Cloud Platforms, Online Data and Corona Virus Lockdown

Data management and data analytics have become of utmost importance in today's lockdown situation, where all  the data has to be stored, accessed and managed remotely. In this scenario, multi-cloud platforms are  acquiring increasing in significance and it is no surprise that the IT sector is investing maximum resources on cloud technologies enabled by AI.   A new study from Forrester Consulting, commissioned by Oracle, emphasises the essential role of multi-hybrid cloud platforms to collate the mass of information that enables analysis of insights and inform business-critical decisions.

"Even while the general money stream has considerably narrowed during the last few COVID months, it is also observed that COVID has played as a catalyst in the growth of digital payment platforms in India, with more number of people adopting  e-transaction modes. Forcing people to either stay at home or maintain social distancing has led people to a behavioral change, compelling to be habituated with online payment platforms. In fact, companies have witnessed addition of a high number of new users of digital payment gateways during this time.

Digital platforms are in general highly secure; however it is also important how well aware the users are to potential threats reaching out. On the forefront of fighting off digital fraud, the users have to employ caution and security measures. Few basic measures like not using insecure data networks and not opening links to lucrative websites must be strictly enforced. Also, payments must be made only to trusted sources, and payment gateways on phones and other devices must be strongly protected with passwords, finger prints, or facial recognition too."

--Ashis Guha, CEO, RAH Infotech

"Technology has made it all possible. The pandemic gave us a chance to re-evaluate and push businesses everywhere into an accelerated state of digitisation. COVID-19 has increased the adoption of digital payment solutions significantly. E-payments options are making it possible for people to sit at home and order essentials online be it from Flipkart or Amazon or any of the online E-commerce platforms. The use of digital payments was anyway growing but we have now seen this grown even more exponentially thanks to this COVID-19 situation.

The threat of cyber-crime is a real one - and there are technological solutions like encryption and identity imaging, which helps overcome this cyber-crime threat. There are government regulations in place but the implementation and the imposition of the guidelines of the same should be taken up seriously - currently, there is a gap."

--Prashanth G J, CEO, TechnoBind

"Digitisation is emerging as a potent medium for all business transactions during this Covid-19 crisis and this is here to stay. The Digital India movement is a giant technological leap which is lubricating the wheels of India's economy during this crisis situation. Though we as a country are still at a nascent stage in adopting this countrywide digital transformation, it is in the best interest to establish robust cybersecurity measures. Ransomware, distributed denial of service, and stealing of classified information are rampant globally and hacking is getting more sophisticated, so it's imperative to be well equipped to deal with cyber-attacks and close all backdoors. The solution to this is simple, to be proactive instead of reactive. ATEN being a pioneer in Secure KVM solution with built-in hardware and software-based security features are helping government, military, intelligence agencies across the world to allow protected access and management of data."

--Sunayana Hazarika, Marketing Manager,    ATEN

"Corona virus has broken the supply chain while rupturing the demand and market trends. As we're forced to work remotely and use technologies for the first time, we're realising the benefits they deliver. Organisations are getting deeper into digital transformation. There is a paradigm-shifting to remote banking, digital payments, and direct financial aid which is further pushing the financial industry to become digital. This transformation will inevitably promote India's Digital Mission. Policymakers need to support the ways people and organisations are using the internet to come together and deal with new pressures as our lives shift abruptly online. The focal point will be to ensure that critical functions like IT, cybersecurity, fraud prevention, and digital services are well protected."

--Shibu Paul, VP, International Sales,    Array Networks

"The COVID-19 pandemic has allowed us to modernise and harness the power of technology.  Stakeholders are using technology to cushion the impact of COVID-19.  We see major digital transformation coming up as India gears to establish a sense of normalcy. This shift is bound to drive India's digital mission. Remote working and e-services have become the new norm. Banking and Personal finance institutions are trying to limit customer walk-ins by augmenting their digital capabilities and extending new online services. We see exacerbated use of hybrid cloud and hyper-converged platforms as people have realized the importance of cloud-based communication-enabled business processing. This has also led to the strengthening of cybersecurity systems to safeguard sensitive data and protect assets from malicious data breaches. Going forward, the industry would need systems that enable remote monitoring of processes and machines. Remote work will play a significant role in business continuity planning and this digital transformation will further aid in fulfilling India's Digital Mission."

--Gurpreet Singh, MD,   Arrow PC Network

The study explains that 82% of the 670 senior technology decision makers recognise that investing in the right data management strategy will lead to better business outcomes. But 73% admit that they have disparate and compartmentalised data strategies that are stopping them from providing business stakeholders with the data they need.   With increased complexity, compounded by working across different IT environments, 64% of respondents are grappling with the challenge of managing a multi-hybrid infrastructure. So it’s not a surprise if 70% of organisations consider the need to simplify their IT processes as a high priority.

Following are the main highlights of the study -

• 82% want their data strategy to lead to a better understanding of the customer and a better customer experience.
• 73% of organisations report disparate and disjuncted data strategies that stop them from achieving this goal.
• 36% of the data is still hosted on-premise, 19% is hosted on a public cloud and 18% on private cloud.
• The nature of the data collected by these organisations has considerably changed – with 31% being tabular/structured and the remainder being non-tabular/semi structured or unstructured data. Of the latter, are 18% text data and the rest evenly distributed across images/video, machine generated data, streaming data and others
• Public sector and retail shows low data strategy maturity - 34% of public sector and healthcare organisations have an incomplete data strategy.

In the light of the above, it is imperative for the channel community to migrate to cloud platforms and  expand their business in the online platform mode. The IT world is changing fast and the channel community has to move fast with it.