Sri Lanka firms could gain from cloud computing: SAP

Apr 28, 2014 (LBO) - Companies in Sri Lanka, especially smaller ones, could avoid capital expenditure by using cloud computing to run anything from accounting to procurement and analyze social media, SAP, an information technology firm said. A company could separately purchase services such as accounting, human resources, marketing and sales and procurement, as needed, Michael Sathasivam business head for Sri Lanka at SAP said.

Such firms no longer have to invest in multiple servers or data centres, as they are hosted on a distributed global network or 'cloud'.

Could based services are sold on subscription basis and could be purchased per user and as a firm grew, additional capacity could be purchased in incremental steps.

Peter D'Almeida, chief executive of N-able, SAP's business partner in Sri Lanka, a five year old firm which says it has 12 million US dollars in annual revenues said it won customers by selling virtual servers for example instead of separate physical servers.

"Companies spend too much on IT," he said.

"Today, with the cloud you can buy what you want when you want it, like electricity. Turn on turn off. You are metered at the end of the month.

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"We are seeing it grow very fast in Sri Lanka. If the