Cloud Computing Storage Strategy in Corporate Mergers

November 9 8:18 AM CET

Today, I read an interesting article of the Latin American business magazine CIO. Guillermo Moya, regional manager of EMC Chile, Peru and Bolivia. The article talks about how cloud computing reduce the hassle of corporate mergers.

When companies merge there is lots of data that has to be analyzed and synchronized between the different companies and especially among the departments. Basically there are 3 parts that come into play on the technology side of a business merger:

• 1. A lot of times new technology has to be implemented. Cloud computing makes implementing new technologies a lot easier. Data can be shared and archived more easily.
• 2. There is the danger of losing control over business operations. Cloud storage and cloud computing can help maintaining good control over business operations and communication within the departments.
• 3. During the merger collaboration within different departments of the company could suffer. That’s why the CTO has to make sure everybody is on the same information level and that the new business strategy is clearly communicated.

“Cloud Storage makes mergers more effective”

Guillermo Moya argues that its cloud computing and online storage make mergers more effective since companies don’t have to worry about their storage needs because it increases automatically on-demand. However, if the company has rather proprietary processes the process of integrating cloud computing strategy into the recently merged company can be difficult. The CTO has to develop a thorough strategy to execute the merger as soon as possible on the technical side.

One example could be banks. Many times the banks first start the merging process to get operations going and to keep customers happy and later they start the integration process on the backend. That obviously causes problems on the technical side.

That’s why the most important part of a merger is to analyze the structure associated with the data to be merged. One has to think about the storage, archiving, and finally the online backup of files.

Cloud Computing and Storage

Cloud computing and cloud storage make it possible to store data redundantly and therefore provide an extra level of security. Also it includes backup deduplication to optimize storage space. Meaning that it only saves new data blocks without touching data that has not been touched for quite a while.

To generate a good strategy for cloud computing and storage it is essential to conduct a review of the company and analyze the exact storage needs a company has. In this analysis one can come to the conclusion that 50% of the storage space 6 months ago no one has even touched. Also, 30% of the online storage hasn’t been touched for 3 months either. So there is only 20% of the capacity that is being used.

The conclusion would be to save the data that is not being used frequently on cheaper hard disks while the 20% that is used often should be served by fast SSD hard disks. Cloud computer and storage could help to serve data faster and increase the overall corporate effectivity.