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Recently one of my friends back in India highlighted the benefits of Cloud Computing to me in a very real way. You may have seen the adverts for HP’s ePrint, a Cloud Computing service which allows the user to print documents regardless of their geographic location. My response to this was to question why I would prefer to print a document in India when I was sitting in the UK? In hindsight I shouldn’t have asked this question as it appeared very naïve, but it opened the doors to an intriguing conversation giving me a great deal of insight into a success story within the growing world of Cloud Computing.

So, what is ePrint? Well according to HP it offers:

1. Printing from any email device to a printer through HP’s print platform
2. Storage of documents in a secure location within the cloud, which can be printed when required
3. Interaction with Google Cloud Print (to enable printing from Google Documents)

Coming back to how this service benefitted my friend, he is the owner of a chain of Examination Centres in India. To give some background, when candidates are scheduled to take exams (such as GMAT, GRE, etc.) they need to visit an examination centre to write them. Not all exams are based on computer platforms; some are paper based. And, not to forget that some exams are seasonal i.e. they only happen at a particular time of the year.

Before using Cloud Computing, a delivery of question papers had to be arranged to the examination centre around the time of the exam. Clearly this process involved a few costs – transportation costs, arranging security of the vehicle carrying the papers and so on. But now, with ePrint, HP has created an opportunity for Universities to upload (or ‘push’) question papers into the cloud before the exam. On the day of the exam, every examination centre in India prints by pulling this paper from the cloud or alternatively, a centralised system manages the print to all registered printers across all examination centres. As with most Cloud vendors, I believe HP also charges on a usage basis – so while there is a cost involved, it is less than the previous delivery model. The new process is also much simpler and involves fewer parties when compared to the number of parties involved in the packaging of papers, transportation and final delivery.

I personally think it is fantastic that such a simple function such as printing a document can be taken to the “cloud” and benefit enterprises like the one described above.

Assuming HP’s main line of business is print, and we make an analogy with the SAP ecosystem, the opportunities are immense. SAP Consultants deal with all sizes of enterprises across the world and similar to the print business, we cater to most of the verticals. I am sure that in time to come all of us will be looking at more and more off-the-shelf SAP Cloud Services which can provide immense benefits to our clients.