VADS to offer virtual private cloud services 'soon'
By Goh Thean Eu May 27, 2014
- Plans to consolidate its data centre
- Exploring idea of offering VDI services
VADS Bhd, an ICT and business process outsourcing (BPO) services provider wholly-owned by Telekom Malaysia Bhd, plans to offer virtual private cloud services to its enterprise customers soon, part of a plan to tap into the growing demand for cloud services.
The move is also partly to expand its range of cloud-based services. Currently, it offers both public and private cloud services.
“We will be launching our private virtual cloud services soon with another large enterprise. With the launch, we will be able to offer more flexibility and value proposition to our customers when it comes to prices,” VADS chief executive officer Ahmad Azhar Yahya (pic) told Digital News Asia (DNA) recently.
It isn’t entirely surprising that VADS is expanding its cloud-based offerings. According to a study by Cisco, global cloud traffic is expected to grow sixfold from 683 exabytes of annual traffic in 2011 to 4.3 zettabytes by 2016.
Ahmad Azhar said that the main difference between a private cloud and a private virtual cloud is that the infrastructure of the private cloud is hosted on the customer’s premises, while the infrastructure of the virtual private cloud is usually off-premise. This means it is most likely that the new service will be hosted on one of VADS' many data centres in the country.
“Based on the existing data centres that we have, we do have enough capacity to offer the service to our customers, which are mainly enterprise customers,” he said.
VADS currently has about 15 data centres in its portfolio, including one which is located in Hong Kong.
Over the near-term, the company is looking to consolidate and also to upgrade some of its older data centres. In fact, it is in the midst of closing down one of its data centres in Malaysia.
“We are looking into consolidating and moving those customers to some of our newer data centres because we don’t need that many -- but we do need more modern data centres that are able to accommodate new requirements.
“For example, when you look into the computing infrastructure these days, people don’t talk about how many servers or square feet you have; they talk about how much power you can provide. In the old days, one rack was one server. Today, one rack is multiple servers because of blade technology. So you can imagine the power requirement,” he said.
Exploring VDI opportunities
VADS, which was taken private by TM in more than five years ago, is also looking into the possibility of offering virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solutions.
“This is one area which we see to be quite exciting, because it helps enterprises to provide security and integrity of their data. With VDI, any enterprise can do BYOD (bring your own device) easily,” said Ahmad Azhar.
He added that with increasing number of employees wanting to bring their own devices to the office for work purposes, IT departments will have a challenging time managing these devices.
“If you don’t have proper control and governance over it, then it can present a challenge. BYOD by itself is easily implemented, but for BYOD to be successful and effective, and to benefit the business, it has to be thought through carefully,” he said.
Although it is still in the early stages of exploration, one thing that is clear is that VADS will need a partner to offer VDI to its customers.
“We are not a technology creator, we are a technology adopter,” Ahmad Azhar noted.
Related stories:
Cloud traffic to dominate data centres: Cisco study
VADS sees a cloud future
VADS named VMware global solution provider of the year
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