Openliven in MilanoFinanza
Titolo: Openliven explains how Cloud Computing can help businesses
Date: March 10th, 2009
Author: Andrea Secchi
Heading: MilanoFinanza
"Sometimes Cloud computing is more beneficial to small companies than it is to big ones", maintains Luca Faggioli, CEO of Openliven, a consultancy firm based in Bologna that specializes in cloud-based technology with Amazon. "Unlike small companies, large companies often have access to their own internal data centers and significant hardware resources. Rather than investing large sums in the establishment of a data center, small- and medium-sized businesses can set up a Cloud Computing instance with a couple of thousand Euros and then pay according to the amount they use. One of Openliven's clients, Mercurius, a Turin-based company managing a network of sites, decided to migrate all the activity that had previously relied on traditional hosting solutions to a Cloud-computing model.
Other clients include a company certifying carbon-dioxide emissions as per the Kyoto protocol. The company operates in China but makes use of an Italian management team. As the number of employees grew, the traditional hosting model was not able to provide the required degree of flexibility, so the management decided to migrate internal applications to a Cloud-Computing model.
The cost of this type of service depends on the so-called Cloud "instance" purchased, which is a term used to describe the actual use of available capacity as required. An instance on Amazon equivalent to an entry-level server costs 10 US cents an hour, whereas the use of the more elaborate server instances can cost up to 4/5 thousand Euros. "The average saving that we see", concludes Faggioli, "is around 30% along with all the advantages that come with the added flexibility."
Other clients include a company certifying carbon-dioxide emissions as per the Kyoto protocol. The company operates in China but makes use of an Italian management team. As the number of employees grew, the traditional hosting model was not able to provide the required degree of flexibility, so the management decided to migrate internal applications to a Cloud-Computing model.
The cost of this type of service depends on the so-called Cloud "instance" purchased, which is a term used to describe the actual use of available capacity as required. An instance on Amazon equivalent to an entry-level server costs 10 US cents an hour, whereas the use of the more elaborate server instances can cost up to 4/5 thousand Euros. "The average saving that we see", concludes Faggioli, "is around 30% along with all the advantages that come with the added flexibility."