Essar unleashes cloud power with Windows Azure

New Delhi, April 30 (IANS) Aiming to cut costs by nearly 65 percent while improving scalability, multinational conglomerate Essar Group has rolled out Windows Azure, Microsoft's cloud services platform, offering web-based applications with high performance and scalability.

"With its enterprise customers in mind, the company sought to enhance its offerings with a cloud version of some of its applications. 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," an Essar statement said.

Because it is hosted in Microsoft data centres, Windows Azure is able to provide developers with on-demand computing and storage, as well as the ability to scale and manage Web applications, the statement said.

The delivery of its applications through Windows Azure will enable the company to increase profitability and reduce costs by as much as 65 percent, the statement said, adding that 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 Essar Group Chief Technology Officer Jayantha Prabhu.

"A scalable, well-defined platform gives us much fewer problems to solve and more time to focus on the overall experience of the application," he added.

"In addition to cutting costs, Windows Azure has given Essar the flexibility to scale compute and storage resources up and down as needed," Prabhu said, adding: "In fact, we can maintain the high level of scalability needed at a lower total cost of ownership compared with an on-premises solution."

Essar is a leader in various business sectors, including steel, energy, power, communications, shipping ports, logistics and construction, and with operations in more than 25 countries across five continents and revenues at $17 billion.