"I think the next big game changer will come from how enterprises embrace public cloud," observed Ashok Balasubramanian, Head of Syntel's Cloud Computing Center of Excellence, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan.

"Think of what Salesforce.com did to CRM. Now, imagine if the same thing were to occur in the ERP market - it would be huge," continuued Balasubramanian. "A lot of the industry standard business functions can move to BPaaS and custom business functions could move to IaaS. With a shift like that, we could see a day where businesses might not own or manage any IT assets."

Cloud Computing Journal: A very general question first, about Cloud Computing itself: Surely we've heard all of this before in various forms and guises - grid computing / utility computing, etc.? What is different this time - why is everyone so convinced it will now work?

Ashok Balasubramanian: A great question that's really been keeping the cloud naysayers busy. The way I look at it, a lot of the technologies have been around for decades, but we are now at a tipping point where all the advances in grid computing, virtualization, large public data centers, robust and secure networks, architectural advances in distributed computing and multi-tenancy are coming together in a secure, economical and meaningful manner that is very relevant to businesses and consumers. Similar to the way the Internet flattened the world and made information accessible to all, I believe cloud will flatten the world in making computing resources available to all. That is very powerful proposition and very much here to stay.

Cloud Computing Journal: What are the three main factors driving companies toward the Cloud?

Balasubramanian: Like any new technology, there is significant hype around what cloud can do. While a lot of the components of cloud are maturing, there is significant value in its current form. I see the following as three key drivers for cloud adoption across private and public clouds:

1. Lower Capex: Public clouds help you avoid capex; private performance clouds help you reduce capex through a grid of commodity servers.
2. Lower Opex: Significant automation, self-service, 100% failover and effective management of resources reduce opex. And, deployment of virtual desktops and server environments has never been easier.
3. Faster Time-to-Market: With the time required to deploy a desktop or a server on the private or public cloud down to seconds and few capex worries, this is the right time to focus more on your business ideas and take them to market ahead of the competition.

Faster, cheaper and better! It is indeed possible with a well-planned roadmap and carefully selected partners.

Cloud Computing Journal: And what are the three main barriers preventing some companies from moving some of the on-premise computing to the Cloud?

Balasubramanian: Some may label it as resistance to change, but I see it as the fact that it is a paradigm shift, which takes time to establish. That's the foremost challenge that manifests in different forms today. Otherwise, we could always look at perceived security and vendor lock-in concerns. These are minor and will evaporate as industry adoption and standards evolve.

Cloud Computing Journal: How does your own company's offering/s assist CIOs and organizations/companies?

Balasubramanian: Syntel is an end-to-end services provider in the private and public cloud space. We work with our enterprise clients - from defining their cloud strategy to implementing it and managing it - thereby partnering together to achieve ROI. We have unique tools to assess ROI and choose the right portfolio to move to the cloud, as well as automation tools to do the migration and management. We work with a strong partner ecosystem to put together the best solution for our clients in achieving their cloud vision.

Cloud Computing Journal: Are there other players in the Cloud ecosystem offering the same - or is your company unique? Why?

Balasubramanian: It's not as bad as the dotcom era, but there are new cloud companies popping up every other day. Syntel has a 30+ year heritage of transforming disruptive technologies, like cloud, into business value for Global 2000 enterprises. We work with the client from start to end delivering the promise - creating the roadmap, implementing pilots, building out full-scale implementations, and then managing and optimizing the cloud deployment. Our unique tools enable us to do this better than others.

Cloud Computing Journal: In the future what do you see as being the next "conquests" by virtualization and/or cloud computing? Are there any unclimbed heights yet in the enterprise? Is for example the convergence of telecoms and the cloud the Next Big Thing, or...?

Balasubramanian: Of course telecom and cloud convergence is already very much happening, leading to consolidation in the IaaS space. I guess we could potentially see some SaaS also in this mix soon. I would see all of this akin to vertical integration.

I think the next big game changer will come from how enterprises embrace public cloud. Think of what Salesforce.com did to CRM. Now, imagine if the same thing were to occur in the ERP market - it would be huge. A lot of the industry standard business functions can move to BPaaS and custom business functions could move to IaaS. With a shift like that, we could see a day where businesses might not own or manage any IT assets.

Time will tell!