?Indian IT market?s growth is unusually high?

To compete effectively, enterprises need an IT infrastructure that they can scale quickly to meet dynamic business demands and maximise utilisation of their IT investment. American PC maker Dell has developed a growing portfolio of efficient cloud computing solutions to help enterprises achieve that flexible infrastructure. ?Cloud computing enables an enterprise to respond faster to the needs of their business, while driving greater operational efficiencies,? says Paul Bell, president, Public and Large Enterprise business units at Dell, the world?s No. 3 PC maker. In this role, he leads the team that helps government, education, healthcare organisations and corporate IT users make full use of IT to achieve their goals. He recently met with Diana Ningthoujam in Dubai to clear the myths surrounding cloud computing, separating myths from facts. He also laid down Dell?s strategic approach towards this latest hype in the IT world. Excerpts: What are the initiatives you have in mind for increasing the company?s presence in cloud computing?

We come out from several different angles. One is the services team; we have about 45,000 people now on the Dell?s service organisation. We are one of the larger IT service companies in the world and that starts with the engagement we have with an individual customer. We have to help them think about their strategy applications.

Our global applications and BPO businesses are based out of India and that is one of the ways we approach customers. We help our customers understand our applications and what could go to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, how they can migrate to a private cloud model.

Then at the infrastructure level, as we continue to create innovation in virtualising storage, servers and networking, we are creating many of the fundamental building block technologies for private cloud. We will continue to innovate to make it easier for people to take advantage of this kind of technology.

Final thing I would like say is the experience we have had in building datacentres for some of the largest cloud providers in the world. We have learned a lot about how to design the infrastructure and it is very different from the legacy architecture that is out there.

What will be your strategy to tap the Indian market?

The Indian IT market is growing 15% every year. The rate of growth here is unusually high. We have other markets like China and Brazil, which might be comparable, but this one of the fastest growth markets. The part of what people spend that is going into different types of cloud implementation is in a very high rate of growth, but it is also relatively small base.

In India, everybody is doing proof-of-concept?first implementation and then trying to figure out how to take advantage of it. The majority of datacentre infrastructure even a few years from now will not be in the cloud model. The industry tends to take a decade to go through a major transformation, but the rate of growth will continue to be very high.

Which are the sectors that will be the main users of cloud computing?

Pretty much all of them because these are fundamental technologies that all enterprises are using and we are at that fundamental level. We absolutely think about how to make them more relevant for specific sectors and solving specific issues that they have. For higher education, we have partnered with an open source provider of enterprise resource planning (ERP) called Moodle. We are now hosting a private cloud for them, which about 2.5 million students and faculty are using around the world. This is an example where we are leveraging the core fundamental technologies that would apply in other sector, but we are using an application stack that is relevant for higher education and we created the cloud service around that.

Is it true that small and medium businesses are large users of cloud computing?

What is true is that smaller businesses have the least budget or capability for running a lot of physical hardware themselves. A lot of small businesses are growing rapidly, so they do not necessarily have a legacy infrastructure. Therefore, we see fast adoption rate of the SaaS model. They want all their software delivered as a service, they do not have to run it on IT infrastructure.

Where does India stand in the adoption of cloud, when compared globally?

Right at the forefront. India is one of the fastest growing technology sectors, which has some of the most technology savvy customers we have anywhere in the world. So they are pushing the envelope.

I would say that Indian companies are right at the leading edge.