Telecom Lead India: The Essar Group has implemented
Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud services platform, to deliver some of its
applications.
Essar is keen to offer its customers Web-based applications
with high performance and scalability while maintaining low infrastructure and
management costs.
With its enterprise customers in mind, Essar sought to
enhance its offerings with a cloud version of some of its applications. The
Essar group has presence in segments such as steel, energy, power,
communications, shipping ports, logistics and construction,
Microsoft Services approached Essar with a cost-effective
solution in Windows Azure that allowed the company to obtain the benefits of
both public and private cloud computing while also reducing the level of IT
maintenance required to manage the applications on-premises.
Essar expects that the delivery of its applications
through Windows Azure will enable the company to increase profitability and
reduce costs by as much as 65 percent. Because IT staff members are also no
longer allocating time to infrastructure management, they can devote more time
to mission-critical operations.
With Windows Azure, we don’t have to spend money on
hardware and software, and we don’t have to spend time on administrative tasks
related to infrastructure,” said Jayantha Prabhu, chief technology
officer, Essar Group.
In association with MindTree, a Microsoft Gold Certified
Partner that delivers a broad range of IT services and software product
engineering, Essar seamlessly transitioned four of its applications – HSECAR
(Corrective Action Report (CAR) system), AVID (A Voyage into Insatiable
Discovery), Saksham and Visitor Management System & Gate Pass System – to
the Windows Azure platform in August 2011.
In addition to cutting costs, Windows Azure has given
Essar the flexibility to scale compute and storage resources up and down as
needed. In fact, we can maintain the high level of scalability needed at a
lower total cost of ownership compared with an on-premises solution,” Prabhu
added.
