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Why the Asia Pacific is Eyeing the Hybrid Cloud

IT infrastructure in the Asia Pacific market is steadily becoming overloaded. This is due to rapid growth in the region’s economy which has increased overall workload and demand that infrastructure. While Asia’s economic growth is obviously a good thing, traditional IT seems to be having a hard time keeping up in practically all sectors of the economy. Of course, the cloud is often an ideal solution, since it allows companies to establish scalable infrastructures. However, many decision makers resist the idea of replacing or upgrading their already existing (and often costly) infrastructure in order to invest in what they see as a gamble. Fortunately, there is a solution: the hybrid cloud model.

Cloud computing is already gaining momentum in the Asia Pacific market

Surveys of the region have noticed that cloud computing in the Asia Pacific region is quickly gaining a large market share. In fact, it seems that at least a third of existing IT departments surveyed plan to move to the cloud within the next year. The main reason why many IT decision makers are moving to the cloud is because its availability has increased in the recent months. The flexibility of the cloud and ease of disaster recovery are also important reasons.

It is important to note that disaster recovery is one of the most important concerns for IT decision makers in the Asia Pacific. There are very competitive markets in the region and a clogged pipeline, significant downtime, or other common technical issues can have important effects on a company’s bottom line and future growth. Because of this, companies are quickly turning to IT solutions that will allow them to keep pace with their competitors in terms of growth, while maintaining reliability and disaster recovery capabilities. One of these companies, GMO Cloud, constantly looks for ways on developing solutions in helping companies rid of these failovers. A high availability solution comes into play as most disadvantages mentioned are addressed in this type of strategy.

As a result, surveys indicate that 2013 will be a very important year for cloud service providers in the Asia Pacific market, and today we are already seeing cloud technology vendors swoop in to claim their stake in the market.

Why hybrid clouds are Asia’s next big thing

Nearly two thirds of IT decision makers polled in the survey above indicated that they plan on evaluating or implementing (or are currently using) a hybrid of existing data centers and remote servers owned by a cloud service provider. What is the main attraction of the hybrid cloud model for these companies? It is seen as an effective way to bridging the gap in IT infrastructure that exists because of a lack of resources or access to technology. The two main advantages of hybrid cloud infrastructure is that they 1) allow a huge amount of customization on the client side while 2) are more flexible than traditional IT or an entirely cloud-based approach.

One of the main concerns for decision makers in the Asia Pacific region is effective network virtualization, especially in terms of being able to reallocate unused bandwidth and increase reliability and performance. Business needs are changing. The increased mobility of today’s technology and the demand for customized IT, coupled with the rapid growth in the region’s economy means that traditional infrastructures simply cannot keep up without help from third party servers. Hybrid clouds give companies the best of both worlds, the security of traditional IT with the scalability, customization options, and flexibility of the cloud.

A stellar reputation

One of the reasons why demand for hybrid clouds has increased in the Asia region is the good reputation of the model. Companies already investing in cloud technology have reported very high levels of satisfaction and significant returns on investment, prompting competitors and other businesses in the region to implement these technologies themselves. Existing cloud service vendors with data centers and network virtualization should jump on the opportunity available in this market. Multiple sectors can benefit from an increased access to hybrid clouds, ranging from IT-related industries to companies in the financial or entertainment sectors.

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About the Guest Author:

Nida Rasheed

Nida Rasheed is a freelance writer and owner of an outsourcing company, Nida often finds herself wanting to write about the subjects that are closest to her heart. She lives in Islamabad, Pakistan and can be found on Twitter @nidarasheed

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Why the Cloud is Great for Gaming

One of the latest trends in the gaming industry is the shift towards the cloud. While there is a lot of hype surrounding the term ‘Cloud’, practically every industry has significantly benefited from joining the cloud revolution, and the gaming industry is no exception. In fact, gaming might be the industry that has benefited the most.

As everyone knows, video games require high-speed processors, high-end graphics, and lots of memory. By moving into the cloud, the gaming industry makes maximum use of resources to offer the highest gaming experience for its users. While scaling is an important feature that attracts the gaming industry towards the cloud, there are other features that can boost the performance of high-end MMORPGs. Before talking about other features, let us look at scalability.

Automatic Scaling

One of the most striking features of cloud computing technology is automatic scaling. The ability to scale up your resources during peak traffic times and the flexibility to scale down during off-peak times is cost effective for companies in terms of capital expenditures as well as operating expenses.

Moreover, the performance of the server is improved. Consider an instance where several people log onto a MMORPG game. If the server capacity is 6000 users, it starts going down if more people start logging in. If the game is hosted on a cloud server, where the capacity of the data center is 64 servers, each server can host 6000 users. That’s a total of 384,000 users who can enjoy the highest performance of the server at the same time. Under normal circumstances, not more than 6000 people log in to the server.

The billing is done only for the services used. This is the power of automatic scaling.

What does the cloud offer game developers?

While scalability is one of the main advantages of cloud gaming, there are other benefits for game developers. In the traditional development environment, game developers are stuck with static consoles. Though gamers have the necessary creativity to devise high-end games, they have to limit their creativity to suit the existing infrastructure. In a cloud-based environment, hardware is constantly updated. Developers get the opportunity to use cutting-edge technologies to deliver amazing games.

Cloud technology also answers latency concerns. Cloud-based games run at 60 frames per second and 1080 resolution. This is a game developers’ dream when compared to the 30 fps and 780 resolution of static consoles. Lower latency levels greatly increase the performance of the game.

Another benefit of cloud-based gaming is device independence. Developers get the flexibility to create device-independent games. Whether games are to be used on PCs, notebooks, televisions, tablets or smartphones, developers can create games that are of high quality, low latency, and are device independent. With mobile devices, end users can access the game from anywhere. They can pause and continue the game at any time.

Another positive feature is that game users do not have to purchase new hardware, install applications, download programs, or carry physical discs. The hassle-free game environment offered by the cloud environment gives license to developers to unleash their creative talents in creating innovative games.

How is a game server configured? Read more on the Game Server Solution page of GMO Cloud and see how all these benefits come together to handle sudden heavy traffic.

Be Part of Our Cloud Conversation

Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

About the Guest Author:

Kaushik Das

Kaushik Das is an engineer, research analyst and a technical writer in the areas wireless, IT, enterprise software, next-generation hosting, storage and renewable energy. He specializes in competitive analysis, market research, industry insights, white paper and actionable web content development.

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