Indian IT biggies open new windows with cloud services

Indian IT services biggies are taking baby steps in ?cloud? services, a new Internet-based technology that can change the way IT services are delivered today, and rock Indian IT?s primary service offering?application development and maintainance (ADM).

Although ADM generates 40% or more in top line for most IT services firms in India, cloud computing may change the entire scenario in the years to come. Enterprises worldwide may no longer need custom applications. They can pick and choose from the huge application marketplace being built by firms such as Salesforce, Google, and Microsoft.

Cloud computing, as it uses virtual technologies, can potentially help an enterprise shed all its IT assets one day; their servers and storage can be rented as per the need from cloud infrastructure providers. Ditto for applications such as mails and spreadsheets, crippling the traditional licensing model software product vendors are used to.

Research firm Gartner had estimated the cloud computing market to surpass $56 billion in 2009 and touch $150 billion in 2013. It predicts that by 2012, 20% of businesses will own no IT assets.

To protect their backyard, India?s top three IT services exporters?TCS, Infosys, and Wipro ?are readying cloud services. They are engaged in consulting assignments and are talking of creating what Wipro?s chief strategy officer Lakshminarayana KR says is a ?two-minute noodle? approach.

Wipro is piloting its cloud services such as office productivity and ERP in some small and medium business clusters?textiles, gems & jewellery and healthcare.

TCS too is piloting a new solution for small businesses with 60 customers on a monthly rental model, CEO N Chandrasekaran said. ?We need to create new business models using the cloud computing paradigm. We have made three bets so far. They are all in early stages of adoption,? he told scribes during a recent interaction in Bangalore. The firm has 2000 branches rolled out on this platform.

Infosys has thus far done cloud engagements with about 20 customers and Wipro a similar number of consulting assignments where it has helped customers identify applications and then migrated them to the cloud. Both firms are internally using a ?private cloud? and its success is being showcased to customers. In a private cloud, the IT assets are still owned by the enterprise and not any third-party infrastructure provider.

Wipro believes that while SMBs will adopt cloud services over the next 3-5 years, bigger corporations will remain sceptical and hold on to their assets. ?We can provide end-to-end services on private cloud?consulting, architecting, SI, maintainance.

Enterprise mails, for instance, can migrate to the cloud. This gives us an opportunity for consulting and integration work,? Lakshminarayana said.

For public cloud, Wipro has inked partnerships with Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP, Oracle, EMC, and Cisco to help customers migrate to these platforms.

Besides consulting service, Infosys has readied a bunch of cloud offerings. The first category is Platform BPO. ?The platform takes an well established component like an SAP

HR module or an Oracle fina-ncial module, applies vertical knowledge, and customises the business processes to the verticals. It is then made available as a software as a service (SaaS) model in a ready to consume fashion,? explained Raghavan Subramanian, head of Cloud Computing Centre of Exce-llence at Infosys.

?We must have a set of services for the cloud because if it really takes off, we can get disintermediated. It is possible that the way applications are developed and used can be very different. It will be developed and owned by the supplier or the vendor rather than the client. Today, when we develop an application, it is owned by the client. Unless we own the apps, it will be owned by somebody else and they will not use Infosys to do the development,? CEO Kris Gopalakrishnan told FE.

However, he added that even though cloud is a threat to traditional services model, it is not a significant headwind right now since all enterprises will not move to the cloud overnight. ?May be, in the next 5-10 years. We have time to build our portfolio and operate in the changing scenario,? he added.