Cloud Architecture, Hybrid Cloud & AI to Become Important in 2021

Cloud architecture related to Hybrid Cloud and AI are becoming critical in the aftermath of lockdown and with the new wave of rising Corona cases, remote work is becoming very important. Sandip Patel, MD, IBM India talked to DQ Channels about this increasingly visible change in the industries. This information is especially important for the CSPs and Systems Integrators and Managed Services Providers. They can focus on these services to expand their business in 2021.

IT Landscape after Lockdown

Responding to a query about the situation of IT landscape post-lockdown, Sandip Patel said, "The IT landscape in India has leapfrogged in the last one year with emerging technologies helping clients take advantage of the data paradigm and reshape standard business models. AI, Hybrid Cloud, analytics, automation, IoT and blockchain, underpinned by security have become pervasive, helping businesses gain speed and scale in the move to digital." He added further, "

This has increased the importance of Cloud Architecture, AI and automation in industrial set ups.

In fact, the increased push for digitisation has had a direct impact on hybrid cloud adoption.  Everywhere you look today, businesses and organisations have an acute need for speed to market, flexibility and agility, and continuous innovation. On this, hybrid cloud delivers. In fact, clients find that choosing a hybrid cloud approach is 2.5 times more valuable than relying on public cloud alone.  Benefits are across many areas - business value acceleration, developer productivity, infrastructure cost efficiency, cost of regulatory, compliance and security."

Sandip Patel also said that the opportunity in AI is massive while the current enterprise deployment rate is in the single digits. Clients are now at the point where they are moving from experimenting with AI to deploying it at scale.

Meeting the Challenges

Elaborating upon meeting the challenges in post-lockdown phase, Sandip Patel said that IBM has made decisive moves to help its clients thrive by tapping into the immense power of hybrid cloud and AI.

He enumerated three factors that will determine the success of AI in business - Automation (across business processes and IT), Natural Language Processing (understand and can extract insights from the language of business) and Trust/Explainability (achieve greater trust, transparency and confidence in business predictions and outcomes by applying the industry’s most comprehensive data and AI governance solutions). He further said that more importantly, with rapid technology adoption, will come an increased adoption of novel security technologies including Quantum-Safe encryption and fully homomorphic encryption.

He further elaborated about the strategies the organisation is taking to meet these challenges.  He said, "First, we will drive a new model of engagement that will enable us to create highly-experiential journeys through relevant value propositions for our clients – both digitally and through IBM Technology Garage sessions. We will have our cloud developers and data scientists engage with clients early on, to show the solution capabilities through rapid prototyping. Second, a key element to our strategy is to win the architectural battle in cloud. A platform-centric strategy requires a fundamentally different way of doing business and our strategy is aimed at creating value through greater focus on our portfolio, our operating model, and the needs of our clients."

Growing Sectors in Terms of Demand

In a response to the query about which sectors are growing in demand for hybrid cloud, AI and automation, he said, "We are witnessing uptake for technology led transformation across sectors, both in Enterprise and SMB segments, though the adoption patterns tend to vary. For example, according to IBM CEO study, over 111 CEOs in India, highlighted that regulation, technology infrastructure and managing an ‘Anywhere’ Workforce will be top challenges until 2023. They believe focus on talent, technology and partnerships can be key to thrive post-COVID-19 pandemic. We are working with many of our clients to navigate their complex and mission-critical needs and address some of these challenges."

According to Sandip Patel, another key segment is the Banking and Financial Services industry, as both public and private sector banks are now starting their journey towards the cloud. A third important sector is Cybersecurity, which is a huge focus for the BFSI sector.

"Clients across various sectors continue to see value in Hybrid Cloud, AI, Security, Server and storage solutions. We have in the last couple of years launched many solutions to accelerate our client’s innovation journey."

--Sandip Patel, MD, IBM India

Sandip Patel informed us that to help clients undertake this journey to Hybrid Cloud & AI, the organisation he represents is supporting them with modernising their underlying infrastructure and there is seeing a lot of uptake in this area. He said that for example, today, 11 out of 13 public sector banks are running their mission-critical workloads on IBM Power Systems. In addition, with the amalgamation of 10 public sector banks into 4 megabanks- 3 of the resultant entities are running their core banking systems and all 4 banks run their mission-critical workloads on IBM Power Systems.

This conversation shows that the growing need for Cloud Architecture, AI an Hybrid Cloud has necessitated the Systems Integrators and Managed Services Providers to build these services into their offerings. Other partners should also build Cloud Architecture and AI related services and cybersecurity offerings into their services.