By The Irish Times

IRELAND HAS the potential to become a world leader in the emerging cloud computing industry, according to new research.

A report commissioned by Microsoft predicts that Ireland is poised to capture about 13 per cent of the world cloud computing market. By 2014, the cluster of firms involved in this industry in Ireland could generate €9.5 billion in sales, and employ about 8,600 people.

Cloud Power Event

Origina would like to invite you to Microsoft’s Cloud Power Event on January 25th to learn how Cloud solutions can help transform your IT and move your business forward.

An exciting speaker panel has been lined up, including Forrester’s Vice President and Principal Analyst, John Rymer and Microsoft’s EMEA Chief Technology Officer, Stephen McGibbon to share their insight on the future of cloud computing and what this could mean for your organisation. You will also hear live customers testimonies and best practices to help you make well-informed IT strategy decisions around the cloud.

The Cloud Power event will take place in the Havelock Area (level 4) at the Aviva Stadium, Lansdowne Road, Dublin 4. Registration starts from 8.30am with the keynote session at 9am and will close with lunch at 1pm.

News Release                            

Origina and Microsoft Join Forces to Simplify and Reduce Cost of Virtualisation in Irish Enterprise Market

• New alliance will offer virtualised, private cloud solutions to enterprise organisations
• Cost of virtualised solution from Origina and Microsoft is available at up to 40% less than rival offerings

Dublin, Ireland, 01 December 2010

Origina, a leading Irish IT services company, today announced a new partnership with Microsoft in the Irish market to offer lower cost and simplified virtualisation solutions to enterprise organisations.  Through the integration of Origina’s private cloud infrastructure and Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtual servers, the new solution will be available at significantly lower cost than comparable rival offerings - up to 40% in some cases. Origina and Microsoft see significant opportunities to grow revenues for server virtualisation in the Irish enterprise space.  This is being fuelled by organisations looking to consolidate their existing storage and server requirements, reduce costs, lower carbon emissions and improve disaster recovery times.

With Origina’s existing knowledge and footprint in the Irish enterprise market, Microsoft expects Hyper-V to gain further market share.  Hyper-V has already gained almost 5 points of share over the last year in Ireland. This joint initiative will see Origina and Microsoft target all enterprises in Ireland with more than 25 physical servers.

This announcement follows Origina’s recent investment of more than €1 million in a private cloud infrastructure which will enable customers to move quickly and seamlessly to a virtualised environment.  Origina will provide a fast and highly efficient consolidation service as businesses opt to virtualise their server environments.  Origina will also provide 24x7x365 proactive management of all new virtualised solutions from its managed service headquarters in Dublin.

Origina and Microsoft Ireland have already proven experience working together in the virtualisation space.  Origina recently captured an award at the 2010 European IT Excellence Awards, in recognition of a virtualised solution provided to Lakeland Dairies, one of Ireland’s leading dairy co-ops.  Utilising Microsoft Hyper-V, Origina consolidated 35 physical servers into 2 virtual servers, with 70% saving on power and cooling costs, and disaster recovery reduced from 5 days to less than 2 hours.

Martin Cullen, Director, Small, Medium Business & Partner Group, Microsoft Ireland, said, “We are delighted to have Origina onboard as a  virtualisation and cloud computing partner in Ireland due to its extensive experience and high quality customer base in the enterprise market.  They have designed and built a unique blueprint for end-to-end server virtualisation, which provides significant cost and service benefits for customers.  We believe our new joint offering will be a huge success and will provide a much needed alternative for Irish enterprises.”

Tomas O’Leary, Managing Director, Origina, said, “This is the latest exciting development for Origina as we look to keep investing in our infrastructure and solutions portfolio.  Microsoft is an obvious choice of partner as its virtualisation technology is more dynamic, intuitive and much better value than the alternatives.  We plan to shake up the Irish enterprise market by continuing to introduce simple, effective and low-cost solutions that will ultimately make life much easier for CIOs and IT directors.”

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By Jeff Vance

1. Top tech companies will make sure you start moving to cloud computing

With the launch of Windows 7 and Windows Live, Microsoft is betting heavily on the cloud. Cloud services and cloud storage form the background of Office synching, file sharing, collaboration, rich media and more.

Windows 7 means that even companies that have been sitting out the cloud transition are now a few short steps away from relying on the cloud each and every day. Most organizations, though, have already adopted the cloud, usually in a slow, application-by-application fashion.