Indian businesses that had put their digital transformation on a long-term roadmap now are scurrying to speed up such efforts to cope with the ripple effects of the global pandemic. For them, hybrid cloud offers a compelling option to accelerate their business transformation and, VMware Cloud on AWS with Sify, specifically, addresses concerns companies have about cloud migration and complexity.
Even before the COVID-19 outbreak, organisations had already recognised the value of digitalisation in terms of operational efficiencies, enhanced productivity, and enriched service delivery, amongst others.
For traditional sectors such as agriculture, retail, and healthcare, digitalisation can create incremental value of between $10 billion and $150 billion for each sector by 2025, according to McKinsey. Digital applications in these industries can boost output, save time and costs, reduce fraud, and plug the gap between demand and supply.
The consulting firm notes that tapping such benefits will depend on how quickly executives adapt their organisation's existing business models and how thoroughly they digitalise internal operations.
The journey, though, has not been easy, as some Indian businesses struggle with their digital transformation. Some 61%, for example, reveal that cybersecurity risks are hindering their digitalisation efforts, with 46% of respondents that have begun their digital transformation experiencing a security incident, according to a Frost & Sullivan study.
Concerns about security as well as the lack of in-house skillsets, among others, had led businesses to push digital transformation back on their agenda, stretching such plans on a three- to four-year timeline, according to Sushant Purushan, Business Head, Datacenter and Cloud Services at Sify Technologies.
This was before COVID-19 changed the course and moved the timeline up to one to three years, he says. Businesses are betting on digital transformation to improve their internal efficiencies as well as create new revenue streams and open the door to new markets and platforms.
Purushan notes: "There's no longer an option to delay or postpone their digital transformation plans. Organisations definitely feel the need to scale up such efforts."
Cloud can help ease the transition, offering a cost-effective, low-risk infrastructure that is consistent and fast to deploy -- particularly when Indian companies choose to deploy VMware Cloud on AWS.
VMware Cloud on AWS by Sify powers safe transition to digital
IDC predicts that COVID-19 will push cloud demand for 64% of Indian organisations and see another 56% increase in demand for cloud software. The research firm says cloud adoption will climb as businesses look to test new initiatives natively on such platforms.
However, their cloud journey can prove challenging, particularly in terms of capabilities and skillsets and managing the complexities of moving to the cloud.
Ravi Maguluri, CTO – Cloud and Managed services at Sify Technologies explains: "Many are reluctant to migrate because there are different platforms operating on different hypervisors and they will need multiple tools to manage these. This can inflate costs. And if the tool isn't competent or compliant with their existing workloads, they will encounter downtime and this will impact productivity as well as hamper business agility."
These concerns can be addressed when they adopt VMware Cloud on AWS with the help of a competent VMware cloud provider partner, such as Sify Technologies.
VMware's cloud platform provides consistent operations and compatibility with VMware’s on-prem infrastructure. This ensures workloads are highly portable and provides for true hybrid capabilities, enabling companies to move applications easily between all environments including on-prem and cloud.
For the few companies that are not running VMware in their IT environment, service providers such as Sify can help them seamlessly switch hypervisors and migrate to VMware Cloud on AWS.
To further address concerns Indian businesses may have about cloud security, Maguluri notes that Sify's cloud infrastructure is hosted on its own data centres, which are compliant with the most stringent regulations and industry standard security protocols.
VMware Cloud on AWS also uses a shared responsibility model for security, which ensures a higher level of security and eliminates single points of failure. In addition, VMware has robust controls in place to safeguard all application or object source code, ensuring that access is restricted only to authorised personnel. Its security development lifecycle programme is further designed to identify and mitigate security risk during the development phase of VMware software products, so they are released to customers only when they are tested to be safe.
Deployed alongside partners such as Sify, VMware Cloud on AWS provides Indian customers a seamless digital transformation that is secure and resilient.
"Powered by our cloud-adjacent data centres and integration with hyperscalers, our cloud platform delivers on-prem like performance even for cloud workloads," Purushan says. "Through our CloudInfinit Cloud Management Platform, we provide customers with a unified view of their cloud environment for complete visibility, better control, and in-depth insight."
These, he adds, should resolve common concerns amongst Indian businesses that cloud would be costly and dilute the performance of their applications.
Sify Technologies is one of India's most comprehensive ICT service and solution providers, offering capabilities around cloud, data centre, network, digital services, security, and system integration services. Operating one of India's largest MPLS networks, Sify owns 10 data centres and has another 48 interconnected data canters. Its network spans more than 3,100 points-of-presence covering more than 1,600 cities. With its cloud@core portfolio of services, Sify is helping customers achieve their digital ambition with agility, flexibility, and choice.
Contact Sify today to start your hybrid cloud journey with VMware Cloud on AWS.
