Digital transformation starts with IT transformation which is now a critical agenda for the CEOs and IT leaders, who report that they need it for their businesses. The transformation, however, often requires a hybrid multi-cloud infrastructure environment that allows enterprises to deploy resources when they need them and where they need them.
S Sriram, Chief Strategy Officer at iValue InfoSolutions
Hybrid cloud architecture with flexibility to burst in and out of multiple public clouds has been a fundamental needs for most corporate and enterprise business in the recent times. At the enterprise segment, >90% of the instances continue to be on private cloud driven by multiple factors like regulation, compliance, rate of growth of business and transaction volumes and more importantly cost of ownership over 3/5/7 year period. Many of the start-ups leverage “as a service” public cloud model during their initial phase to optimise on cash flow along “scale as you go” need. Over the years, Customers have seen better RoI with Private cloud than with Public cloud as you need to pay perpetually in case of public cloud. Hence the initial euphoria with public cloud started waning and sanity on what and how much to be on private vs public cloud started to emerge. The capex model with depreciation and tax benefits offered lower TCO to matured business with no cash flow challenges with predictable and steady growths.
Also with predictable growth and transaction volumes of matured business, cost of ownership was found to be high with perpetual payment in public cloud with no need for flexible load balance need. Many of the fast-growing start-ups have migrated from public cloud to private cloud due to the same challenge over the years while they continue to leverage public cloud for their seasonal and peak loads. This helps them to optimise costs and delay their refresh cycles.
The current covid pandemic again saw more demand around public cloud investments as the business had challenges around visibility driven by uncertainty. In such a scenario, it made business sense to opt for a subscription-based opex model vs upfront capex model with lower growth or degrowth in business along with tighter cash flow issues. We did see Capex model making a gradual return from Q3 of fy21 with steady improvements in sentiments, visibility and business. The second wave from March’21 which seem to be more rapid and severe, seems to a far lower impact on business sentiments and investments, which is a positive sign for the eco system having learnt the lessons over the last year in managing business operations remotely.
The key takeaway hence is to have the architecture flexibility to leverage both public and private cloud needs in line with business dynamics with a hybrid cloud model with the option to burst in and out of multiple public clouds in a seamless way with complete manageability and security, like in a pure private cloud. This is becoming a basic need for business across all sizes going more and more digital with agility, scalability and flexibility in a secure way.
Prashanth GJ, CEO at TechnoBind
In today’s rapid innovation in technology, companies need to adopt the same, hence digital transformation becomes a means of survival, as these technologies bring agility to business at a never-before scale and current cloud technologies provide the tools and infrastructure to be the catalyst for this change.
The key enablers for all of this are the available different cloud technologies:
- Infrastructure as service
- Software as a service
- Platform as a service
Cloud computing technologies help companies who adopt to go towards the realization of digital transformation, thereby making them competitive in a rapidly changing digital world, more so ever important now, with Data being the new oil. In addition to adopting cloud technologies, companies should also look at implementing a new form of technologies that speed up, automate and improve the business like Artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data analytics, and the Internet of things.
A company’s top priority should be to integrate these new technologies in this digital era, it is possible with the adoption of cloud technologies, being in the cloud means attaining instant agility and interoperability due to its native embedded connectivity, thereby gaining intelligence and take smart decisions due to the interoperability, and that leads to building a reliable infrastructure for digital transformation.
Gurpreet Singh, Managing Director at Arrow PC (Dell Technologies – Titanium Partner)
A research found that the hybrid cloud market will grow to $97.6 billion by 2023, at a CAGR of 17 percent as hybrid not only helps in easing the economic factors for an organization but also delivers security. The present traditional applications are also choosing to move to the cloud, in turn pushing the cloud applications also to develop. There will be continuous growth in the demand for cloud infrastructure services along with expenditure on specialized software, communications equipment and telecom services.
Players have adopted various growth strategies, such as partnerships and new service launches, to expand their presence further in the impact of COVID-19 on the cloud market and broaden their customer base. Digital transformation will help in keeping businesses afloat. Organizations need to utilize cloud automation to increase their online presence by developing commerce websites on cloud platforms. But not just hybrid, cloud is also being influenced by privacy-preserving multi-party analytics in a public cloud, hardware-based security, homomorphic encryption topics and IoT-based services. As hybrid is a combination of public and a private cloud platform it provides the best of both, and with barriers between the platforms disappearing due to technological advancement, the adaptation of hybrid cloud is only going to increase.
