Without cloud, you are dead’

There’s an inevitability about cloud today. That was reflected by panelists on the Times Techies webinar recently.

Indu Malhotra, vice president of cloud infrastructure services for India at Capgemini, said the pandemic has taught us that on-premise infrastructure just cannot provide the same level of agility and capability offered by cloud. There’s no need any more, she said, to convince anyone about cloud – they just want to know how to use cloud in their environment.

Raj Shekhar Joshi, head of global technology transformation and information security at the Aditya Birla Group, was also absolutely clear that moving to cloud was a no-brainer. “If you are not using cloud and AI, you may not be in the race tomorrow. It’s an existential question today. Wherever there is data, wherever there is connectivity, and wherever there is a user, cloud has to be there,” he said.

Joshi said most Aditya Birla Group companies have moved to cloud. “When the pandemic struck, overnight we put some 30,000 people on to the cloud environment. Even a company in an area as traditional as mining, they moved their entire ERP operation to cloud. Our retail companies are able to do design collaborations very quickly, bring products to market quickly because of cloud,” he said.

Neelam Gupta, vice president of group portfolio for India in Capgemini, said large companies can even reduce their carbon footprint by almost 30% if they move to cloud. The way cloud infrastructure is designed – multi-tenant, shared environment – and the cloud data centre management practices, bring a lot of energy efficiency. Big cloud providers are also now making conscious efforts to use green energy, compared to those who have infrastructure on-premise,” Gupta said.

But everyone noted that security on the cloud requires special attention. Joshi noted how people feel they are automatically secure when they move to cloud. “That is not the case. Many of the security breaches that have happened over the last year were because of misconfigurations in the cloud. Buy security tools, from cloud providers themselves, but also from others too. Ensure backups,” he said.

Malhotra said the agile methodology – used to develop and bring features at a pace like never before – also makes it critical to focus on security. “For that, you need what’s called DevSecOps – embed security right at the design stage, and ensure right security tests before releases,” she said.

Joshi said it also makes sense for large companies to have more than one cloud vendor, even if their offerings are similar. It would make a difference, he said, to the way they structure their deals, the way their enterprise account management teams deal with you, the way they provide extra benefits.

Gupta said often the driver for multi-cloud is the notion that you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket. “If something goes wrong, a relationship doesn’t go that well, then you are not dependent on one vendor,” she said. As for cloud services, she said, some vendors are more mature in certain services than others, depending on who launched the service first. “So, choose the best. Though most catch up at some point,” she said.

Malhotra said startups typically go with a single cloud, because the tradeoff of managing and standardising across multiple clouds does not give them the required return on investment. Gupta said if a cloud vendor offers a startup a good package that has everything to run the business, including the financials, then they could go with a single vendor. “Otherwise, even they could look at more than one vendor,” she said.

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