Firm with roots in Cebu delivers top-class cloud solution

FOR a country like the Philippines, which has high power cost, the cloud computing solution developed by a company that was incubated in Cebu is a cost-efficient solution.

“It’s the most power-efficient cloud platform. That’s important because in the Philippines we have among the highest costs of power,” Morphlabs co-founder Winston Damarillo said during an interview last Friday.

“It’s best in class, better than anybody else by 1/2,” he said.

The private cloud solution, mCloud Helix, is now available worldwide through a partnership with Dell, the world’s third largest PC seller according to Gartner. It’s being used by Media Temple, one of the world’s top web hosting companies.

Damarillo said mCloud Helix is a “very green, very energy-efficient” platform that can be run with 10 watts per virtual machine (VM). The solution is solid-state drive (SSD) based.

Media Temple has called Morphlabs “true pioneers in cloud computing and open source software who have delivered innovative web services,” Morphlabs said in an earlier press statement.

Damarillo was in Cebu last Friday to talk to local start-ups.

“I want to show them this is what we can do, use it and then compare it to everything you find and realize that you can do something like this on your own,” the serial entrepreneur said during the interview in Tech Bar at the IT Park.

The solution has come full circle, Damarillo said. The product was developed here in the country, marketed abroad and now made available to local entrepreneurs who will get two servers each.

Damarillo said the Morph concept was developed in Cebu.

“Gi-incubate nato diri for two years then after that, we moved it to LA… you know it’s easier to sell it when you’re in the United States. Now that it’s popular and deployed, we’re bringing the technology back to Asia. In Singapore Starthub is using it. In the Philippines, Globe is using it. Media Temple is using it,” he said.

Damarillo said Morph is doing well and the market is responding well to the product. He said people are moving to the cloud because “it makes sense.”

“First of all ROI is easy. We discovered that there are three main applications for the cloud now: one is server consolidation, the other is for development and testing and the third is web-delivered services,” he said.

For server consolidation, he said it’s easy to see how it makes sense: “legacy is you have 10 servers with each at 400 watts. When you have multiple servers, you need to have a sys admin to manage it. Server consolidation takes 10 servers down to one and so when that happens, not only is your power lower, you don’t need as much space anymore,” he said.

Damarillo said server consolidation will drive cloud adoption in the Philippines and will be its top application.

In software development, he said cloud solutions can help improve productivity.

In web services, he cited health care as “working really well” with private cloud products like mCloud.

“Public cloud is not secured. Hosted private, which is Helix, is secured,” he said.

He cited as example the Medcurial service offered by Exist, another of Damarillo’s companies.

Medcurial allows doctors to manage their clinics and practices online and through mobile devices like iPads.

Apart from portability and access, doctors are now able to use the device’s other capabilities like taking photos.

“So instead of describing the wound, they’ll just take a picture. They can also just dictate instead of write things because they can record their voice,” he said.

The system helps doctors because it makes efficient use of their time, he said. The automation also helps eliminate human error and the whole system assists in the accurate recording of patient data.