With the Cloud promise holding good in India, Infosys is focusing on Cloud Services with a view to provide a seamless and well integrated platform to enterprises. By Mehak Chawla
Cloud, in the near future is going to be more about management, than actual deployment. In India, there is huge amount of unstructured information, which hasn’t been leveraged in the past primarily due to cost and time to compute.
According to Vishnu Bhat, Vice-President and Global Head, Cloud Services, Infosys, that is why the homegrown IT giant is investing a lot of its energies in the Cloud services domain. In today’s world, with technologies such as Cloud and Hadoop, storage cost and speed of compute and storage is almost unprecedented. Enterprises who are leveraging Cloud can have almost unlimited capacity to process the data and make available the information that was removed from decision makers in the past. And ultimately, Cloud and information being ubiquitous, the ability to manage them is extremely important for decision makers, who are quite mobile in today’s world. Access to data and intelligence and ability to deliver decisions faster can only be delivered through mobility.
Hence, remarked Bhat, “A combination of Cloud, big data and mobility is an extremely attractive proposition for an enterprise.”
Cloud landscape
In India, there is a lot of activity around the private Cloud, even as public Cloud is slowly overpowering the initial hiccups in its way. Bhat believed that while there are challenges pertaining to Cloud in India, there are also a lot of advantages that the Indian market has. Unlike mature markets, there is not a lot of legacy infrastructure that the Indian enterprises have invested in. Thus, from an adoption of technology standpoint, India is at a more advantageous situation.”
He however, agreed that there are somethings that need to be resolved, especially in terms of public Cloud. “Government has taken the initial steps in setting up a council of experts to bring out a policy for Cloud computing in the country. Policy requirement is something that every country is dealing with, in terms of regulation, national security as well as elements pertaining to protecting people’s identity. If we are to look at a public Cloud that is to be viable for a country and its citizens, we need a solid policy framework,” observed Bhat.
According to Bhat, government needs to come up with a policy more for the benefit of SMEs rather than its own Cloud deployments, which are being spearheaded by some huge IT intensive projects like the UID. “Government initiatives for Cloud will follow a private Cloud trajectory and are likely to be managed and hosted in premise. A policy is more relevant for SMEs wanting to store information on public Cloud and it is something that even the large enterprises can start leveraging.”
All countries, including India need to have a policy that brings a degree of governance as well as the flexibility for industries to adopt Cloud in the fullest possible way. If you look at some countries in Europe, there are frameworks and regulations around Cloud. Bhat felt that countries have to come together to make Cloud computing across borders possible and still protect citizen information.
Cloud Ecosystem Hub
With their recent offering, Cloud Ecosystem Hub, which they launched in August this year, Infosys is looking at providing end to end Cloud servicing for enterprises and position itself as a Cloud system integrator. Explained Bhat, “ We look at three main components for our Cloud Ecosystem Hub- professional serivces for Cloud, focus on business platforms and building a strong partner ecosystem.”
While their professional services line is mostly around Cloud consultancy, Infosys, according to Bhat is focussed on bringing seamlessness to an extremely varied and complex Cloud environment. “We advise organisations on migration and setting a best of breed ecosystem- often a combination of private and public Cloud. A key part of this process is that we bring our expertise in terms of regulation to the table and help enterprises to manage the whole Cloud at a single point.”
Under the gamut of business platforms, Infosys is offering Cloud services as a business stack that comprises of business solutions that can be deployed on the Cloud and provide outcomes that are a combination of software and business processes. “We have what we call the Edge platforms and we have launched 12 platforms in the market already . Our customers buy end to end services or business outcomes on pay as you go models or transaction based pricing models,” elaborated Bhat.
Infosys is also putting a huge emphasis on its partner ecosystem because Cloud being a complex chain with several players involved, integration across the board becomes a key ingredient for success.
“There are technology players, Cloud service providers, infrastructure players and there are new IPs coming up every single quarter . It is important to integrate all these links in a seamless way. So, we work closely with the likes of Microsoft, Amazon, Rackspace. We work with technology providers like Computer Associates, Cisco, HP and IBM and Oracle etc. This forms the backbone of our services offerings,” said Bhat.
Service delivery
When Infosys started the Cloud services journey, they set up a dedicated Cloud unit as a key part of their strategy which is now over 3000 people and they have already completed 170 engagements in different parts of the world and across all verticals.
According to Bhat, “When we evaluated our strategy as a Cloud system integrator we first looked at the huge promise of Cloud in terms, of cost which has been talked about since its inception, but hasn’t been realised as often.” The Cloud promise is all about innovation, agility and time to market. Bhat said that Infosys saw early that most IT organisations deal with specific challenges of security, fragmentation of workloads across multiple Cloud environments , governance in a holistic way, performance and orchestration, consolidated metering and billing. “Above all this, we saw that tools and technologies that will be available to solve these challenges will be broken and available in silos. That’s when we stepped up our efforts to bring seamlessness to Cloud and enable its governance on a single glass pane.”
The Ecosystem Hub comprises of 6 modules like the ‘Private Cloud Module’ which enables extreme automation of the private Cloud. There is also a ‘Hybrid Cloud Module’ that integrates Cloud environments with connectors built across Cloud service providers. It allows for cataloguing of business and IT services that can be used as service oriented setup. It also enables brokerage decisions as to where to deploy the workloads.
Infosys is approaching the market for Cloud Ecosystem Hub with its partners and is looking at clinching deals in the telecom, BFSI, retail, and hi-tech manufacturing verticals.
With the Cloud promise holding good in India, Infosys is focusing on Cloud Services with a view to provide a seamless and well integrated platform to enterprises. By Mehak Chawla
Cloud, in the near future is going to be more about management, than actual deployment. In India, there is huge amount of unstructured information, which hasn’t been leveraged in the past primarily due to cost and time to compute.
According to Vishnu Bhat, Vice-President and Global Head, Cloud Services, Infosys, that is why the homegrown IT giant is investing a lot of its energies in the Cloud services domain.
In today’s world, with technologies such as Cloud and Hadoop, storage cost and speed of compute and storage is almost unprecedented. Enterprises who are leveraging Cloud can have almost unlimited capacity to process the data and make available the information that was removed from decision makers in the past. And ultimately, Cloud and information being ubiquitous, the ability to manage them is extremely important for decision makers, who are quite mobile in today’s world. Access to data and intelligence and ability to deliver decisions faster can only be delivered through mobility.
Hence, remarked Bhat, “A combination of Cloud, big data and mobility is an extremely attractive proposition for an enterprise.”
Cloud landscape
In India, there is a lot of activity around the private Cloud, even as public Cloud is slowly overpowering the initial hiccups in its way. Bhat believed that while there are challenges pertaining to Cloud in India, there are also a lot of advantages that the Indian market has. Unlike mature markets, there is not a lot of legacy infrastructure that the Indian enterprises have invested in. Thus, from an adoption of technology standpoint, India is at a more advantageous situation.”
He however, agreed that there are somethings that need to be resolved, especially in terms of public Cloud. “Government has taken the initial steps in setting up a council of experts to bring out a policy for Cloud computing in the country. Policy requirement is something that every country is dealing with, in terms of regulation, national security as well as elements pertaining to protecting people’s identity. If we are to look at a public Cloud that is to be viable for a country and its citizens, we need a solid policy framework,” observed Bhat.
According to Bhat, government needs to come up with a policy more for the benefit of SMEs rather than its own Cloud deployments, which are being spearheaded by some huge IT intensive projects like the UID. “Government initiatives for Cloud will follow a private Cloud trajectory and are likely to be managed and hosted in premise. A policy is more relevant for SMEs wanting to store information on public Cloud and it is something that even the large enterprises can start leveraging.”
All countries, including India need to have a policy that brings a degree of governance as well as the flexibility for industries to adopt Cloud in the fullest possible way. If you look at some countries in Europe, there are frameworks and regulations around Cloud. Bhat felt that countries have to come together to make Cloud computing across borders possible and still protect citizen information.
Cloud Ecosystem Hub
With their recent offering, Cloud Ecosystem Hub, which they launched in August this year, Infosys is looking at providing end to end Cloud servicing for enterprises and position itself as a Cloud system integrator. Explained Bhat, “ We look at three main components for our Cloud Ecosystem Hub- professional serivces for Cloud, focus on business platforms and building a strong partner ecosystem.”
While their professional services line is mostly around Cloud consultancy, Infosys, according to Bhat is focussed on bringing seamlessness to an extremely varied and complex Cloud environment. “We advise organisations on migration and setting a best of breed ecosystem- often a combination of private and public Cloud. A key part of this process is that we bring our expertise in terms of regulation to the table and help enterprises to manage the whole Cloud at a single point.”
Under the gamut of business platforms, Infosys is offering Cloud services as a business stack that comprises of business solutions that can be deployed on the Cloud and provide outcomes that are a combination of software and business processes. “We have what we call the Edge platforms and we have launched 12 platforms in the market already . Our customers buy end to end services or business outcomes on pay as you go models or transaction based pricing models,” elaborated Bhat.
Infosys is also putting a huge emphasis on its partner ecosystem because Cloud being a complex chain with several players involved, integration across the board becomes a key ingredient for success.
“There are technology players, Cloud service providers, infrastructure players and there are new IPs coming up every single quarter . It is important to integrate all these links in a seamless way. So, we work closely with the likes of Microsoft, Amazon, Rackspace. We work with technology providers like Computer Associates, Cisco, HP and IBM and Oracle etc. This forms the backbone of our services offerings,” said Bhat.
Service delivery
When Infosys started the Cloud services journey, they set up a dedicated Cloud unit as a key part of their strategy which is now over 3000 people and they have already completed 170 engagements in different parts of the world and across all verticals.
According to Bhat, “When we evaluated our strategy as a Cloud system integrator we first looked at the huge promise of Cloud in terms, of cost which has been talked about since its inception, but hasn’t been realised as often.” The Cloud promise is all about innovation, agility and time to market. Bhat said that Infosys saw early that most IT organisations deal with specific challenges of security, fragmentation of workloads across multiple Cloud environments , governance in a holistic way, performance and orchestration, consolidated metering and billing. “Above all this, we saw that tools and technologies that will be available to solve these challenges will be broken and available in silos. That’s when we stepped up our efforts to bring seamlessness to Cloud and enable its governance on a single glass pane.”
The Ecosystem Hub comprises of 6 modules like the ‘Private Cloud Module’ which enables extreme automation of the private Cloud. There is also a ‘Hybrid Cloud Module’ that integrates Cloud environments with connectors built across Cloud service providers. It allows for cataloguing of business and IT services that can be used as service oriented setup. It also enables brokerage decisions as to where to deploy the workloads.
Infosys is approaching the market for Cloud Ecosystem Hub with its partners and is looking at clinching deals in the telecom, BFSI, retail, and hi-tech manufacturing verticals.
