational companies everyone can subscribe to the service. Subscribers can use the latest IT infrastructure and enjoy constant maintenance service. The company’s VCC Pay system facilitates bank card payment via telephone to partners’ customers. István Bessenyei, owner and managing director of Laurel revealed that they had launched their Retail Cloud service this March. Thanks to the ‘pay as you go’ system, usage costs are low. The Laurel Retail Cloud is a base system which features the systems the company has developed so far, from the decision-support system to the B2B and B2C system to big data applications and classic IT services such as e-mail, storage or virtual server rental. Mr Bessenyei sees growing interest for cloud services from SMEs. He thinks that cloud-based systems aren’t only cheaper at the start but also cost less to operate. According to László Csesznok, Comforce Zrt.’s senior account manager, for his company cloud computing technology is very important as they use it to provide contact centre services to partners. Employees also work ‘in the cloud’, so physically they can be anywhere in the world. They answer callers’ questions in 25 languages, from Budapest to Tokyo to Rio. Most of the employees work in a home office system, saving lots of time and money.