Has The Lockdown Enhanced The Need For Cloud Services Even More?

A model of computer data storage, cloud computing has been a much sought after affair in the recent times. Cloud is a storage model that allows data to be transmitted and stored on remote storage systems, and allows users to pay for their cloud data storage according to their consumption, monthly rate. This is based on a virtualised infrastructure that has accessible interfaces, near-instant elasticity and scalability. Some of the benefits of using cloud include better convenience, cheap and offsite security.

As mentioned before, the pandemic has facilitated the way for increased cloud consumption. Ashwin Kumar, Director, Data Centre and Cloud Operations, Linode India mentions about the increase in cloud usage, and how has it disrupted the traditional way of conducting business.

Edited excerpts:

Do you think in the current pandemic scenario, there has been an upsurge in the demand of cloud services? Why?

The lockdown definitely caused an acceleration of the digital first mindset. During the first two weeks, we saw demand spike almost 100%. We’ve seen enterprises across industries such as pharma and IT deploying larger compute and storage plans. We have also witnessed significant demand from regions across India, such as Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Mumbai.

We expect demand will continue to grow as businesses continue to accelerate their transformation to the cloud. This is driven by new work from home requirements, as well as the need for better business resiliency and efficiency. In many cases digital is now the only channel for customer interface and collaboration within organisations. SMEs and MSMEs are rethinking their business models and rapidly embracing the cloud to enable collaboration and remote working. Going forward, we’ll see a shift toward managed services, as companies for which technology is not their core business, look for ways to simplify the tools they will use to run their businesses in the cloud. As digital maturity increases, we expect technologies like Linode Kubernetes Engine to play a large role in this simplification.

How are you competing with leading cloud providers like Azure and AWS?

I can proudly speak about Linode’s legacy, as we entered the cloud innovation space three years before AWS and have more than a decade of strong but quiet growth in the public cloud market. We’ve amplified our efforts with investments across staffing, data centers, product and service portfolio, partner channel and sales and marketing efforts. This includes building a powerful next generation network that connects the 11 data centers we’ve established around the globe. Our servers are built on the same industry standard hardware from companies like AMD and nVidia. But there are a couple of important things that make Linode different in this marketplace.

We’re independent. Every product decision we make and every business decision we make is done in the service of our customers, not a VC or shareholder or board of directors. As a result, we’ve been able to build a company that delivers dramatically better cloud price performance than even the large mega clouds can provide. And we’re able to support it with an unheard of commitment to customer support — 24x7x365, no tiered, actual human support.

For the first time, customers have a choice in the cloud. We call ourselves the ‘alternative’ cloud providers in relation to hyperscalers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. We are not competing with the hyperscalers in terms of footprint or feature sets, rather we are competing on the premise of offering a simpler, lower cost and more directly supported cloud infrastructure platform, appealing to cloud users for which the scale and pace of innovation of the big players isn’t necessarily a selling point. 

What is the next big innovation expected to be in the cloud space?

As businesses across the world gear up to resume operations post pandemic, cloud will be a mainstay in their business strategies. Ensuring that operations are conducted seamlessly on the cloud will be the key focus for all enterprises. We expect a trend picking up towards managed services such as Kubernetes and databases as companies whose first business isn’t technology make the jump to the cloud. Kubernetes will soon become core to the creation and operation of modern software. 

How will the cloud backbone hold up under increased pressure going forward?

We suspect this increased demand will continue as CIOs accelerate shifting their organizations to the cloud. And while this rapid transformation puts pressure on every provider, over the past 17 years we’ve built a global, next generation network and developed strategic peering relationships that reduce latency and lower friction of scale to allow our customers’ traffic to travel faster and with reliability they require. 

How should companies plan their cloud strategy after lockdown?

As organizations embrace the cloud to enable new digital initiatives, drive efficiencies, and boost cost savings, CTOs and CIOs must lead the charge on how business initiatives are enabled and architected for speed and scale. This will require a holistic approach across cloud and co-location environments to align their organization’s cloud strategy with its data center strategy and business goals.

How is Linode helping SMEs to scale on cloud?

India is a storehouse of power-packed small and medium enterprises, which contribute a significant portion towards the country’s economic growth and workforce. This year, collectively MSMEs contributed 45% of overall exports and employed 14.9 million people. As we look at the next few years of continued economic growth, MSMEs across India will remain a key pillar and will undergo a paradigm shift as they move forward in their journey toward digitalization and cloud adoption. 

Additionally, as MSMEs are often cash strapped with limited technical IT staff, we offer them more hands-on and localized customer support, vertical knowledge and specialization. Linode is unique and we’ve built an advanced technological platform that is accessible to everyone, from large enterprises to SMEs to individual developers. We believe Linode’s presence in India will be beneficial to MSMEs.

As we continue to focus on addressing complexities that make cloud adoption a challenge, our goal is to make cloud simple, offer ease of access and on-demand provisioning so it resonates with the sector. We understand that this sector needs to deploy applications quickly, and prioritizes price, performance and access to a level of technical support.