Reflections from the India Cloud Day Conference

With public cloud services in India estimated to grow to $7.3 billion in 2022, it’s not a matter of if you should move to the cloud—but how and when

At the India Cloud Day conference on November 18, 2021, the question on everyone’s mind was not whether organizations should move to the cloud—but how, when, and in what manner should they?

Digital transformation due to the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the need for agility, and more value is expected from technology than ever before. Cloud is now vital for a firm’s survival. Gartner predicts that public cloud services in India are estimated to grow to $7.3 billion in 2022. Infrastructure as a Service is estimated to be about a third of the total investments in public cloud services.

The three-hour virtual India Cloud Day conference, which was organized by Netnex Global and sponsored by Apptio, saw a mix of over 200 participants across industry verticals like manufacturing, banking, and retail. The participants also varied in size from enterprise to SMB (small to medium business).

Industry leaders spoke at length about how businesses should approach cloud migration securely, picking the right cloud configuration for the business and integrating new-age technologies for the cloud. Underpinning this conversation was a need for companies to use real-time analytics that provide visibility into the IT footprint, consumption, costs, and utilization trends. Organizations need data to make the decisions to move the right workloads to cloud based on business goals and risk mitigation—instead of a piecemeal approach based on ease of execution.

Mallory Beaudreau, customer portfolio director at Apptio, noted that cloud has advanced to become an indispensable enabler of business transformation. She emphasized that success in modernizing IT through the cloud begins with a discerning look at the existing portfolio. Determine what is suited for public cloud platforms or SaaS alternatives. Choosing your transformation approach, articulating IT and business goals, securing buy-in, addressing change management, and adopting new KPIs are key steps along the way. Sustaining the benefits obtained is the secret sauce to unlocking the full power of the cloud.

She stated, “Value is not just about savings—organizations are not just reducing the total cost of ownership, but are using cloud to move fast and innovate, leaning into key business goals and line of business requirements.”

Apptio is a pioneer of Technology Business Management (TBM), as well as a premier member of the FinOps Foundation. Thousands of Apptio customers over the past 13 years have successfully reduced their cost of IT with full visibility across all IT assets. With Apptio’s solutions, technology and business leaders can quickly justify technology investments to their board and leadership and present best practice benchmarking, vendor management, and transparent tech chargeback to business units if needed. Apptio works closely with cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and others to enable complete public cloud optimization.

As we look forward to the new year, a Forrester report predicts that we will see companies begin to scale up their digital presence, seeking cloud efficiencies, scalable solutions, and unique customization. As India embarks on this transformation journey, Apptio is the toolkit the modern CIO needs. Learn more about Apptio and its offerings here.

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