Basis Bay: Revolutionizing The IT Landscape With Green IT And Specialized Cloud Offerings

Praba Thiagarajah, CEO

Technology has been constantly shaping the business landscape. However, the recent gush of technological advancements in corporate IT—each obsolescing the previous one in a short span of time—has made it imperative for businesses to seek protection for their valuable investments. Achieving operational efficiency with existing infrastructure and maintaining sustainability has become the other major concerns. Organizations with substantial IT deployments, today, show considerable interest in recycling and optimizing their IT infrastructure. ‘Green IT’, as it is called in the business circles, has become a norm to sustain this rapid change. A pioneer in ‘Green IT’, Basis Bay has been offering sustainability solutions to balance social, economic and environmental costs. Praba Thiagarajah, CEO, Basis Bay, expounds, “Basis Bay defines 'Green IT' as the efficient use of IT resources with sustainability in mind.”

Basis Bay's core focus is on providing Green IT solutions that covers IaaS/Private Cloud-based solutions, enterprise infrastructure planning, Green IT consultancy, and Green Data Centres.

Basis Bay recently celebrated its 20th year anniversary having initially established itself in South East Asia in 1996. Being a successful provider of Sustainable Information Technology (IT) Infrastructure and Managed Data Centre Services across 22 countries, the company has served close to 300 clients so far. It operates in a niche segment across multinational companies with a key specialization in the financial services industry which make up close to 85 percent of its current client base. Apart from large American and European companies, many financial institutes in the world have been using the company’s managed data centre services for almost 20 years, which in itself is the greatest USP for Basis Bay. Many ‘sustainability awards’, including the prestigious Dutch Business Council Sustainability and Enterprise ASIA Green Leadership awards, have been bestowed to Basis Bay. In addition, a long list of client testimonials vindicates the commendable work it has done that went into client’s success.

Sustainable Cloud for Productivity Improvements

Given the complex and demanding nature of knowledge required to sustain, today, very few organizations manage their own data centres. An exception in today’s competitive landscape is Basis Bay that owns as well as manages its data centres. The Basis Bay’s Sustainable Cloud is the first of its kind in the market. It is a comprehensive multiplatform private cloud that showcases the company’s specialization in the complex legacy systems found only in large financial companies. It permits companies to get on to private cloud space in well-planned stages and in a sustainable manner. It also provides solutions for hybrid environments, vendor lock-in and sustainable issues. The Basis Bay’s Sustainable Cloud offers multiple tiers of compute, storage, data protection as well as management. It is a full-layer, self manageable private and hybrid cloud that can be customized depending on the customer needs.

Using this, the conglomerates that have legacy, proprietary and UNIX based systems can roll out strategic Business Applications more seamlessly than ever before. These companies stand to benefit on technical and economic terms, addressing their environmental concerns and lowering total cost of ownership.

The financial sector, which constitutes nearly 85 percent of Basis Bay’s clientele, uses applications that are heavily reliant on IT. For them, Basis Bay uses its own or partner’s data centres to manage the load. They are highly secure as well. Using The Basis Bay Sustainable Cloud, organizations can have access to their vital data from any location in the globe. The Basis Bay’s Sustainable Cloud offers advanced security network end-points, supporting SSL, VPN and IPSec access. It even manages Software and hardware encryption.

Today, leading banks and financial institutes rely on Basis Bay in managing adverse situations when production server or banking services go down. “Our in-house design and build capabilities can also be tapped by companies who are looking to build or retrofit their data centre with green philosophy and want to optimize on energy usage,” explains Praba Thiagarajah.

WE OWN AND MANAGE MOST OF OUR DATA CENTERS. THEY ARE PREMIUM DATA CENTERS THAT STAND UP TO THE BEST OF STANDARDS AROUND THE WORLD

Cornerstones in Building Data Centre Framework

Green IT is not about ‘Greening’ the IT infrastructure for the sake of it. It means streamlining the processes for effective utilization of IT resources. Basis Bay believes in upgrading or extending the system rather than investing in every new product that comes in to the market. The company has a unique procurement strategy. Its ‘Smart Procurement’ process allows CIOs to acquire preowned IT equipment, recycle or simply upgrade existing infrastructure. It focuses on providing both pre-owned as well as new hardware, server, and storage devices. Basis Bay even offers large computers such as Mainframes to be shipped from anywhere in the world to any part of the world. It has been a partner for the MNCs.

Basis Bay’s Green IT journey pivots on its Technology Lifecycle Management processes. In the way of managing product life cycle for IT equipment, the company often takes on the drudging work of maintaining and supporting legacy IT equipment that proprietary vendors only grudgingly support that too at an exorbitant cost. Basis Bay’s support team remains agnostic to the fact whether the equipment supplied is new or otherwise and works arduously to extend the product life cycle to best possible means.

Realizing that clients are being exploited by rapacious vendors to increase their profit margins, Basis Bay's Technology Lifecycle Management is about optimizing technology assets to their true product life cycle. This is truly cost-effective and is in line with Basis Bay’s policy of protecting the client from exploitation. It protects the environment as there is minimal disposal of outdated technology. In today’s competitive environment, businesses want to protect their investments in IT as well as demand for ROI. To that end, Basis Bay offers flawless integration between old legacy systems and new cloud based architecture. It supports an array of IBM proprietary systems, UNIX, Linux, Windows, and host of other platforms.

Praba Thiagarajah elucidates, “Optimization should not be confused with maximization, a common misconception in the IT services industry.” Basis Bay’s objective is therefore not to maximize anything since maximization usually results in burn-outs and wastages. Optimization, on the other hand, results in long-term sustainability and it has allowed Basis Bay to deploy different technologies and processes in the best possible way to the client’s benefit.

Founded in 1996, Basis Bay has come a long way. Going by recent shifts in technology, it has built and pioneered data centres for various needs, following the same green IT philosophy it believes in. Green Data Centre also incorporate latest power optimization technologies such as PUE and tries to balance it with cost. Basis Bay designed Data Centres power usage as a function of actual IT usage and dynamic compute load. In fact, it is the first company in Asia to build a Green Data Centre in 2009. “Our journey of building Green IT Infrastructure and managing lifecycle of IT equipment while undertaking Server and Data Center consolidation is indeed unique. We continue to develop, consult and keep abreast with other Green IT best practices,” states Praba Thiagarajah.

Basis Bay, based across APAC ensures that an application deployed in a data centre is used to its optimum capacity. Many CIOs are unable to take an efficient stock of software that sits in their data centres due to the inefficient knowledge about the usability of their application. Basis Bay’s Green IT goes beyond the immediate needs of its clients. In fact, the company takes care of end-to-end management of servers, devices, and even the refresh policies for years together.

Consistent Growth with a Holistic Approach

Basis Bay has been a straight out success story since its inception. Mostly due to its passionate and technological acumen expertise, the company has been able to stand out in the crowd. Regular incentives and job satisfaction for the employees have driven the growth engine of the company so far. Moreover, the company’s holistic approach to Green IT makes The Basis Bay story sustainable and impactful.

Data centres built by Basis Bay are witnessing heightened demand from customers. Praba Thiagarajah states, “There is a tremendous push from end users, to focus solely on the line of business we operate in.” However, the company has decided not to dive into volume share and lose quality, but rather continue to focus on premium markets and drive up the quality deliverables. Though it provides comprehensive technical support in several countries, the focus, however, remains to managing private cloud on high end systems and offering its data centres to host these high-end systems in countries across the APAC region.

Sticking to its philosophies of Awareness, Initiatives & Management (AIM), Basis Bay ensures all its initiatives are sustainable in the long run and are inline with its core values of Integrity, Sustainability and Leadership. AIM is about having a complete framework to guide, streamline and monitor sustainability efforts. By continuously delivering on promises, driven by passion, and working towards a common goal, Basis Bay continues to remain committed to achieve excellence. Praba Thiagarajah concludes, “Our vision is to be a recognized global, premium, and sustainable organization in Green IT initiatives.”