Business Articles

NetApp: Is Your Data a Boon or Bane to Business?

Asia Cloud Forum  |  7 August 2012

By Khoo Boo Leong

Within weeks of the massive earthquake and tsunami devastating lives, homes and infrastructure across Japan in March 2011, Softbank Telecom had not only enabled its displaced workers, customers as well as other organizations to resume operations but also fulfilled government energy requirements.

"To keep their businesses running, they managed to deploy 1,000 desktops in a day, [something] they used to do in a week - through NetApp's agile data infrastructure. So, in a couple of weeks, they deployed 14,000 desktops," said Loh Ching Soo, country manager of NetApp Singapore. "They were also able to provision their internal cloud services within days to their customers and 37 million subscribers."

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Defending Data with a Secure Cloud Strategy

Computerworld Singapore  |  3 May 2012

By Loh Ching Soo

In a recent post in Forrester's Vendor Strategy Blog, Michael Barnes, principal analyst for Vendor Strategy Professionals, wrote that more than 50% of organizations surveyed in Asia Pacific excluding Japan are either currently using or actively planning cloud initiatives.

Despite this, the same report found that as many as 31% of organizations in Asia Pacific do not currently have a formal cloud or IT strategy in place. This is a significant finding, as the success of any cloud implementation does indeed rest on a solid transformation strategy. Making the move to the cloud can be daunting as it compels CIOs to look at multiple issues - such as storage and server consolidation, automation and human resources - at the same time.

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Top 3 Considerations for Enterprises on a Budget

Enterprise Innovation  |  20 March 2012

By Loh Ching Soo

Gartner’s Outlook of IT in 2012 indicated that global IT spending will reach about $ 285 billion this year, an increase of 6.4% from 2011. Gartner also forecasted that the top performing sectors in IT includes software for virtualization, collaboration, data management and security

Despite this healthy forecast, studies have shown that about 70% of IT budgets are spent on maintaining and from this budget -  an average of 55% is targeted at hardware upgrades or support. This is a bane in many IT departments. Times like these call for companies to leverage IT to innovate, seeking new ways to store, secure and analyze data in the most cost-efficient manner and acceptable timeframe.

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NetApp: 5 Steps to Choosing an Enterprise-class Cloud Service Provider

CIO Asia  |  2 March 2012

By F.Y. Teng

How do you go about selecting the Cloud service provider that’s just right for your business? Loh Ching Soo, Country Manager, NetApp Singapore offers up a five-step approach.

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Drive Efficiency and Data Control in 2012, says NetApp Singapore Head

MIS Asia  |  17 January 2012

By F.Y. Teng

In statement issued Tuesday (January 17), Country Manager, Singapore of information management company NetApp, Loh Ching Soo referenced a key prediction made by research firm Gartner and cited three areas that organisations need to manage right and well starting in 2012.

A recent Gartner report was quoted: “Through 2015, more than 25 percent of Fortune 500 organisations will fail to effectively exploit Big Data for competitive advantage.” The report detailed the various technical and management challenges specifically presented by Big Data that it says big organisations are not suitably prepared to meet.

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How to Deal with Big Data the Right Way

CRM Innovation  |  26 December 2011

By CRM Innovation Editors

Business analytics is increasingly becoming a strategic advantage for many companies across all sectors – from financial services, government and public services to fast moving consumer goods. Vendors have been, and are increasingly still, coming up with new solutions to help efficiently manage Big Data. With so many solutions available, how do you ascertain what works best for you?

Loh Ching Soo, Country Manager, NetApp Singapore, highlights how companies should start right with Big Data management.

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Conquering the New IT 

Networks Asia  |  13 September 2011

By Loh Ching Soo

From government agencies to multi-national enterprises and SMBs, cloud computing is topping the agenda in IT boardrooms. Since the internet boom, experts and observers agree that there has never been a greater phenomenon than the cloud. With CIOs realizing that this new IT delivery model can bring significant potential benefits, the agenda has moved from considering cloud adoption to planning when and how their cloud implementation should begin.

As eager as organizations are to leap into the cloud, many have yet to understand that cloud computing brings a new reality to the data center. Early adopters have realized that a successful cloud implementation should run on a unified architecture that can provide elastic scalability and support an always-on service delivery model. To achieve this, data and applications must be decoupled from hardware, so that resources can be provisioned dynamically, transparently and seamlessly across the cloud environment.

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Managing Social Media

Reduce risks and optimise opportunities in the social media space with appropriate policies

STJobs  |  14 July 2011

By Loh Ching Soo

According to Nielson’s Asia-Pacific Social Media Report released last year, 32 per cent of online users in the region access their social media accounts at work, making the workplace the most common access point. Enterprises are becoming increasingly aware of the power of social media, with companies tapping on social networks as a branding, marketing or recruiting platform.

The benefits of social media are clear. Social networks offer instant and frank opinions from netizens from all over the world. Enterprises use social networks as a way to reach potential customers while generating and owning conversations surrounding their brand.

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Virtualize but Don't Forget your Storage

SMB World Asia  |  31 May 2011

By Loh Ching Soo

According to analyst house Forrester, 91 percent of respondents to a recent survey are currently using virtual server technology, as compared with 78 percent last year, strongly signifying the maturing server virtualization market. Respondents in the same survey also revealed that storage remains a complicated aspect of virtual server deployments, with numerous technology and vendor choices to make.

CIOs generally agree that virtualization efforts need to cut across multiple technology areas for maximum business impact. Yet, the management of storage for the virtualized environment remains out of the grasp of many IT organizations, with many citing effective capacity management and cost control as the main challenges.

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A Smooth Flight into the Clouds

SMB World Asia  |  11 May 2011

By Loh Ching Soo

Analysts worldwide are predicting a rise in cloud adoption in the new decade, with SMBs accounting for the bulk of adoptions. Loh Ching Soo, Country Manager, NetApp, gives his take on the issues to look out for when moving into the cloud.

According to Springboard Research, cloud adoption has accelerated sharply across all countries in the Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ). The same report also revealed that small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are the most aggressive adopters, with 54 percent currently using or actively planning to adopt cloud-based solutions.

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NetApp IT Fitness Plan 

CIO Asia  |  5 May 2011

By Anushkar Mohinani

Loh Ching Soo, country manager of NetApp Singapore, provider of data management and storage solutions, shared his thoughts on data centre efficiency, overall IT efficiency and the company’s data centre fitness page.

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How to Save Storage Cost and Time

Enterprise Innovation  |  13 April 2011

By Enterprise Innovation Editors

In the next few years, CIOs will face an inevitable predicament: the amount of data they will process will balloon to cosmic proportions but the storage systems they have will not be prepared for it. Worse, storage costs won’t see any sign of going down, adding the cost variable to the equation.

How then, can CIOs maintain the sweet spot between data demands and storage capacity growth? Loh Ching Soo, Singapore Country Manager for NetApp, shares his thoughts.

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Sharing of IT Resources to Become More Common

The Business Times  |  23 February 2011

Panelists:

Png Kim Meng, Datacraft Singapore MD

Uwe Schlager, T-Systems MD for Singapore and India

Loh Ching Soo, NetApp, Singapore Country Manager

Gidion Suranta Barus, GM of Strategy and Development, Lintasarta Indonesia

Simon Piff, IDC Asia Pacific Programme Director, Enterprise Infrastructure

Moderator:

Amit Roy Choudhury, Technology Editor, The Business Times

Cloud computing captured huge mindshare among CIOs in 2010. With most companies understanding the benefits of the cloud it is expected that this year shared IT infrastructure, an important foundation for cloud computing, will become the focus as CIOs look at building a cloud infrastructure which is both robust and cost effective. BizIT brought together a group of experts to discuss the various issues involved.

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NetApp Wins Storage Management Software Award at the Computerworld Readers Choice Awards

Computerworld  |  1 November 2010

By Computerworld Editors

In the highly competitive storage business, NetApp continues to excel through a combination of technology and product innovation, and a close relationship with its partners. Computerworld spoke to Loh Ching Soo, Singapore Country Manager for insight into NetApp’s win for the Storage Management Software Award for NetApp’s SnapManager.

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NetApp Bags Two Awards at the Computerworld Customer Care Awards

Computerworld  |  1 July 2010

By Computerworld Editors

"NetApp is proud to have secured the Computerworld Customer Care Awards in both the Storage Hardware and Storage Software categories", says Loh Ching Soo, Country Manager NetApp Singapore.

"We view the Customer Care Awards as a report card for vendors, drawn from Computerworld's vast readership pool. NetApp's excellent showing in the awards is a signal from our customers that our dedication to customer success is a key value-add appreciated by enterprises in Singapore"