"There are two gale storms coming our way that will change how technology investments are planned and executed. ‘Cloud and consumerization of IT’ will transform how customers think of their IT and service providers rebuild their business models. We are betting the company that this will happen in the next three years. And we want to be the #1 cloud service provider on platform as a service." The conviction and passion is palpable in the voice of Pradeep Rathinam, CEO at Aditi technologies. Six months of manic activity, triggered by the acquisition of Cumulux, a full marathon and a 23 city cloud technology roadshow with Microsoft and his customers are asking for more. He has good reasons to bet the fortunes of Aditi on the cloud.

Aditi Technologies has always been a contrarian in a fairly homogenous Indian IT services sector. When the Indian IT services market was chasing Y2K deals, Aditi instead focused on building the first ‘made in India’ product. Years later, when large scale commodity services like enterprise application maintenance was propelling unheard of growth, it chose to focus on niche high value skills like user experience, program management and product development for ISV. The focus on emerging technology and paradigms has played out very differently for Aditi. It has remained in the mid-size bracket but clients regularly turn to them when a new paradigm emerge which requires serious technology depth. Today, the world’s largest ISV, largest insurance company, largest gaming company, largest information services provider, largest mobile carrier and second largest social network count them as their R&D innovation partner. And the emergence of cloud provides the perfect platform for an innovation blitzkrieg.

Cloud services are still at a relative infancy. Most companies have been considering cloud services and the early movers have around 20 odd cloud implementations for customers. In contrast, Aditi has worked with over 67 clients and notched up an impressive 100 cloud engagements over the past three years. Rathinam’s goal to be the #1 PaaS solution provider is well under way. Fuelling this breakout are two key leverages: a close relationship with Microsoft and addition of Cumulux to the fold. Cumulux is one of the top 3 Microsoft cloud service company in the world and has won the Microsoft cloud partner of the year.
PaaS pioneers
"Emerging technology is core part of our DNA. Our customers have their preferred set of vendors who help them 'run the business'. We focus on helping our clients 'change the business'. We see cloud technologies, specifically platform as a service, change the way businesses will run," says Vineet Arora – the Chief Architect turned Managing director of the company. For context, most cloud implementations today are limited to using cloud as an infrastructure (IaaS) or implementing SaaS products like salesforce.com. Aditi is betting on the nascent cloud technology concept of Platform as a service. Their platform of choice - Microsoft Azure.

PaaS combines an application platform with managed cloud infrastructure services. Platforms like Azure provides an application platform for multi tenet cloud environment and spans development, runtime and management tools and services. Along with Azure, Google app engine (GAE), Force.com., Tibco and Cordys, the PaaS space is evolving rapidly and only a few vendors have developed a services strategy to implement Microsoft PaaS. This is where Aditi has a considerable first mover advantage. And the SI players might have missed a trick.