Magazine : 
There's No Wrong Time to Move to Cloud
In today's dynamic digital world, the ways a business approaches its cloud computing strategy is tantamount to its growth. Cloud adoption was expanding rapidly for several years and it has seen acceleration during the pandemic. But in the post pandemic world, new trends in cloud adoption are taking shape. In a recent interaction with the Editor of Siliconindia, Sumed Marwaha, Managing Director, Unisys India, shared his insights on the widespread acceptance of the Cloud advancements in modern technology.
How has Cloud evolved in India and what is the current scenario in terms of adoption?
Cloud Computing has three key types of offerings: IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. Based on their requirement, a business owner can choose any one or more of these offerings which is available from multiple service providers. Cloud Computing provides flexibility, faster commissioning, decommissioning, on-demand availability, pay per use and many other benefits for business owners to quickly scale-up and or down their infrastructure or applications as may be required. This enables the businesses to focus on their core offerings while leaving their IT needs to be fulfilled by their cloud service provider, without having the business to invest huge capital in their IT requirements. They can spend their capital on their core business while paying for their IT costs on usage basis. The cloud also provides flexibility to run the services from locations closer to the consumer base of the businesses thus providing even better reach while eliminating any latency issues for the business.
How has Cloud aided in terms of Productivity, Efficiency, and Scalability?
Cloud enables the businesses to focus on their core offerings while IT is enabled by the cloud service provider. It enhances the businesses productivity as they need not invest huge capital and manpower on spinning up servers or databases when all of these can be made available with a click of a button. The cloud also enables quick expansion of resources as required, which may be used to run month end, quarter end or any other promotional programs for businesses which may see rapid increase in the requirement of resources for a temporary period of time. These resources can be deployed for limited period of time only improving the efficiency of the operation. The cloud is scalable quickly and in multiple geographies for the business to take advantage wherever they may be.
How can Cloud services be advantageous to the user end point?
During the pandemic we witnessed many businesses opting cloud platforms as their end users started to work remotely. Cloud can provide online access to their users in a secured manner. Modernizing applications using cloud provides this flexibility to organizations and also ensures applications are designed for future scalability. There are various SaaS offerings available (like Office 365 etc.) which enable users to access various business applications like email, SharePoint etc. on the cloud from anywhere.
Is there a right time to move to Cloud?
The right time to move to cloud was yesterday. If you have not already done that, please start now. Most of the new innovation will be better suited for modern and cloud enabled applications and environment. In a time of uncertainty, organizations need to ensure that their IT infrastructure and applications are available 24x7 and accessible from anywhere and cloud can enable that for them.
Security concern in the cloud is not a barrier to adoption as it was once. Considering this, what's the future for Cloud adoption?
Cloud Computing has come a long way from a security standpoint. It used to be one of the biggest concerns a few years ago, but the service providers have really worked hard to take care of it. I believe with 5G networks ramping up worldwide, cloud will be even more accessible from different devices. Edge computing will ensure there is a compute environment available closer to the users. I believe we will see more innovative Cloud Computing models and every business, small or large, will depend on cloud as we move into the future.
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