Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Alan Perkins, CIO of Altium (Part 4)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: That is interesting to know. You are saying that for large file transfers you, don’t use any of the services like youSENDit?

AP: Typically not. Obviously, there are a few places within Altium where people individually use such services. Some of my IT team use a range of different utilities. Frankly, I don’t know what some of these newer utilities are. But I know our development and R&D team, they use a number of such utilities as well, it is not a particularly big issue for us. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Alan Perkins, CIO of Altium (Part 3)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: What is the architecture that you are using to build and roll out something like this? I presume that this cloud computing discussion is relevant to this new marketplace, this electronics marketplace that you are developing, right? >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Martin Silverman, Director IT at EvensonBest (Part 4)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: I now have a fair picture of what you are trying to do with cloud computing. We have talked mostly about your infrastructure, about security and privileges. What about other services? What about other business functions that a lot of people are moving to the cloud, such as CRM, talent management, and all sorts of SaaS applications? Are those in your cloud strategy as well? >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Alan Perkins, CIO of Altium (Part 2)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: From your point of view, where is the industry today in terms of adopting a cloud-based model such as your local design vault and a cloud-based release design vault where designs from participating designers all over the world sit? Is that a reality today, is that something that is happening, or is that still very much in the cloud? >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Martin Silverman, Director IT at EvensonBest (Part 3)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: I guess the reason I asked for clarification about data sharing was to ascertain whether you are running what we call an extended enterprise, which I think you are. The IT infrastructure that you are running is actually being used by people outside of your employees. Does this mean that you have serious authentication and permission challenges to deal with? >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Alan Perkins, CIO of Altium (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

We have touched upon the electronic design automation (EDA) industry in some of the previous interviews as part of our Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing series. We noticed that there has been extremely limited cloud adoption in the EDA space so far. As we prepare to ring in 2011, the same trend seems set to prevail. There are, however, pockets of activity, especially among the newer EDA players who are exploring and leveraging the cloud both in-house and as a vehicle for EDA collaboration in the future. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Martin Silverman, Director IT at EvensonBest (Part 2)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: Why do you have so many data center requirements in your business? What is going on in your data center?

MS: Well, you have to understand that we are a very, very data intensive company. We manufacture widgets. We do not stock furniture, but we are dealing in furniture configuration. If you go into an office and sit down at a workstation in a cubicle, you are not sitting down at a desk, you are not sitting on a chair – you are sitting on thousands and thousands of discrete parts and pieces that went into these components. Let me give you an example. A typical customer for us is, say, the New York Yankees or Horizon World Headquarters or King Abdullah University for Science and Technology in Dubai. King Abdullah University had between 500 and 600 trailers of knock-down parts. When you are talking about 500 to 600 trailers of these parts that are made to order and the time that this stuff is assembled and brought to the site, it all has to all fit in. It all has to be just right. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Martin Silverman, Director IT at EvensonBest (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

Is the mid-market ready for cloud computing? What are the mid-market customer aspirations from a typical cloud-based solution provider? Most of the cloud-based vendors and the entrepreneurs chasing the cloud market are focusing on the most common and volume-based solutions, but there are there niche segments that are willing to pay a higher price for cloud-based solutions provided their specific and special needs are met by vendors. In this interview, Sramana delves behind the scenes into contract furniture manufacturer EvensonBest’s IT organization and brings out some interesting perspectives from mid-market segment. Do you belong to the camp that perpetually worries about dealing with the disaster recovery (DR) scenario when it comes to cloud adoption? If yes, then you may find EvensonBest’s hybrid cloud usage interesting.  The company address DR in a rather unusual manner. For Martin Silverman, director IT at EvensonBest, being able to support his end users through a cloud-hosted offering is a bonus because he no longer needs to worry about updating and maintaining dedicated servers for supporting IT needs of EvensonBest. >>>