SMEs (small and medium enterprises) are India’s budding stars, the role played by IT tools & applications has proved to be crucial in the growth and expansion of these industries.

1. Cloud Computing
BLADE SERVERS FOR SMES
GROWING
ADOPTION
BY DIGITAL EDGE BUREAU
They say that SMEs (small and medium enterprises) are India’s budding stars, and in no way are their business matrix less criti-
cal than those of large enterprises. Their numbers run in millions and their operation zones crisscross continents. In the unfold-
ing sagas of their growth and expansion, the role of IT tools & applications has proved to be crucial. A good number of them
get nicely capable IT infrastructure. However, this quest makes SMEs evaluate the option of embracing ‘blade-server-centric’ IT
set-ups. Digital Edge makes an endeavour to unravel the reasons behind the growing adoption of blades by India’s SMEs.
J
ust have a glance over some facts related with SMEs (small
and medium enterprises) in India: there’re over 12 million
SME units in the country which contribute 45 per cent of the
total national industrial outputs and 40 per cent of exports; they
create a million jobs every year and produce more than 8000 qual-
ity products for domestic & international markets; and presently
they contribute 17 per cent of GDP, which is expected to touch
the mark of 22 per cent by the end of 2012.
Yes, SMEs are at various evolutionary stages, but in no way are
they small in their aspirations. They’re budding stars, which wear
twinkles in their eyes, eyes full of dreams and eagerness to excel.
The evolutionary journey of theirs may not necessarily be starting
at swanky offices, well-partitioned and air-conditioned; rather,
most of the times, they get conceived in bedrooms, and deep cor-
ners of their drawing rooms. And, from those familial ambience,
they land in the rapid corridors of corporate world. This is more
or less the same story proudly remembered by today’s SME stocks
teeming in million in India. Cutting across economic sectors, and
30 OCTOBER 2011 DIGITAL EDGE

2. Cloud Computing
Blades bring with it a great Blade servers offer an opti- Harsh Chitale, CEO
deal of opportunity for us. mal solution for those busi- HCL Infosystems Ltd
Our processors are very nesses which are start-ups
much optimized to work in and look at expanding their
the blade environment IT horizons over a period of
3-5 years
The rise of Indian SMEs has
R. Ravichandran, Director—Sales Vinay Sinha, Director
something to do with the
Intel South Asia Enterprise Business, AMD India
aspiring entrepreneurial
business verticals, India’s millions SMEs the economic liberalization and free inter- spirit humming in the Indian
not only address the growing domestic national trade regimes; it has something to expanses for ages; it has
markets for goods and services, but also do with the improving national infrastruc- something to do with the
cater to the global markets of Far-East, ture; it has something to do with the inter-
South-East Asia, Middle-East, Central- vention of machinery and better industrial unshackling of this great
Asia, Africa, Europe and Americas. production means; and it has something to nation from the subjugating
Like other parts of the world, India, too, do with the growing adoption of
yokes of British colonial rule;
look at the small and medium businesses Information Technology (IT).”
from the prism of ‘supply-chain’ of large For Chitale, the CEO of India’s one of the it has something to do with
enterprises where they (SMEs) bring in largest IT companies, the last clause of his the spread of literacy and
their intermediate products, and services definitional continuum of SMEs, which
expertise. A vivid example is that of auto- reads, “it has something to do with the
knowledge; it has something
component manufactureres who supply growing adoption of Information to do with the emergence of
motor-parts to national and international Technology (IT)”, is truly value loaded. It the great Indian middle-class;
vehicle makers. There exist hundreds of tries to explain the contemporary thrust
verticals and sub-verticals for which SMEs applied on IT by progressive SMEs in it has something to do with
work like indispensable elements in the India. The destiny of SMEs is being the economic liberalization
wider ‘supply-chain’ of big companies. But designed by the gush of bits traversing and free international trade
then, a good chunk of SMEs runs their over information superhighway.
independent businesses, offering finished regimes; it has something to
The game changer
goods and end-to-end services for local as do with the improving
well as international markets. The utensil For SMEs, IT is a credible business
enabler, which ultimately serves and satis-
national infrastructure; it has
and souvenir makers of Moradabad, for
instance, take their masterpieces directly to fies their end-customers. Without reliable something to do with the
consumers in India and beyond. So are the and scalable IT capability, SMEs may not intervention of machinery
cases with garment and leather goods think to sustain their operations. Those
manufacturers who quite often reach out to SMEs, which are at the lower rung of evo- and better industrial produc-
customers directly. lutionary pyramid, may content with basic tion means; and it has some-
In a very terse mien, Harsh Chitale, CEO, LAN resources (including NAS or unified thing to do with the growing
HCL Infosystems Ltd, recounts, “The rise storage devices) where entry-level servers
of Indian SMEs has something to do with connect with clients, and possibly, some adoption of Information
the aspiring entrepreneurial spirit hum- imaging & printing systems. They are the Technology (IT).
ming in the Indian expanses for ages; it ones, who deploy Tally and Tally-like
has something to do with the spread of lit- Accounting Software. This is quite possi-
eracy and knowledge; it has something to ble that some of them also subscribe to
do with the unshackling of this great integrated business applications available
nation from the subjugating yokes of on ‘cloud’ including ‘Ramco OnDemand’
British colonial rule; it has something to and ‘SAP BusinessByDesign’. This is also
do with the emergence of the great Indian likely that they subscribe to mail servers
middle-class; it has something to do with on clouds—after all, they need a good
DIGITAL EDGE OCTOBER 2011 31

3. Cloud Computing
The SME units look for scalable and The market is witnessing more of inte- Blade systems answer many of the
reliable IT platforms, which could nego- grated solutions. We’ve been watching questions which perturb SMEs regard-
tiate the future growth of their busi- more deals which involve servers, stor- ing their growth and overall opera-
nesses. Here comes the relevance, and age, networking, and backup resources tional sequences
suitability of blade servers for SMEs
Faisal Paul Leo Joseph Satyen Vyas
Head-Marketing & Solution Alliance Vice President - System x, STG Director, Medium Business
ESSN, HP Enterprise Business India IBM India & SA CSMB Division, Dell India
number of ‘e-mail ids’ for their respective no means less challenging than those of their ability to manage business growth
employees. large enterprises. and diversifications in coming times.
But, as Indian SMEs keep on growing rap- Ever since IT has begun to be adopted on Whether it is service oriented SMEs or
idly—in terms of headcounts, geographical large scale by SMEs, tower servers and manufactured driven ones, they all have
expanse as well as product & solutions rack-mounted servers have played major to ramp up the respective headcounts. For
portfolio—they need to have robust, reli- roles. However, the server technologies as a them, the very management of human
able and scalable datacentre capabilities. whole have also been evolving throughout resources brings a plethora of challenges.
Yes, they can subscribe to some of the the period, and today blade servers have Issues like ‘recruitment’, ‘performance
available cloud services like SaaS (Software turned into trusted darlings of datacentres. review (appraisal)’, ‘promotion’, ‘team
as a Service) and CaaS (Communications as Companies including HP, IBM, Dell, composition’, ‘leaves management’,
a Service), the basic datacentre capability Fujitsu, Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems, ‘employee benefits’, ‘relieving’, and
for running on-premises mail servers, and NEC have intensified their operations ‘retrenchment’ demand quick and intelli-
application servers, and database servers on blades targeted at SMEs. gent management. For this purpose,
SMEs increasingly go for specialized HR
management software applications includ-
ing the famous PeopleSoft.
For handling internal resources including
Blades don’t come in isolation, finance & accounting, some SMEs have
they appear in confederacy of com- been deploying ERP or ERP-like blended
pute, storage and networking business applications for quite sometimes,
which make the quest for creating while others evaluating the feasibility for
a datacentre-in-a-box easy doing so. Also, for handling issues like
sales & marketing (including business
leads), and customer services & retention,
CRM application is widely implemented. If
Abhilesh Guleria SMEs are in the realm of manufacturing
Head, IT Platforms & Multimedia Product Group then applications like SCM and PLM are
NEC India quite relevant. And if SMEs are banking or
even non-banking financial institutions,
has always been desired. So, it’s very clear then CBS (core banking software) applica-
Of blades and SMEs tion automatically comes into the picture.
that SMEs do intend to deploy decent dat-
acentre footprints, having scalable and reli- In an interaction with Digital Edge, Mehul The business intelligence (corporate per-
able servers, storage, networking and secu- Doshi, Country Manager Enterprise formance management) application is
rity resources. Servers at Fujitsu India Pvt. Ltd, said, already a hot topic with SMEs. Last but
Of all the vital components of datacentres, “The adoption of blade servers are not con- not least, every enterprise software appli-
the server part holds a unique position as fined to large enterprises. Today, SMEs cation requires database which is provided
it largely defines the nature, scale and show equal interest in blades. Every quar- companies like Oracle and Microsoft.
overall capacity of any worthwhile data- ter, we watch our blade systems heading As most of the SMEs aspire to expand their
centre. A huge focus is being shed on the for datacentres run by SMEs.” existing reach to customers, which make
selection of right servers, which could For SMEs, which have been evolving with them establish their multiple locations, they
credibly sustain the growing business real- amazing pace, the challenge does not lie in need robust and scalable networking provi-
ities of SMEs. In fact, their business handling the present business expediencies sions. Naturally, scalable and reliable
processes and operational dynamics are by alone, they’re equally concerned about switches and routers are required. The
32 OCTOBER 2011 DIGITAL EDGE

4. Cloud Computing
From management point of view, vir- The adoption of blade servers is not As blade servers contain all of the
tualized blade systems are easy to confined to large enterprises alone. essential components, which are
manage—a fact which gives huge Today, SMEs show equal interest in needed in a small datacenter, it
impetus to the prevalence of them blades. Blades deliver efficiently and becomes easier for SMEs to scale up
(blades) among SMEs cost-effectively whenever the needs come in
Rajesh Rege Mehul Doshi Kapil Sood
Sr. VP, Data Centre—India & SAARC Country Manager, Enterprise Servers VP, Systems Business
Cisco Systems Fujitsu India Oracle India
security related issues make SMEs deploy of positives which make the relevance of in-a-box is full of merit, but the ability of
effective security measures. Not to mention, them further heightened. The modularity, blades to work in virtualized environment,
they all need specialized storage solutions. compactness and smaller form factor of seamlessly, is the top on the puddings. In
Now, for handling so many integrated blades enable solution providers to inte- conservative sense of the term, virtualiza-
applications, the disparate, and rigid IT grate datacentre vitals in a highly con- tion is an effort to utilize the compute,
infrastructure may not desirably fit. Mind densed fashion—servers, storage (SAN and storage, networking and security
you, SMEs have limited budgets. So, even unified storage), networking and security resources optimally.
if the exiting information systems are appliances congregate tightly. Today, virtually every new datacentre
tweaked into running multitude of busi- “Blades don’t come in isolation, they comes up virtualized. The existing data-
ness applications, the TCO (total cost of appear in confederacy of compute, storage centres having legacy systems have either
ownership) factor may look scary. But, the and networking which easily make the been upgraded and virtualized or have
coming of blade servers and associated IT quest for creating a datacentre-in-a-box”, actively planned to do so.
ecosystems has changed the datacentre said Abhilesh Guleria, Head, IT Platforms Ostensibly, virtualization is a mechanism
games of SMEs. & Multimedia Product Group, NEC India. for doing away with any unnecessary pur-
“The SME units eagerly look for scalable
and reliable IT platforms, which can nego-
tiate the future growth of their business.
And here comes the relevance, and ulti- At Wipro, we have been witnessing
mate suitability of blade servers for
growing numbers of SMEs who go
SMEs”, said Faisal Paul, Head-Marketing
for blade systems. They’re getting
& Solution Alliances, ESSN, HP
Enterprise Business India. increasingly aware of the efficacies
There may be some instances where of blades
newly established SMEs directly jump
over to the blade option. So, whatever the
case may be, SMEs increasingly go for
the adoption of blade platform. “Blade Ashok Tripathy
systems answer many of the questions VP & Business Head
which perturb SMEs regarding their Wipro Systems & Technologies
growth and overall operational
sequences”, viewed Satyen Vyas, Director, “The market is witnessing more of inte- chase of servers, storage, networking and
Medium Business, CSMB Division, Dell grated solutions. We’ve been watching security devices as it (virtualization) helps
India Pvt Ltd. more deals which involve servers, storage, extract the most of their potentials.
Corroborated Ashok Tripathy, VP networking, and backup resources”, said Therefore, the intervention of virtualiza-
& Business Head, Wipro Systems & Leo Joseph, Vice President-System X, tion has a direct bearing on TCO. For
Technologies, “At Wipro, we have been STG, IBM India & South Asia. In similar SMEs, virtualization of datacentre
witnessing growing numbers of SMEs vein, Kapil Sood, Vice President, Systems resources is very helpful.
who instinctively go for blade systems. Business, Oracle India Pvt Ltd, said, “As And, blade systems, are highly optimized
They’re getting increasingly aware of the blade servers contain all of the essential for receiving virtualization treatment. The
efficacies of blades.” components that are needed in a small dat- other important characteristic of blade
acenter, it becomes easy for SMEs to scale servers is the ease of datacentre manage-
Advantage Blades up whenever the needs come in.” ment. “Management of virtualized datacen-
While, scalability and reliability are the In the case of blade systems, the mechan- tres is highly challenging as the handling
basic attributes of blades, there is an array ical solidarity among cardinal components of virtual servers, virtual storage, virtual
DIGITAL EDGE OCTOBER 2011 33

5. Cloud Computing
As Indian SMEs have started adopting more
of blade servers, modular and mobile data-
centre infrastructure solutions provider like
Elliptical Mobile Solutions (EMS) has inten-
sified its operations in the country.
The micro-modular datacentre enclosures
which have got inbuilt cooling & air condi-
tioning facilities, can house blade servers,
storage, networking gears, security appli-
ances and power-backups. The company
targets hailing from state co-operative soci-
eties, regional rural banks, film production
houses, on-field oil exploration companies,
media houses, manufacturing units, hospi-
tality and academic institutions.
Interestingly, Sharad Srivastava run
‘Grassroots Channels’ has taken the Posing with self-contained portable datacentre: (L-R) Don Kennedy of Elliptical
responsibility for establishing the US-based Mobile Solutions (EMS); and Sharad Srivastava of Grassroots Channels
‘Elliptical Mobile Solutions’ in this part of
the world.
Vinay Sinha, Director, Enterprise Business,
AMD India.
On the other hand, storage companies like
WD (Western Digital) and Seagate have
expanded their 2.5” enterprise HDD (hard
disk drive) product portfolio. For them
blade servers come with big promise.
At the same time, server vendors have
started inducting SSDs (solid-state drives)
into blade servers on a large scale as SSDs
support almost instantaneous booting of
the systems. Companies like WD, Seagate,
SanDisk and Kingston are some of the
leading players in this space. “For blade
systems, Kingston comes with a wide
Implementing server virtualisation For blade systems, Kingston comes range of enterprise SSDs”, said Nidhi
allows SMEs to reduce the amount of with a wide range of enterprise SSDs. Sethi, Sales Director, Flash Products,
physical servers that they have, and In India, we’ve started witnessing Kingston Technology, India.
therefore, free up physical space growing demands for enterprise SSDs. Moreover, any talks of blade servers would
Good for us! be incomplete if virtualization aspect is not
discussed. For virtualization software com-
Kaushal Veluri Nidhi Sethi panies such as accelerated, Citrix, Oracle,
Director-Channels & Alliances Sales Director, Flash Products and Microsoft, blade servers offer huge
Citrix Systems India Kingston Technology, India business opportunity. Those SMEs which
deploy blades, invariably deployed virtual-
ization software. “Implementing server vir-
switches, and virtual security appliances based processors, x86 is the most preferred
tualisation allows SMEs to reduce the
simultaneously requires easy and efficient compute technology.“Blades bring with it a
amount of physical servers that they have
mechanism. From the management point great deal of opportunity for us. Our
and, therefore, free up physical space.
of view, virtualized blade systems are easy processors are very much optimized to
Having virtualised servers allow SMEs to
to manage”, said Rajesh Rege, Sr. Vice work in the blade environment”, said R.
deploy new or enhanced business services,
President Data Centre—India & SAARC, Ravichandran, Director—Sales, Intel
so that they can easily roll out new appli-
Cisco Systems. South Asia. The Xeon Series of Intel
cations to employees”, said Kaushal Veluri-
processors have seen the maximum deploy-
Ready blade ecosystem Director-Channels & Alliances, Citrix
ments in the blade systems. “In terms of
Systems India.
In making blade servers compact, energy performance and energy-efficiency, Intel
wise efficient and cloud-compatible, the products deliver the best. There is no
entire component ecosystem plays its big doubt about this”, added Ravichandran.
role. If we talk of processors, companies While, AMD, which has experienced rapid
like Intel and AMD have immensely con- market growth the world over including
tributed in making blade servers so much India, has accelerated its operations around
consolidated, and efficient. This is to be tapping the growing market of blade
reminded that blades which specifically servers. “Blade servers offer an optimal
address the typical compute needs of data- solution for those businesses which are
centres being run by SME entities are start-ups and look at expanding their hori-
heavily dominated by x86 servers. zons over a period of 3-5 years (as the ROI
Barring some special instances where, for investments in blade technologies usu-
SMEs deploy blades powered by RISC- ally pays off after the 1st year or so)’, said
34 OCTOBER 2011 DIGITAL EDGE