The Symbian Foundation is saving huge amounts of money, and managing an international workforce, by using cloud based services for everything they can.
The Symbian Foundation was spun out when Nokia bought Symbian back in 2008, charged with looking after the open source code and ecosystem that had developed. With no shareholders, the "not for profit" organisation focuses on keeping the developer community going – letting others participate in developing the next generation of smartphones. With 400 million handsets shipped by companies including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and others, Symbian has a bigger share of the smartphone market than iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile and Blackberry combined, claims head of IT, Ian McDonald.
“We have no capacity worries – we can add the infrastructure we need without adding any serious cost. We have staff all over the world – they can work from Australia just as effectively as from London.” Ian McDonald, Head of IT, Symbian Foundation |
And with no shareholders, and no profits rolling in, there's a requirement to keep costs low. That's where the cloud comes in: McDonald's aim is to have no servers on site at all.
“This way, we have no capacity worries – we can add the infrastructure we need without adding any serious cost. We have staff all over the world – they can work from Australia just as effectively as from London. And we work extensively on trains, in cafes, in airports…”
McDonald's view of the cloud is characterised by utility pricing, instant and almost infinite scalability, and accessibility from any device, anywhere.
Spread across several countries, with offices in six, the company has to share files and manage an email system with very little spare cash or time to put into support. For that reason, it uses Google Apps for its email, and JungleDisk for file storage. Mediawiki, running on Amazon Web Services – “cloud based servers!” – is used for documentation, Basecamp for project management, and Twitter for collaboration.
So just how much is the organisation saving with all this cloud use? Is it worth it?
Absolutely, says McDonald. JungleDisk, for example, charges US$2 per user, plus storage costs, per month, which works out at about $5000 a year for the whole team. “I think to install our own equipment, we'd be looking at about £50,000 up front, and then maybe £10,000 a year to run it,” McDonald says. Email server costs are similar, he says.
Without the cloud, Symbian Foundation would have needed up to $2 million in additional start up costs. “I think we save about 90 percent on start up costs, and maybe 75 percent ongoing,” he says.
McDonald has found its best to let staff decide the way forward as they use the technology – they'll find what they prefer. “We do make some decisions – for example, we do all use Gmail. But there are lots of different email clients being used to access it. For the admin staff we do decide what they should be using – they're not so techie and they don't really want to „explore so we just tell them what we'd like them to use,” he says.
Generally, he says, the company tends to stick with the bigger players with an established reputation. If he does use a smaller, lesser known supplier, the main point is the ability to “get the data back out,” he says.
Tips for anyone looking to move to cloud?
Symbian Foundation has not needed to switch to the cloud, having used it from the start, but McDonald does have some advice. The first piece of which is – don't assume cloud is always the answer.
“What do you want to achieve? Are there real benefits in flexibility? There's no use trying to run your own Microsoft Server in the cloud – but if you use the cloud services that are on offer, you can save lots as you add and remove users.
It's also important to think about the service levels you're able to accept. Anyone using Google mail will be aware that getting assistance from Google isn't easy. But there are ways around that – Symbian Foundation pays Ancoris to act as an intermediary. “Google just isn't geared up for direct customer service – it's just a big black hole. But if you use a service partner like Ancoris they have a relationship with Google and they can help with recovering any deleted accounts, that sort of thing,” he says.
Virtualisation is a good first step to getting your head around using cloud based services, McDonald says.
“And if you find you can't virtualise your services, you won't get them working on the cloud!”
It's important to be aware, to, that what a lot of vendors want to sell you isn't really cloud, he says. "Private clouds, anything that involves buying hardware, or takes a while to set up, isn't really cloud, he says. McDonald's view of the cloud is characterised by utility pricing, instant and almost infinite scalability, and accessibility from any device, anywhere.
“All of which is great for a start up – you don't need to invest a fortune just to set up, and you can grow rapidly – or cut back, if it comes to it. And it brings communities together, gets people partnering and developing innovative technologies. Which has to be good,” he says.
Excerpts from case study written by Gillian Law on behalf of Digital Systems Knowledge Transfer Network, part of the Technology Strategy Board. The Technology Strategy Board is an executive non-departmental public body (NDPB), established by the Government in 2007 and sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).
