Singapore companies get the Fund to adopt Cloud
ANSAN, a cloud initiative that digitizes business cards for collaborative use within companies has raised S$24.2 million in Series C funding – S$4.2 million of which will be invested to help more businesses in Singapore to use the cloud to boost productivity.
It is believed that Sansan will then reinforce its business card management service emphasizing on “mobile”, as more companies use smartphones to make up their sales strategies and expand its user base beyond SMEs to include large businesses.
Chika Terada, chief executive of Sansan, said: “Singapore is the highest-ranked country (globally) for smartphone penetration, and the growing proliferation of software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions and cloud- based technology adopted by businesses here makes it a hard-to-ignore opportunity.” Sansan’s web and mobile platform allows sales teams to measure the “reality of their business function” by looking at the breadth of their database and discovering the business opportunities that exist within them.
Benefits of Cloud to the Businesses
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Manageability
Cloud computing offers simplified and enhanced IT management and maintenance capabilities to the businesses through central administration of resources, SLA backed agreements and vendor managed infrastructure. The extra efforts of IT infrastructure updates and maintenance are removed because the service provider is responsible for the maintenance. Businesses can enjoy a simple web-based user interface for accessing software, applications and services without needing installation. Plus, SLA ensures the timely and guaranteed delivery, management and maintenance of your IT services.
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Cost Savings
The most significant cloud computing benefit is in terms of cost savings. No matter what is the type or size of businesses, they earn money while keeping IT investment and operational expenses to the least. With cloud computing, businesses can save considerable capital costs with zero in-house server storage and application needs. The lack of on-premises infrastructure also eradicates their associated operational costs in the form of power, air conditioning and administration costs. Businesses have to pay for what is used and disengage whenever they like and there is no invested IT capital to worry about. Also, it’s just a misconception that only large businesses can afford to use the cloud. However the reality is that cloud services are extremely affordable for smaller businesses too.
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Reliability
Cloud computing is much more reliable and consistent with a managed service platform as compared to the in-house IT infrastructure. Most providers offer a Service Level Agreement which guarantees 24/7/365 and 99.99% availability. An organization can benefit from a massive pool of redundant IT resources, and quick failover mechanism. This means that if a server fails, hosted applications and services can easily be transited to any of the available servers.
