It seems financial and business considerations and not purely technological aspects are fuelling the rise of cloud computing in Malta.
Pierre Mallia, managing director of local company iMovo Limited, explained to i-Tech how the benefits of cloud computing, in terms of savings on ICT operations, are attracting much attention now.
“Cloud computing is coming to Malta with tangible moves from companies and it is not just a buzz. The economic situation is making Maltese companies think about less capital expenditure and more about operational expenditure. It is really driving interest into cloud computing. There is a lot of potential for Maltese companies.”
Cloud computing allows computing resources such as processing power, storage, applications and services to be based on a server somewhere on internet or ‘the cloud’ rather than installed on the computer in front of users.
“Most of our contacts are with business people and not IT people. The cloud brings less management of IT. An example is HP, which is moving towards service-base. It will hit Malta eventually,” added Mr Mallia.
iMovo, a customer relationship management (CRM) and business intelligence (BI) company has just announced a new partnership with Zoho.com, a market leader in the cloud computing arena.
Zoho.com is a division of Zoho Corporation, a privately-held and profitable company. Zoho.com offers a comprehensive suite of award-winning, online, business, productivity and collaboration applications. Customers use these applications to run their business processes, manage their information and be more productive while at the office or on the go, without having to worry about expensive or outdated hardware or software.
“We were looking around for something that fits the characteristics of the Maltese market. Zoho.com are pretty much the right size for our market – not a very large company, yet they have enough functionality to have companies operational, serving both big companies and SMEs. We wanted something cloud-based,” explained Mr Mallia.
To date it has launched 26 online applications – from CRM to mail, office suite, project management, invoicing, web conferencing and more. It has received numerous awards, including an InfoWorld 2009 ‘Product of the Year’ award, a 2008 PC World ‘25 Most Innovative Products Award’ and a 2007 TechCrunch ‘Best Enterprise Start-up’.
Although Zoho may be relatively new to the Maltese market, it counts major brands among its customers including Time Magazine, Business Week and The Economist as well as thousands of small and medium businesses.