How private clouds save money and protect the environment

Five years ago, after many acquisitions, the IT environment in Ricoh was out of control and running 26 ERP instances was just one of the problems. "We have reached a point in the journey," said Ian Winham, Ricoh's European chief information officer and Chief financial officer. Here we have to address three issues: how to improve internal efficiency, how to make our customers more efficient, and how to reduce our IT capabilities to the detriment of the environment. We work with our clients to improve their infrastructure. We have to start doing this for ourselves. ”

Standardization is necessary in the face of pan-European and global demand for its print, file management and IT service customers.

Figuring out how to manage a client effectively is a lot of confusion and difficulty, Winham said. The IT department starts with the rationalization of applications, abandons everything and starts from scratch, with the goal not only of standardizing the system, but of standardizing the process, which eventually standardizes a total of 122 processes. Then, in 2011, they began to examine their messy IT infrastructure in the same way.

In collaboration with India's IT service provider Infosys, Ricoh has developed a private cloud of two T3 Super centers to configure SaaS (software as a service) and IaaS (infrastructure as a service).

The public cloud is not competent

Public clouds are not suitable for mission-critical applications. "We need to give our customers the confidence to know where they are and when the data is being delivered," Winham explains. ”

35 companies operating in Ricoh Europe are deploying private clouds. More than 50% of Ricoh customers and all their internal applications are currently running on this private cloud. "We are now in the second phase, cleaning up the traditional bits and pieces that are still wandering around," Winham said. We still have small data centers and it vaults that need to be undone. ”

The benefits of internal clouds have been obvious. The company is merging 9 data centers into 2 and cutting IT infrastructure costs by 30% by reducing 1000 servers. The move also reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 16800 tonnes (equivalent to 3,350 cars on the road), helping the company achieve its goal of reducing energy consumption by 87.5% in 2050.

But Winham now sees the cloud as an income factor in the Ricoh service sector. One of the first cloud applications developed within Ricoh is the electronic invoice system. This system is in line with the European Commission's most recently promoted management invoice system throughout the EU. "That application has elevated the agenda of infrastructure projects and has real value for ourselves and our customers," Winham said. ”

This is a new method that Winham brings to Ricoh. "If we build something for ourselves, we must have a value chain that serves us internally and externally," says Winham. It's embarrassing when you sell a solution that you don't use. This will make you look stupid. ”

"Through the European regulatory environment, it has been the hardest part of cloud migration," Winham said. Each country has different interpretations of EU data protection directives. So, when you know what the customer is up to, you have to figure out what criteria to use. ”

Legislation on the location of financial data is even more complex. Ricoh must obtain the approval of the Luxembourg Government before it closes its data centre in Luxembourg. "I never want to set up a data center in Luxembourg," Winham said. These nuances are really painful things. It has nothing to do with the actual technology. ”

Of course, after figuring out how to get through the complex terrain, Winham also sees a new starting point-helping clients build private clouds in Europe. He said, "You have to eat what you sell." We have developed a lot of experience products. One of the things we expect to do is to figure out where the synergy between Ricoh, Infosys and other partners is. Anyone can provide the infrastructure or secure the infrastructure, but the process of how to do it in an enterprise is the key. (Compiled/Populus euphratica)

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)