The Cloud or Cloud Computing is a metaphor for abstracting underlying hardware or software from users who no longer need to know about it. It typically involves the provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources as a service over the Internet. This has been a natural evolution over years shown in the figure below (Source: Forrester Research).

 Figure 1: Evolution over the years of the Service Provider space and delivery mode

Cloud Service Offerings

We are well positioned to get into the cloud space for the next year and provide very specific service offerings to the market. Primarily our service offerings may be classified into the following four offerings:

1. Cloud Development Services:

Software development has been a cornerstone of our success. The cloud is enabling the underlying hardware and infrastructure to be irrelevant. This allows us to utilize and leverage our existing capabilities even more. Developing for the cloud is just a change in the mindset. The typical databases (MySQL, MSSQL, Oracle etc.), platforms (.NET, Java etc.), infrastructure (hardwares, routers etc.) and the operating systems (Unix, Linux, Windows) can now be dynamically provisioned (on a pay-per-use basis) based on the needs of the application being built.

So where are we on this?

We are riding high on the programming front. Along with it we are also continuously upgrading our knowledge of different platforms provided by big players like Amazon (Amazon Web Services, S3, SimpleDB, EC2), Microsoft (Windows Azure – MSSQL Services, Sharepoint Services etc.), Salesforce (Force.com) and Rackspace (Cloud Files and Servers). Expertise on these platforms goes a long way in providing excellent value for our customers as well as for us.

In addition to all these, we possess specialized skills and experience in several PaaS providers such as Force.com, Google app engine, Oracle SaaS platform and Windows Azure platform which enhances our potentials in developing and deploying solutions into the cloud. These platforms typically provide staging environments in ensuring that solutions are hosted on production environments.

2. Cloud Migration & Deployment:

There are two aspects to these services:

• Migration includes all those services where customers may want to migrate from a dedicated server model to a cloud based model. The difference in savings is huge. For example, a typical Java application based on a dedicated server model may cost about $1200 per month on hosting charges from a vendor like Rackspace. However, a comparative hosting on a cloud server will cost only about $500 per month keeping all parameters the same.

• Deployment Services are targeted towards either solutions which need to be deployed on the cloud or that was intended for traditional deployment methods but will fit better on the cloud because of the economics.

3. Cloud Management:

These services like any service offering from Managed Services thoroughly rely on familiarity with specialized tools for routine management. Fulcrum employs the majority of popular tools available in the market to enhances our potential in the area of Managed Services.

4. Cloud Consulting:

There is an abundance of terminologies and acronyms on cloud computing. This enhances opportunities for business consulting and providing a “logical” picture for the customer. These can be positioned as business evaluations, ROI analysis, and TCO analysis.