IBM Projects 7% Increase in Hybrid Cloud Spending in India by 2023

The Study reveals that Indian executives investing in hybrid multi-cloud to drive business transformation.

At the IBM Media eXchange 2020, on September 3^rd, 2020, the Managing Director (MD) of IBM India/South Asia,  Sandip Patel and the Vice President, IBM Cloud and Computing Software and Services, IBM India/South Asia, Vishwanath Ramaswamy, unveiled the key findings of a study done by IBM, which focused on hybrid cloud adoption.

The study named The hybrid cloud platform advantage- The India point of view is authored by Vishwanath Ramaswamy, Anil Bhasker, Hybrid Cloud Leader IBM India/ South Asia and Anthony Marshall, Senior Research Director, IBM Institute for Business Value. It is found out that hybrid cloud computing provides services 2.5 times faster than the single cloud.

The study is conducted by IBM Institute for Business Value in collaboration with Oxford Economics and surveyed over 6000 executives globally with more than 400 executives from India.

The survey reveals that by the year 2023, the public cloud spending would be reduced from 50% to 43% and Indian organizations are expected to be using an average of 10 clouds services. However, the survey also pointed out that currently, only 10% of businesses have holistic multi-cloud management strategies in place.

Commenting on the survey insight, Vishwanath stated, "The adoption of cloud has been a central feature in developing new, digitally-driven business models. Interestingly, the findings show that hybrid multi-cloud is the fundamental enabler of an organization's operating model, helping them to embark on a journey to become a Cognitive Enterprise of the future. Further, Hybrid Cloud enables an improved business performance and greater ROI. This is proven in the instance of leading businesses that have successfully achieved. demonstrable competitive advantage through robust hybrid cloud management and governance platform."

Indian Business to Adopt Cloud

The study observed that most of the Indian respondents are ready to adopt cloud computing. The key highlights of the study are –

• Globally, 68% of businesses on advanced cloud journey are building an open-source platform, compared to 46% of Indian respondents.

• The survey report identifies businesses that recognize the strategic importance of cloud, which compromise 13% of the global survey respondents, 2% of which are from India, as 'Cloud Aviators'.

• Indian executives get over 2.6 times of their investment in cloud management over the next 10 years.

• It is observed that organizations in India expect to be using at least 10 clouds services from a growing number of vendors by 2023, but only 29% of businesses have a holistic multi-cloud management strategy.

• Almost 90% of companies globally were "on the cloud" by 2019, only about 20% of their workloads have moved to a cloud environment.

• 54% of Cloud Aviators already deploy Kubernetes-based applications across multiple clouds, versus 38% of India organizations surveyed and due to their lower-friction cloud infrastructures, 56% of Cloud Aviators report that the time it takes to release applications is reduced to days, compared to only 27% of India respondents.

Sandip Patel, MD, IBM India/South Asia pointed out, "Globally 64% of advanced cloud companies recognize the need for enterprise transformation and application modernization to go hand in hand."

Status of Hybrid Cloud Computing in India

The survey points out that-

• Almost 17% of respondents are having IT spending allocated to the cloud at present.

• An increase in the share of spend on hybrid from 42% to 49% is expected by 2023.

• Most industries will exhibit growth in the number of clouds they will deploy, which can go up to 10 clouds particularly in insurance, telecommunications and retail as these industries will continue to expand multiple cloud deployments in the next three years.

Observing the need of the cloud computing, Vishwanath stated that whether planned or through mergers and acquisitions, the main aim of hybrid cloud computing is that the given organization must have multiple cloud environment and the ability to have the infrastructure and seamless architecture. It becomes important for seamless drive migration and movement across multiple cloud platforms.

Ramaswamy stated, "In India, leading businesses such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea are achieving business transformation by leveraging hybrid multi-cloud platform technology and embedding AI. We are betting big on Hybrid Cloud which is secure, interoperable, open and free from vendor lock-in."

Cloud Computing of Godrej Enterprises

Godrej is amongst the few companies that have leveraged hybrid multi-cloud for building an IT infrastructure that is future-ready. The study states that it is moving from a siloed and capital expenditures (CapEx)-driven IT operating model to a simplified infrastructure.

Vishwanath states that Godrej was planning on an overall digital transformation, that would integrate all their application.

The Hybrid Cloud computing requires an open secure multiple cloud solution, that would seamlessly orchestrate the workload with the automation of its applications.

Sandip Patel pointed out that this transformation was taking place for the past 5 years. After this digital transformation, Godrej observed a 10% reduction in the total cost of ownership over five years, coupled with a 100% increase in disaster recovery coverage and zero security incidents.

Stratagizing Hybrid Cloud Computing Platform

The study states that to achieve the hybrid cloud platform, the organizations must strategize, design, move, build, and manage their cloud platforms. The survey states that 33% of IT executives said that they are seeking cloud management platforms for improved visibility and to control their cloud costs.

Vishwanath stated that any cloud computing platform requires designing the infrastructure, scaling it and having a management team which can efficiently manage the platform.

"We (IBM), are at the tip of an iceberg and still have to do more", he added.

The survey revealed that Enterprises in India are seeking Cloud Management Platforms for improved visibility and to control their cloud costs.

Sandip pointed out that on an average, the complexity of managing private cloud with multiple clouds is the fulcrum of the hybrid cloud.

IBM'S Hybrid Cloud Computing Feature

Commenting on the hybrid computing feature provided by IBM, Sandip stated that the company has Cloud Value Transformation, a feature of hybrid-cloud computing, where the company has invested in cloud roadmap journey to the target infrastructure.

With the help of this transformation, the company lay down the roadmap for those organizations who want assistance in cloud transformation.