🔊 Take a moment and listen

Cloud computing is about data storage, analytics, ease of access, flexibility, data security and much more. It’s been on account of these very features that cloud technology has seen a large-scale adoption over a short period of time across the globe. With rising use of Internet and the Government of India launching various data- and analytics-intensive programmes, cloud service providers can look forward to brighter times ahead, writes Akanki Sharma of Elets News Network (ENN)

In the past, people would run applications and programmes from software downloaded on a physical device or computer or server in a building. Storing of data also required a physical device or a server room; more the data, more the space required. For big organisations, managing and storing data was a tedious job as they had to deal with volumes of data.

However, with the advent of cloud computing, things have under- gone a drastic change. It has brought in not just the ease of storage, but also universal accessibility to the data stored: anyone can access any data from any part of the world, thus making various business processes much easier. Besides, it also facilitates IT services to cloud users with greater flexibility, reliability as well as scalability.

Apart from the government ecosystem, cloud computing has seen wide acceptance and adoption by the businesses across the globe, thus thrown open floodgates of opportunities for the IT companies offering cloud solutions and the peripherals.

In this context, the Internet has played a role of a catalyst. With Internet of things (IoT) being seen as the way forward, cloud technology is set to reach full bloom sooner than later. Moreover, given the wave of creating more and more smart cities, we are set to generate much more data than ever before. This will also require further storage space as well as the facility for analysing the same, and that will make cloud still more relevant.

India on Cloud

Although the cloud computing technology has been in use in India for quite some time now, mostly by the business houses, the Government of India came up with its own cloud – Meghraj in early 2014. And, within a year’s time, as many as 241 government departments and projects went running through this cloud, including initiatives like Digital Locker, scholarships, MyGov and eHospital, among others.

It has a huge potential for usage in the eGovernance domain and rural development in developing countries like India, where physical infrastructure in far-flung areas is still amiss. This technology becomes all the more significant following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s various programmes like Digital India, Make in India, Startup India and the Smart Cities Mission, as all of these require data storage and analytics as well as universal accessibility for the citizens.

VIRENDER JEET Senior Vice President Technology Newgen Software “Newgen has always been the leader when it comes to adopting new technologies that empower businesses. Anticipating the potential of cloud in creating lean, agile and smart enterprises, we have extended our core products as well as BPM-based point solutions to the cloud platform. The solutions are available both on public and private cloud to create dynamically scalable and highly reliable enterprise applications. A multi-tenant architecture ensures that the same infrastructure can be optimally utilised by multiple customers in a very flexible pay per use model”

Virender Jeet, Senior Vice President, Technology at Newgen Software explains that cloud is a widely accessible network of the Internet that could prove to be a smart choice as an enterprise-wide operational platform for businesses. “A customer has the flexibility of starting with the bare minimum resources and auto-scaling to a higher load as and when required.”

The Cloud Market

As per a survey by the USA-based Public Technology Institute, 45 per cent of local governments in the US use some form of cloud computing. The primary reason for taking this step is to save the resources like time, maintenance and support costs. Moreover, using a cloud computing model, the cost for US federal data centre infrastructure can drop up to 30 per cent leading to savings to the tune of USD7.2 billion. Similarly, the Government of India is also saving a huge amount through its use in projects like Aadhaar.

A recent report by Gartner suggests that the cloud computing will comprise a bulk of IT spending in 2016. It is anticipated that the cloud market in India itself would reach about USD 2 billion by 2018. A survey has also revealed that 53 per cent of the organisations in India indicate that they have already been using cloud services, while 43 per cent are planning to begin its use in the next few months.

Looking at the demographic profile of India, around 60-70 per cent population is less than 30 years. So, with the growing use of Internet, the demand for cloud service providers is definitely going to surge manifolds. Notably, some of the major cloud service providers covering the globe, including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Alibaba, IBM and HP, are investing in the coun- try with open hands, especially in their data centres. India, after all, is perceived as one of the fastest growing markets in terms of IT and ITeS.

Public Vs Private Cloud

A perennial query remains whether one should go for private cloud or public cloud. The basic technological difference between a private and a public cloud is that private cloud uses a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to render a highly customised data storage and management architecture that allows organisations to score high on information security, confidentiality as well as regulatory compliance. However, it carries the same staffing, management, maintenance and capital expenses issues that are common to the traditional, on-premise data centres.

On the other hand, public cloud shares a computing infrastructure with various users, business units or businesses, providing the much needed scalability, flexibility and agility for businesses at half the cost and without the requirement for a complex infrastructure. However, given its shared environment, public cloud is not suitable for businesses involving mission-critical workloads, security concerns, uptime requirements or management demands.

“While private cloud gives you proprietary and highly customised data architecture, public cloud delivers the ability to change computing resources on-demand and provision of multiple machines for complex computing jobs,” adds the Newgen official.

Jeet further says that in case of private cloud, the data in transit is also secured using a VPN tunnel. “With private cloud, your enterprise stands to score high marks on information security, confidentiality as well as regulatory adherence and compliance, thus suggest- ing that private cloud is best for businesses with dynamic or unpredictable computing needs that require direct control over their environments.”

However, public cloud is preferable for the more voluminous, mundane and working levels of data and information management, for which security is lower on priority than the potential business advantage that could be extracted out of it through the timely access, essential to such data and content. Some other benefits of a public cloud also include self-service, scalability and multi-tenancy,” observes Jeet.

Looking Ahead

In the backdrop of the given facts, one can safely say that cloud computing is not just here to stay, but in the coming years, its usage is set to grow at a pace faster than one could ever think of. The services would be availed by all the sectors – be it healthcare, education, banking or the government itself. In other words, the cloud is set to reign in the days ahead.

Be a part of Elets Collaborative Initiatives. Join Us for Upcoming Events and explore business opportunities. Like us on Facebook , connect with us on LinkedIn and follow us on Twitter, Instagram.