India lacks a formal data breach notification rule : Khalid Wani of Western Digital
While sharing his thoughts about the opportunities that the Indian market presents Khalid Wani, Director, Content Solutions Business, India, Middle East and Africa, Western Digital also highlighed few of the challenges, “a more ongoing problem is the country’s Internet infrastructure (i.e., bandwidth constraints and fiber optic weaknesses) and the inconsistency of its power supply in some areas.” In conversation with EC’s Ankush Kumar, Wani also stressed on the need of a formal data breach notification rule in India and relevance of cloud storage technology in eGovernance space.
Edited Excerpts:
Tell us about the opportunities and challenges that you see in the Indian market for enterprise IT companies ?
India is a growing market for cloud services due to its large number of consumers with internet access. According to the research firm Gartner, India boasts 250 million people with web connected devices, which generally rely on cloud services for applications and other functionality. The study further states that the public cloud services spending in 2015 was $731 million. As Internet access, e-commerce, mobile device and application usage and business adoption continue to expand, the growth in cloud related spending in India should outpace that in the rest of the world and possibly reach $1.9 billion by 2019.
However, despite optimistic predictions there are few challenges we need to address. A more ongoing problem is the country’s Internet infrastructure (i.e., bandwidth constraints and fiber optic weaknesses) and the inconsistency of its power supply in some areas.
India also presents a mixed policy environment for storage and cloud services. Some elements of the environment remain undefined (e.g., India lacks a formal data breach notification rule), while others are clearly positive (e.g., there do not appear to be tariffs on software downloads) and some challenging (e.g., government procurement, which though a major source of IT spending is reportedly a complex, multifarious process).
However government is acutely aware of these situations, and its ambitious Digital India program aims to address some of the infrastructural weaknesses.
Technology underpins many of India’s development and growth programmes, and digital storage is at the heart of nearly every initiative.
How do you evaluate the growth potential of the cloud service market in India ?
Rising availability of cloud services at economical price models and the ease of implementation are the major growth drivers for cloud services in India. In addition, increased government spending on new e-governance projects based on cloud technology is likely to drive the market for cloud computing services in India over the coming years. The market today seems to be coming of age, witnessing a shift from legacy IT services to cloud-based services. The rapid expansion of cloud based services owes its genesis to the trend of organisations now pursuing a digital business strategy.
Technology industry research firm Gartner has listed cloud computing as a top technology trend for the past six years. Among the key trends shaping the cloud ecosystem over the next several years is the continued prominence and even quicker rise of software-as-a service (SaaS, in which users access virtual applications, such as office productivity software, hosted on remote servers), the cloud segment widely expected to show the strongest growth in both revenues and deployments.
Over 250 million Indians today use web connected devices, which generally rely on cloud services for applications and other functionality. As Internet access, e-commerce, mobile device and application usage, and business adoption continue to expand, the growth in cloud-related spending in India should outpace that in the rest of the world. Research firm Gartner believes that by 2018 public cloud spending in India will reach nearly $2 billion, from $638 million in 2014.
How big is this market for IT storage solutions provider ?
Today the need to increase storage capacity has become a kind of ‘work in progress’ for every major enterprise, there is a continuous rise in the numbers of data hungry customers and applications, there is optimism around cloud and there is the explosion of big data—hence it should come as no surprise that the CIOs and CTOs are always looking for new places where massive amounts of data can be stored and utilised with efficiency and security. It goes without saying that the data center market has every reason to be upbeat about the prospects for the industry.
In line with the global trends, Indian storage solutions in India are buoyed by the positive sentiments in the economy and the strong resurgence of growth-related projects across verticals such as banking, insurance, telecom and the government. The storage market is projected to reach $307 million in 2016, a three percent increase from 2015 according to Gartner report, 2015.
Storage modernization and consolidation, backup and recovery, and disaster recovery are some of the key drivers to this market, and they are likely to remain relevant drivers over the forecast period through 2019.
While it is the early days, Gartner also expects the emerging hyper converged integrated systems and storage technologies based on software-defined storage to encroach on the traditional ECB storage market.
With continuous data growth, what could be the future trends that can be seen in the storage market ?
We live in a connected world where the growth of mobility is bringing changes in data consumption patterns and creating new demands from consumers and businesses. The amount of content created, stored and accessed on the go, is gradually creating storage constraint issues. WD believes that personal cloud and specialized storage for surveillance are set to become one of the major future trends in the storage market.
Cloud storage trend is slowly catching up, allowing consumers to store large amount of data without worrying about carrying multiple hard drives. It enables to enjoy multiple backup options and create own personalized digital library with ease. A plethora of devices coupled with increased broadband and mobile internet connectivity could facilitate the adoption of centralized storage that can be accessed on the go. At the same time, data privacy and ownership of the device holding the data holds paramount importance.
On the other hand, security is a growing concern, not only across the country, but globally. It is for this reason that CCTV and surveillance cameras are being deployed everywhere, right from homes to large enterprises. To support these, purpose-built surveillance drives are being deployed and their adoption is growing tremendously and is expected to increase in the coming years.
How is WD planning to increase adoption of cloud based storage solution and NAS business in India ?
The India market today is increasingly aware of technology and its implications on advancing their businesses and gaining competitive advantage. The consumers today need an easy and private way to store the data, access it and manage it from anywhere in the world using any device.
Keeping in mind the growing demand, Western Digital has further strengthened its commitment towards prosumers solutions with the recent launch of My Cloud EX2 Ultra, a high-performance, two-bay network attached storage (NAS) system. The My Cloud EX2 Ultra NAS is designed or creative professionals and prosumers that need to automatically sync content across computers, easily share files and folders and enjoy multiple backup options so they can create their own personalized digital library with ease. It’s the perfect solution for anyone looking for a high performance NAS system.
We believe Indian creative professionals and prosumers are in need of ever greater storage options along with faster data processing and media streaming capabilities. They should also have easier ways of storing, sharing and accessing all of their digital data regardless of location or device. It’s the perfect solution for anyone looking for a high performance NAS system.
