Adam Gifford: Cloud has silver lining for NZ

Mark Loveys. Photo / Dean Purcell

I've been writing a lot about clouds in recent months, and each time think, "Am I thrashing this?"

Then I meet up with Mark Loveys, and realise there is still much to be said about what is becoming a huge shift in the way people work and interact with the digital environment.

Loveys is the guy who wrote an internal accounting system for personal computer assembler PC Direct which became exo-net.

Early in the long saga that led to exo-net being part of the MYOB stable, Loveys struck off on his own with Enprise, which installed exo-net into other mid-sized businesses.

Spotting that many of his customers bought exo-net because of the nifty job costing module Enprise had written for it, Loveys wrote a similar module for the Business One product German software giant SAP developed for small and medium organisations.

That took off, giving Enprise an international reach which attracted the attention of TMT Ventures.

In 2006 TMT invested $2 million in Enprise and merged it with another firm in its portfolio which was struggling for traction.

Then almost 10 years old, EMS Cortex had developed software which allowed application hosting companies to provision their customers: add new users, manage passwords and consents, add new applications and modules through a single browser interface.

That makes Loveys well placed to track the growth of cloud computing.

He's just been on a multi-city trip through North America talking to partners, customers and competitors.

"We're struggling to keep up with demand to provide infrastructure to cloud providers. We're a hands-on company, so we bring on about five customers a month," Loveys says.

In the main that's done over the internet from EMS-Cortex's Avondale headquarters.

The company is looking for implementation partners to cope with the scale of growth it is contemplating.

Lovey's trip included finalising a strategic partnership agreement with implement.com, a Seattle-based systems integrator that works closely with Microsoft to build cloud infrastructure for hosted service providers and telecommunications companies.

The implement.com deal comes hard on the heels of global IT services company Unisys Corporation including the Cortex control panel in its new Unified Communication as a service cloud offering.

Unisys said a key differentiator for Cortex is its ability to allow end customers to perform day-to-day administration themselves, as well as the breadth of applications it supported, including key Microsoft applications like Outlook, SharePoint and Office, as well as Blackberry and Citrix.

"There's a huge wave coming," says Loveys.

Wearing another hat, as a member of an SAP Business One partner council, Loveys says whereas a year ago North American buyers of software wanted their servers on site, resellers now say a large number of customers specify a hosted solution.

"A year ago I used to feel I was a bit outspoken because I was pushing hosting and cloud. They all looked at me like I was smoking dope. But something has happened. What I was talking about for a couple of years is real now."

He says New Zealand has been ahead on hosted environments, and companies here are well placed to compete in servicing the market.

"I asked customers and partners if it would be better for EMS-Cortex to have someone on the ground in the US, and the answer came back that they were fine being serviced from New Zealand."

Loveys says one of the developments opening cloud computing to the applications provider is advances in virtualisation through products such as Microsoft's new Hyper-V.

The notion that each application needs its own server in the office is gone, and multiple applications can now sit on virtual servers.

That's where Loveys the provisioning and infrastructure software provider has got Loveys the application software provider excited.

It means hosting companies/cloud providers can provision virtual servers for applications which are not multi-tenantable - that is, which are not designed to have multiple customers sharing the software engines.

That levels the field between a product like exo-net, which is designed to be set up for a single firm, and an online accounting software package like Xero, which is designed to have multiple customers using the same engine.

"What puzzles me with multi-tenanted software is what do you do with a new version," says Loveys.

Vendors of such software will tout the fact that all users get upgrades automatically, but Loveys believes in the real world of complex ERP systems with multiple interconnected parts, there are advantages in having control of the server.

"With virtual machines, they can be multi-tenanted but each tenant has their own environment. So ERP companies can update as and when the customer needs it."

EMS-Cortex sells on a per user per month basis, so as its customers bring more users into their clouds, revenue will rain down.

adamgifford5@gmail.com