Cloud with a silicon lining
While most of the mid-Hudson region was gearing up for the biggest storm of the season so far, more than a dozen business owners and county officials attended a seminar on decidedly highfalutin technology at the Orange County Business Accelerator Feb. 24 at its International Park location in New Windsor.
Sal Javed, senior partner of Cloud 9 Technology, and Peter Gregory, the OCBA”™s enterprise development director and a former IBMer, led the discussion on technology”™s answer to maintaining large mainframes in companies ”“ “cloud computing.”
Though not literally in the sky, cloud computing is a lofty technology utilized by Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Yahoo and other industry giants to make its hardware accessible through the Internet, eliminating the need to maintain mainframe systems on site.
“These companies have five or six locations across the United States,” said Javed ”“ some of them the size of five or six football fields, added Gregory. “If one should go down because of a power outage or natural catastrophe, business can continue operating because the information is backed up in the other locations. There is no ”˜down”™ time with a virtual mainframe.”
Javed said the cloud computing seminar at the accelerator was the first he plans to put together with Gregory, and his Manhattan-based company is considering applying for space in the incubator. “The opportunity in the Hudson Valley is incredible for this technology,” Javed said.
Gregory agrees. “Hospitals and other large businesses can benefit by having their ”˜mainframe”™ piped into their offices through their Internet browser, rather than maintaining a server and the cost of a large IT staff to manage it. The application works for small companies as well as large institutions, and it can help the small and mid-sized business owner free up money it is spending maintaining its servers via ”˜cloud computing”™ technology, perhaps putting those funds now used to maintain servers into hiring in other departments where help is needed.”
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One plus Gregory and Javed stressed was the ability to “keep business going because there is no hardware for the company to maintain. By going on to your browser, you have access to your server; if you have a problem, you don”™t have to wait till your server is ”˜back up and running”™ ”“ it will always be available, 24/7, through the use of cloud technology,” said Javed.
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While the technology may seem daunting to those used to seeing their servers physically present in the workplace, Gregory pointed to the giants in the industry currently relying on “cloud computing technology” to conduct business without interruption. “Your laptop literally becomes your virtual server,” said Gregory, “and it is a technology that, while new to many, has been successfully used and saved millions for the companies that utilize it.”
Michael DiTullo, executive director of the OCBA, reported another company had come on board with the accelerator, CymoGen DX, a privately held company based in California.
“It will be locating its headquarters in the OCBA,” said DiTullo, where it will be doing market research with a unique genetic diagnostic tool for early stage cancer detection.
“CymoGen DX will have between six and 10 employees working in the accelerator,” said DiTullo. “Once it ”˜graduates,”™ the company expects to go into at least 5,000 square feet of space here in Orange County and employ at least 20 people.
“These are the kinds of business the Accelerator is looking for,” he said. “It has a product; it is finalizing its market research and getting ready to sell its new innovation to the health care industry.
“CymoGen DX”™s research comes out of California, its financing from the Boston area and it”™s bringing an opportunity to assist in life sciences here in the Hudson Valley that will create high-tech, high-paying jobs for our region,” said DiTullo.
DiTullo said the OCBA is negotiating with an alternative energy company and hopes to complete the negotiations within the next few weeks. “These are the kinds of business we need to bring into the area, and the accelerator”™s location, adjacent to Stewart Airport and in the center of the mid-Hudson create a ”˜perfect storm”™ for incubating these high-tech businesses.”