PLDT, Microsoft, Dimension take PHL companies to the cloud

Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) is making an aggressive push to provide companies cloud computing services by adding Microsoft Enterprise applications into its PLDT AppFarm portfolio. At a press briefing on Monday, PLDT head of consumer sales and marketing group Ernesto Alberto said the company’s ePLDT unit is "developing a grand cloud strategy" which headlines its business offerings in the next few years. While he did not readily share data on cloud adoption by local enterprises, Alberto said telecom research firms such as IDC and Gartner "have actually indicated that 2011 heralds the official start of pervasiveness of the cloud across markets," which forms the basis of the company's push toward cloud services. Cloud computing basically refers to virtual servers available over the Internet, which companies can use as a service without capital outlay for additional hardware. "Hopefully as we transcend through the future, we may be able to come up with more pervasive value-laden propositions across markets," Alberto added. At Monday's launch, PLDT announced its partnership with software giant Microsoft Philippines and infrastructure provider Dimension Data, which would see the telco providing Microsoft software to customers on a subscription basis via cloud computing. Some of these applications include Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Sharepoint, Microsoft Lync and Microsoft Web Server, which Alberto noted are already being used by a number of companies in the Philippines. In the three-way partnership, Microsoft will license it its applications, Dimension Data will handle the needed infrastructure and support and PLDT will provide the network connectivity. Juan Victor Hernandez, head of PLDT corporate business, clarified that the offering will be on a "for-rent" basis, where the equipment will be placed on the customer's premises. He said they decided to take the private cloud route—instead of the much-hyped public cloud— because firms still need to "build confidence" for the latter. "[This offering] gives businesses access to applications without the upfront investment, or the need to refresh their infrastructure," Hernandez said. Opportunity to upgrade At the outset, said the partnership is targeting companies already using Microsoft applications but have not yet upgraded to the latest versions, the PLDT executives said. Microsoft estimates that 90 percent of large enterprises are now using Microsoft Office. At least 70 percent of these are using Microsoft Exchange as the back-end, but as much as 60 percent (of the 70 percent) are still using old versions of the application and would want to upgrade, said Hernandez. "The option to upgrade to the new version has always been there," Hernandez clarified. "But these companies are limited by the barriers to entry, which include their financial priorities, the lack of internal expertise, and the fact that they cannot afford to be distracted from their core business." By employing a managed service type of deployment, companies wouldn't have to be bothered with the long implementation periods which usually come with these types of systems. "Customers that don't have a Microsoft Exchange platform today can have one tomorrow," Hernandez claimed. On the cost side, PLDT claimed a cloud-delivered service is much cheaper than having IT administrators deploy the system themselves. With a full subscription-based arrangement, a Microsoft Exchange platform for a company of 500 users would only have to shell out P280,000 per month, or an average of P560 per user per month, compared with the millions they would have to shell-out on a do-it-yourself basis. "Companies could realize as much as 19 percent cost savings using PLDT's solutions," Hernandez added. Alberto said this new service will expand the use of cloud computing in the Philippines. "This will spur awareness because we have something that they're already using. It's now just a question of cost," he added. — VS, GMA News