By Srinath Srinivasan
With buyers displaying a robust preference for on-demand services and items, enterprises are exploring different cloud options—private (their personal servers), public (like that of AWS, Azure, Google) and also hybrids, with public clouds undertaking the heavy lifting and mission-essential tasks in instances of scaling the business enterprise. While the blue-chip biggies present services to set up cloud infrastructure and run finish-to-finish services, there exists a niche segment exactly where several tiny to medium service providers operate. They allow organisations to set up their personal cloud, aid them migrate involving different significant public clouds and also provide worth added services on a subscription basis although making sure higher levels of safety.
“There are at least 50-60 smaller companies doing revenues around $100 million globally,” says AS Rajgopal, CEO, NxtGen Datacenter. “Many businesses begin their digital journey in a cloud ecosystem and scale up in the same. There is a huge set of features and services to retain enterprises today in one particular ecosystem that makes it look like the market is dominated by only a few. It is both an advantage and a pain point sometimes for enterprises.”
Rajgopal has been at the forefront of delivering cloud infrastructure services, information centre co-place for corporations and committed hosting with diversification into video analytics, access manage and creating a platform for NxtGen’s clientele to construct their personal applications. According to him, the use circumstances are lots when it comes to cloud but in the last year alone, video analytics, access manage and remote monitoring have seen a surge due to Covid-19 and the need to have to physically remain away from the workplace. The options are made for different cloud platforms so that organisations do not get locked into one when there is a clear need to have to migrate to other platforms.
“In the public cloud market, it does not make sense to compete with the large brands. Working with them opens up a lot of opportunities,” says Chetan Jain, director, Inspira Enterprise. According to him, for the ones who want to set up their personal cloud, the approach is quite simple. “First we build and architect their solutions. Once that is done, we implement the solution, and then, operate and manage it for typically three to five years, depending on the customer,” he explains.
Sometimes migrations involving different cloud platforms might get complicated and that is exactly where service providers like Inspira and NxtGen step in. To them, this is an untapped market place and a stronger proposition than competing with the significant public cloud players head on. This also opens doors for them to go worldwide. Inspira has been generating inroads in the Middle East, Africa, Sri Lanka, and Singapore although NxtGen has presence in UAE and Oman. “Emerging markets have increased data, cyber security and a huge scope of analytics needs. Businesses in these markets evolve every three years and their needs change as well,” says Jain.
Cyber safety, access manage, analytics, remote surveillance are places of innovation for these firms. “Covid presented a unique challenge. Disaster recovery needs our people to be on the site and work. Our business was classified as essential service but the risk of getting infected was still present. We had to reimagine that. We strengthened our remote working capability. Many of our customers see this as a boon,” says Rajgopal.
For enterprises experiencing heavy visitors, Inspira utilizes AI and ML to monitor IPs and information for threats. “One of our customers is a large bank. We monitor close to about five lakh events per second. So we built intelligence, to filter traffic automatically and then to help us manually look at that and decide if that could be a threat,” says Jain.
In terms of adoption of the technologies, the firms look forward to enhanced information regulations and cultural modifications in organisations. “GDPR was a good move at macro level for cloud adoption. If businesses start maintaining basic hygiene, like adopting cloud-first solutions in employee workflows and changing passwords every three months, they will realise the need to have the larger conversation on full transformation and security easily,” says Jain.