By Business Beat
When Microsoft held its annual Worldwide Partner Conference, six Kenyan firms were among those awarded for exemplary work.
Among them was M2M Systems, which received the small and mid-market cloud solutions award for getting firms to take up cloud computing, a technology concept that has picked up steam in the last few years. In its simplest terms, cloud computing is the storing and accessing of all sorts of data over the Internet, rather than on a computer hard drive.
While the July awards recognised Microsoft partners’ “ability to recommend solutions to meet current and future needs of businesses all over the world”, M2M admits it has not been an easy journey selling a service that is still relatively new in the market.
Co-managers Clare Mungai and Rasto Kiplangat set up M2M to offer consultancy on cloud services and resell Microsoft products. Ms Mungai says that to get their company off the ground, Microsoft first subjected it to rigorous vetting before granting it the licence to resell.
This, she said, was meant to ensure the services M2M offers meet Microsoft standards. Before starting the company in 2014, Mr Kiplangat and Mungai were employees of Microsoft. They, however, had always harboured a desire to go into business, so they decided to branch out together. M2M started out providing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), which helps organisations collect, store, manage and interpret data from its business activities.
It then moved into cloud computing because of its potential. The two say despite the positive reception the concept is receiving globally, it has yet to be an easy sell. Still, their plan is to move SMEs onto the cloud one at a time. “I remember when we started, at one point we could not supply to a client because we did not have enough money to pay for a release of licences.
We approached a bank, but it refused to advance us a loan because it could not see our credit worthiness,” said Kiplangat. M2M wanted to borrow Sh1 million – the bank was ready to advance just Sh60,000, which would not help much. Kiplangat and Mungai decided to talk to Microsoft to give them the licences and allow them a month to pay for them. M2M has made great strides since these early days as more companies see the benefits of cloud computing.
To set up physical servers to capture data and store programmes, a company needs a lot of space and infrastructure that costs a lot of money. Mungai says cloud services are a cheaper option because they eliminate the costs involved in finding space for physical servers, procuring them, powering them and maintaining them.
Everything is stored on servers accessed over the Internet, with the backbone support for this being what consumers pay for. “On average, physical servers have to be replaced every five years, a cost anybody who goes for cloud solutions does not need to think about,” added Kiplangat.
But while the phrase ‘cloud computing’ is everywhere these days, it is not something many people understand. And in organisations with decision makers who are not very tech savvy, it can be a difficult idea to sell.
Kiplangat recalls pitching to a CEO who could not understand how company information could be stored outside the office, fearing it would expose business secrets. But, as Mungai explains, with cloud computing, all that is missing is just physical servers – all other factors, including security and accessibility, remain constant or are even better.
“Ten years from now, servers in the office will be unheard of because everyone will be going for the cloud due to its many merits.” On security, Kiplangat added that company servers are prone to cyber attacks but not when on the cloud.
Most major providers of the service, he said, have the capacity and resources to prevent such attacks. Cloud computing is also a good option for companies do not make full use of their servers, with only a small percentage in use. “This is another thing that the cloud solves, because with it, a firm can downscale to only what it needs to use, or easily upscale when capacity increases.”
Microsoft offers various payment options, including charging firms for the number of hours their servers are in use, saving businesses money as servers can be shut down when they are not needed.