- Overall spending on cloud computing in India is set to reach $16.5b in 2024.
- Cloud continues to be the underpinning platform for all digital transformation initiatives.
Bengaluru: Cloud adoption in India is expected to get a boost due to the rapid intake of emerging technologies such as big data, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, augmented reality and virtual reality, along with enterprises’ focus on cost reduction and operational scalability.
As per data and analysts firm GlobalData, the overall spending on cloud computing in India is set to reach $16.5 billion in 2024.
Amongst the public cloud offerings, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is the fastest-growing segment, with an annual rate of 8.7 per cent during the forecast period 2019-2024, driven by the increasing preference of enterprises to migrate their application and workloads from on-premises datacentres to the cloud solutions to leverage IT effectively.
Although most organisations in India have adopted cloud at some stage, the current pandemic situation has now enabled organisations to spend more on public cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solutions, and software-as-a-service (SaaS).
Accelerating investment in an agile cloud infrastructure is seen as a part of the solution to the challenges arising from the spread of the Covid-19.
According to a recent survey conducted by IBM, organisations in India are expected to be using at least 10 clouds from a growing number of vendors by 2023 but only 29 per cent of businesses have a holistic multi-cloud management strategy and the majority of the cloud budgets are being allocated to hybrid cloud platforms even as their public cloud spend is set to reduce from 50 per cent share today to 43 per cent by 2023.
Anshuma Singh, Technology Analyst at GlobalData, said that the growing adoption of public cloud offerings and the development of cloud-native applications are the major factors driving the demand for the cloud-based solutions and services.
‘Digital India’ initiatives
“Increased government spending on new e-governance projects based on cloud technology is expected to boost cloud adoption in the forthcoming years. For instance, India’s thrust towards ‘Digital India’ will result in increased spending towards cloud services to advance digital business procedures,” she said.
Moreover, India plans to launch a national artificial intelligence programme by the end of 2020.
The National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog further proposes the establishment of a cloud computing platform known as AI Research, Analytics, and Knowledge Assimilation platform (AIRAWAT) and that will create opportunities for the deployment of cloud services in the forthcoming years.
A large number of enterprises and institutions like The Ministry of Human Resource & Development (MHRD), MyGov.in, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), and National Association for Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) leveraged cloud-based offerings to build citizen services, online hackathons, and solution challenges to address problem statements particular to global pandemic situations.
Security and data sensitivity raise concerns
However, Singh said that security and data sensitivity concerns might hinder the growth of the cloud computing market.
“The recent Covid-19 pandemic also created new growth opportunities for cloud vendors. The availability of innovative and scalable cloud-based solutions to cater to the diverse enterprise requirements has provided an opportunity for cloud vendors to further scale-up their offerings to enable enterprises to function normally without any service disruptions.”
Rishu Sharma, Principal Analyst for cloud and artificial intelligence at IDC India, said that cloud continues to be the underpinning platform for all digital transformation initiatives and has therefore seen an acceleration in demand.
“Strategic investments in technology will become imperative to minimize the adverse impact and make businesses more resilient. The role of providers will become crucial in helping organisations flatten the curve and leverage cloud in their next normal,” she said.
More than 60 per cent of the Indian organisations plan to leverage cloud platforms for digital innovation based on IDC Covid-19 impact survey.
Singh added that the cloud adoption will grow soon with the proliferation of start-up ecosystem, along with solutions being built by leveraging emerging technologies like AI, AR/VR and blockchain on the cloud platforms.
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