IBM Cloud is the platform for Success

With an enhancement of PaaS capabilities, IBM after announcing ICP is witnessing more customers signing on on IBM Cloud. Vikas Arora, Country Manager, Cloud Business, IBM India and South Asia discusses about the Indian market scenario with PC Quest.

Vikas Arora, Country Manager, Cloud business, IBM India and South Asia

Major trends in cloud Adoption
To optimize business processes and to improve efficiency Cloud is the perfect answer. Earlier, cloud was seen as SaaS platform; then it became a way for deploying and running large applications which can run on multiple devices. Now the Indian market has started to look upon Cloud as IaaS platform and platform as a service and it still in its nascent stage.

The trend we are seeing is that cloud technology is ubiquitous and is working on newer technologies like AI, machine learning, cognitive applications, blockchain, quantum computing. Now customers know about the potential benefits of a well-designed and well-executed cloud-computing infrastructure services strategy. So nowadays organizations wanted to work in private environment but eventually be on the public cloud as well.

There are different set of customers who are adopting fast. Like customers who are using CRM, ERP software and migrating towards cloud. Then we have customers who want to incorporate AI and blockchain technology into their applications; for example, fashion e-commerce sites using chatbots to help customers for choosing correct outfits. Other wants to move legacy applications to modern applications and stuff like that. We have launched a product IBM Cloud Private, which is meant for such modern applications. IBM Cloud Private brings rapid application development and modernization to existing IT infrastructure and positions it to be combined with the services and experience of a public cloud platform.

Mid market is the driver for Cloud
Cloud IaaS is a viable proposition for most enterprises in the SMB segment. Cloud services give SMBs access to technologies they would otherwise not be able to afford. Seeing a shift in the thought process of CIOs and decision makers cloud is the way to go.

With increasing maturity of IaaS market I keep getting calls from the customers. We are close to 2000 customers on cloud and many of those customers belongs to of tier 2 and 3 of mid sized businesses. Many of them are tasting it for the first time. Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities have mid sized business but with reasonably large workforce and their businesses are of the scale where they need IT solutions for their sales, manufacturing, managing finance etc. SAP migration is a big example; after launch of GST lot of mid sized business have migrated it on cloud. These companies would not process it like large enterprises, but they have started evaluating cloud vendors for different scenarios. Basically, whosoever is seriously considering and going into IT deployments cloud is now becoming their first choice.

IT gets mature; roadmaps got mature
If we talk about the verticals that are adopting cloud technology; we can not name one but many. Financial institutions were the first to adopt cloud, then telecom and manufacturing adopted it. Healthcare, retail and government followed it out.

Hybrid is the Future
Hybrid is the way to go. It has all the characteristics that a company needs to run its applications on. When we launched IBM Cloud Private; we got a huge response from enterprises because it supports public as well as private cloud. This is the option for them to adopt advance private cloud which works as infra as a service as well as platform as a service.

There are applications that customers demand to have on private and public and brought them back again so, nowadays applications are built in work in hybrid environment. Therefore, vendors support the hybrid strategy because it’s just not at the infra level, its about workload and architecture as well.

I can say future of hybrid is bright and that’s why we have specialized software division called hybrid software where things that go inside an application can work on public and private both. For example IBM’s WebSphere application server, it has been one of the most sold applications in the world.

Reasons behind ICP success
IBM is at the forefront of empowering clients by providing a cloud platform which is built for innovation, seamless integration and is secure and compliance ready. With IBM Cloud Private, we are helping customers embark on a cloud strategy by taking advantage of the control and security of their on-premises system with the freedom to connect or move resources to public clouds in the future. There were five key design principles in mind which we want to achieve:
1 It should be a private cloud platform for running and managing modern applications.
2 It should have 100 percent compatibility and migration properties to move from private to public and vice-versa.
3 It should have a capability to redesigning legacy applications into modern applications.
4 It should support Devops.
5 It should have capability of Multicloud management.
These were the key capabilities around which the ICP was designed. We wanted to make sure that the product answers these use cases which are becoming very important for running the business for the customers. And with ICP, all the webtools are there for answering the businesses requirements.