Cloud is India’s best bet to aid faster innovation at scale in 2022…writes Shailender Kumar, Senior Vice President and Regional Managing Director, Oracle India
What the world, and each one of us, experienced in the past two years, has taught us important life lessons. At the same time, it has demonstrated development and progress, which will have a long-term positive impact on society, industry and governance.
As a result of the ongoing economic and humanitarian crises, we have all been witness to a major shift to digital as organisations showed resilience and realignment in their businesses. Now, as the country advances its agenda of building a digitally knowledgeable economy, it must also look to create a self-sustaining model of development and progress.
Business leaders and economists are talking about the recovery of the Indian economy. Optimistic projections from the World Bank (projecting growth of 6.5 per cent by 2023) and according to some economists, business in India has now exceeded pre-pandemic levels, indicating a swift recovery. India’s growth story lies in the hands of select defining sectors like healthcare, government, banking and finance, manufacturing, e-commerce, retail among others.
The pandemic has brought numerous changes in the way growth and scalability are outlined. This means uprooting traditional processes, reskilling and most importantly, pivoting business practises.
In its recent reports, Nasscom estimates that with a more aggressive talent building roadmap, India can increase its cloud talent pool to between 1.7 to 1.8 million and in the process, become the world’s second largest cloud talent hub by 2025. It is estimated that the demand for cloud experts will exceed 2 million.
Numerous companies in sectors like healthcare, pharma, life sciences, telecom, education, banking, and insurance have advanced their use of cloud and have acknowledged the numerous benefits it has brought to their businesses.
Gartner’s recent forecast states that end-user spending on public cloud services in India is estimated to total $7.3 billion by 2022, an increase of 29.6 per cent from 2021.
Along with cloud technologies, new innovative solutions based on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are expected to rise too, which will help create a well-rounded digital ecosystem.
It is estimated that by 2025, the IT industry will contribute up to $350 billion, amounting to 10 per cent of India’s GDP, says MeitY. The growth in the IT space will continue to be driven by use of emerging technologies and this will help industries become progressive and be more efficiently run.
A prime example of leveraging cloud to utilise its full potential is health-tech firm Medexpert Software solutions. Started in 2018, the organisation is helping to ‘uberize’ healthcare delivery. The company runs its health management system on next-generation cloud infrastructure.
Through this technology, they extend support to healthcare delivery organisations like super-specialty hospitals and neighbourhood clinics, to improve business agility and deliver a better healthcare experience to patients.
IFFCO too has implemented cloud technology and is relying on advanced IT systems to support their sustainability efforts, including one of their recent initiatives — ‘Nano-technology’ fertilisers. These eco-friendly fertilisers are able to reduce the use of conventional chemical fertilisers in half, while boosting crop outputs.
Witnessing the recent acceleration in the acceptance of technology, it is quite evident that 2022 will continue to be disruptive. Multi-cloud is going to be the way of the world. Businesses today are already evaluating multi-cloud models where they can gain maximum benefits from a trusted set of cloud providers.
And why not? Globally, organisations are expected to spend an incredible $1.78 trillion on cloud and other digital transformation technologies in 2022, according to Statistica.
For us, as technologists and a major cloud provider, this is an exciting time. We are in the midst of a huge digital revolution. Perhaps what is most exciting is that the economic value created will be proportional to the extent of digital transformation this country will witness — as cloud technologies stimulate innovation and improve efficiencies, while protecting institutions’ and citizens’ most valuable data assets.
Indian businesses are prioritising speed as their key competency this year, to recover growth faster. CEOs want to leapfrog innovation cycles. So their focus clearly is on faster, data-driven innovation. And there’s increased awareness on why cloud is the best engine to aid faster innovation at scale.
Only cloud services can accelerate India’s move towards becoming a digitally empowered society, bringing about a smarter, more inclusive future for everyone.
(Shailender Kumar is Senior Vice President and Regional Managing Director, Oracle India)
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