Cloud for organisational growth and transformation is three times more important than cloud used to cut costs, according to research conducted by Infosys. It also indicates while companies continue to invest in cloud, less than half of the committed spend is actually being utilised. Anant Adya, executive vice-president & service offering head, Infosys, spoke to Sudhir Chowdhary on some of the key findings from this year’s Cloud Radar research. Excerpts:
How do you see cloud investments playing out in the near future, given that companies also see ROI and profitability?
Companies use the cloud to grow, and it delivers. Moving beyond storage and cost-cutting to utilising the cloud to gain access to new technology and capabilities, enable new revenue streams and adopt newer technologies like AI is now mainstream. However, companies risk losing cost, security, and management control as cloud usage expands. To avoid these risks, the report recommends three actions to help enterprises better utilise and manage cloud.
First, companies should master monitoring and prediction. Technology experts and business leaders should collaborate to keep everyone on the same page and predict future costs.
Second, they should embed the business case into the cloud. Without a business case or business owner, tracking and attributing the return on investment of a cloud initiative is challenging, if not impossible.
But the cloud must remain fast and flexible — those are its key attributes.
Finally, companies should adopt a value-centric cloud operating model. This model is set up by organising cloud teams around these customer journeys, client experiences, or value streams.
Give us a sense of how spending around the cloud is growing around the world. In the past year, two-thirds of companies have increased their cloud spending. In the next year, 80% of companies plan to up their cloud spending. This is contrary to apprehensions earlier this year that companies would decrease cloud spending as recession and layoffs loomed.
We expect spending to continue to increase. As cloud-driven solutions such as generative AI, internet of things and 5G continue to be adopted and permeate the enterprise landscape, companies will require more cloud.
Any challenges to the cloud opportunity that Gen AI adoption will bring?
Generative AI and advanced data analytics can unleash a new wave of transformation when adopted alongside the cloud. AI works on humongous amounts of data and needs vigorous computing capabilities. AI is only going to trigger higher consumption of cloud services and infrastructure as organisations unlock new use cases for generative AI.
For instance, Infosys implemented MLOps (Machine Learning Operations) principles and blueprints for deploying different patterns such as a real-time model-serving batch utilising cloud-native principles. This ensured the solution was highly portable, enabling deployment on-premises and across cloud providers like Azure and Google Cloud Platform.
What trends are resonating with clients in the context of cloud adoption?
Over the past two years, there has been a noticeable shift in companies’ interest in cloud investments. Based on our 2021 cloud research, over half of the companies surveyed reported using two or three cloud providers for their infrastructure or services. However, this year 65% of companies are using three or four cloud providers or services. In addition, the proportion of companies relying on a single cloud provider has decreased from 21% in 2021 to 7% in 2023. Over the next few years, businesses can expect to see even greater advancements in cloud computing.
CLOUD DYNAMICS
67% of companies increased cloud spending this year
80% intend to raise their spending next year
47%of the committed cloud spend is utilised currently
50%of companies struggle to manage their cloud costs
75%of companies report cloud migration is very effective
Source: Infosys Cloud Radar 2023
