Enterprises have dramatically increased their migration to the cloud in the last couple of years, which has helped them optimize their mission-critical IT infrastructure operations
At Kyndryl, we’re building skills and expanding our 3A capabilities – alliances, advanced delivery and accounts – focused on the unique needs of our customers and cloud is the foundation of this transformation
Srinidhi S.R, Cloud Practice Leader, Kyndryl India
As there is a prediction of 20.7% growth in cloud spending, what are the areas within cloud that the spending is happening?
Enterprises have dramatically increased their migration to the cloud in the last couple of years, which has helped them optimize their mission-critical IT infrastructure operations and unlock more significant business growth. That said, the areas which have witnessed the highest numbers in terms of spending are Cloud application services (SaaS), Cloud System Infrastructure Services (IaaS), and Cloud Application Infrastructure Services (PaaS). By imbibing the benefits of the cloud, industries can begin thinking about creating an information security environment that’s more secure and efficient for enterprises and customers.
What is the situation in India as to what percentage of customers are moving to the cloud or investing in cloud?
In India, the move towards ‘digital’ was visibly accelerated by the pandemic both at the enterprise and the ecosystem levels. Factors such as a large and developing talent ecosystem, innovation and supportive government initiatives have uniquely positioned India to become a significant player in the global cloud landscape. As per industry reports, cloud spending in India is predicted to touch USD 11 billion (approximately) by 2025.
At Kyndryl, cloud is a critical driver of our customers’ transformation, and we are helping bridge the divide in skills, solutions, and security our customers need to achieve business goals.
What are the major challenges of the CIO while migrating to cloud? Skillset of course is one of the major challenges, what else?
Migrating to the cloud requires a careful analysis of the existing environment and the interdependencies between the application platforms, and clearly defining a proper strategy and priorities. This helps to make the process smooth, efficient, and, most importantly, to get it right the first time.
Apart from advanced skills, some significant challenges include the security concerns that come with the cloud’s enhanced flexibility for the teams and developers. With newer vulnerabilities presenting themselves, organizations must also have their recovery and resiliency programs in place.
The deployment time and different financial models bring in some other challenges that CIOs eventually face. The pay-as-you-go models offered by the cloud service providers transform the cloud budget from a capital expense into an operating cost, which can often be challenging for organizations.
What do CIOs need to take care of while moving into cloud environment?
The CIOs must map their decisions along a continuum, keeping continuity in mind over reactivity. Whether it is scenarios like detecting vulnerabilities with the help of machine intervention or situations that require human judgement, the notion of speed is the key.
Data democratization is another crucial aspect. Data will always be valuable, and leaders must ensure that all employees can access the relevant data. Now, data can be sensitive; therefore, with access to data comes the responsibility to keep it secure. Security and resiliency frameworks must be in place from day one.
Lastly, building a collaborative domain internally and externally is vital to empower growth and progress. In today’s time, building a data environment that is isolated from the stakeholders in the ecosystem is impractical.
Whether multi cloud strategy is better than being engaged with a single service provider?
At Kyndryl, we’re building skills and expanding our 3A capabilities – alliances, advanced delivery and accounts – focused on the unique needs of our customers and cloud is the foundation of this transformation. It’s about meeting our customer where they are on their cloud journey. We collaborate and consult with our customers, review their options, and choose a cloud provider that works best for them and their future growth.
However, a multi-cloud strategy brings along undeniable benefits. It gives organizations the flexibility to choose how to deploy workloads, preventing vendor lock-in and the associated unnecessary costs and security concerns. Having data distributed across multiple clouds and geographically reduces the risk of applications becoming unavailable and helps minimize latency and boost performance. An efficient CMP (Cloud Management Platform) supports a multi-cloud strategy.
How about justification of investment in cloud computing vis-a-vis business outcome?
In the age of digital transformation, cloud is ‘the vehicle’ for delivering growth and opportunities. It enables companies to innovate faster via enhanced developer productivity, simplified processes, consistent delivery, more cost-effective modernization and integration of other technologies like artificial intelligence.
For instance, cloud helped companies across industries through the pandemic, enabling faster economic recovery while allowing businesses to operate in creative ways, including with remote work. Overall, it is the bridge that ensures that the technology works toward achieving ambitious, long-term business goals.
FinOps is a new way of working needed to drive sustainable and systemic change in the way businesses manage their IT usage and spending. FinOps is designed to optimize businesses’ IT and cloud investments by bringing together financial, technical and business functions to drive financial accountability and create predictability in hybrid IT costs – ultimately, creating a cost-conscious culture. Its not just a cost savings tool – but a way of operating differently that enables employees across the business to work more effectively (leading to better optimization of their spend).
There are many customers who use mainframe infrastructure, how can they move into value chain to integrate new age applications?
Considering the countless benefits of modernizing mainframes and integrating new-age applications, organizations must make sure that they take advantage of their digital transformation journey sooner than later.
As organizations start or continue their journey to cloud, they also need to tackle the core business processes or systems of record, with many of those mission-critical applications and data running on mainframe platforms. A successful mainframe transformation and application modernization begins with a well-informed strategy and uses an iterative process, capturing incremental value and building momentum. It is important to have a partner in the journey with the knowledge, expertise, and a broad ecosystem to support the transformation. A managed services provider can make this process hassle-free, efficient, and cost-effective by managing and securing an organization’s mission-critical operations during and after the process. Commitment to the strategy by stakeholders is required for it to be successfully implemented. This commitment is specially critical for any technology transformation campaign because it touches so many parts of the enterprise technology
At Kyndryl, we support our customers at every stage of the transformation- whether on or off the mainframe, or integrated with a public or private cloud. We enable transformation by providing a 360-degree approach to identifying and solving challenges and driving transformation with our outcome-based modernization expertise.
With the growth in technology, there have been very good hyperscaler products with low carbon footprint and many of the CIOs are thinking of moving back their workload from third party DCs and cloud environment, what is your take on this.
Progress in sustainability requires action on several fronts. One such option is to migrate to a public cloud from legacy data centres. As per a report commissioned by Amazon Web Services (AWS), Indian companies and public sector organizations that migrated from on-premises data centres to cloud infrastructure could expect to reduce their energy and carbon footprint by nearly 80%.
Public cloud providers have data centres that are much more efficient than an average enterprise organization. Thoughtful migration and optimized cloud usage can enable organizations to contribute towards nature by significantly reducing their carbon footprints. If we look at the bigger picture, migrating to greener and more efficient products offered by the hyperscalers is undoubtedly a wise move.
At Kyndryl, we believe global sustainability challenges must be tackled with a vision to create an inclusive and environmentally sustainable future. We are committed to implementing a sustainability strategy integrated with our business approach by applying industry standards, innovation and a sense of urgency.
How Kyndryl is helping the customers in both situations?
At Kyndryl, we firmly believe that applying environmental solutions with our customers and alliance partners will create collaborative opportunities to manage climate change’s impacts.
With decades of experience managing mission-critical IT infrastructures for customers across verticals worldwide, we are well-equipped to cater to the demands of each organization with customized solutions.
