In its market study, Ofcom identified a number of features in the supply of cloud services that make it more difficult for customers to switch and use multiple cloud suppliers…reports Asian Lite News
UK media regulator Ofcom on Thursday referred the public cloud infrastructure services market to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) for an independent investigation to further examine US tech giants Amazon and Microsoft’s dominance of the cloud market in the country.
In its market study, Ofcom identified a number of features in the supply of cloud services that make it more difficult for customers to switch and use multiple cloud suppliers.
Ofcom has estimated that the market for cloud services in the UK was worth up to 7.5 billion pounds in 2022. “We welcome Ofcom’s referral of public cloud infrastructure services to us for in-depth scrutiny. This is a 7.5 billion pounds market that underpins a whole host of online services — from social media to AI foundation models,” said Sarah Cardell, CEO of the CMA.
The features which Ofcom is most concerned about are charges that cloud customers must pay to move their data out of the cloud.
The media regulator is also concerned about discounts which may incentivise customers to use only one cloud provider and technical barriers to switching, which may prevent customers from being able to switch between different clouds or use more than one provider. The Ofcom study found that Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft had a combined market share of supply by revenue in the UK public cloud infrastructure services market of 70-80 per cent in 2022.
“The CMA’s independent inquiry group will now carry out an investigation to determine whether competition in this market is working well and if not, what action should be taken to address any issues it finds,” said Cardell.
The CMA has appointed independent panel members to an inquiry group, who will act as the decision makers on this investigation. The CMA will conclude its investigation by April 2025.
The challenge for marketers, sellers, and service agents is to leverage the new velocity and vast quantity of data, with the help of AI, to unlock powerful insights that benefit customers and help grow business…reports Asian Lite News
Cloud major Oracle on Tuesday added new artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities in its Fusion Cloud Customer Experience (CX) to help marketers, sellers, and service agents grow revenue and deliver exceptional customer experience.
The latest AI capabilities liberate marketers, sellers, and service agents from time-consuming and manual tasks by unlocking relevant content, recommendations, and insights with automation and conversational interfaces, the company said during its flagship ‘Oracle CloudWorld 2023’ conference here.
“Pre-trained large language models (LLMs) are changing the way we interact with people, content, and critical knowledge in our enterprises. We can now unlock insights and communicate with clarity like never before,” said Rob Tarkoff, executive vice president and general manager, Oracle Cloud CX.
The challenge for marketers, sellers, and service agents is to leverage the new velocity and vast quantity of data, with the help of AI, to unlock powerful insights that benefit customers and help grow business.
“With a unique combination of traditional and generative AI, running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and embedded in application flows, Oracle Cloud CX enables customer experience professionals to do their jobs with more accuracy and efficiency to ultimately drive more revenue,” Tarkoff added.
Part of Oracle Fusion Cloud Service, the new generative AI capabilities include assisted agent responses, knowledge articles, and administrator guidance as well as search augmentation, customer engagement summaries, and field service recommendations.
The company also announced new Guided Campaigns features within Oracle Fusion Cloud Customer Experience (CX) that help improve efficiency and collaboration between marketers and sellers.
The new features can guide marketers through a simplified campaign builder to launch hyper-targeted, high-quality campaigns designed to generate pre-qualified and conversion-ready opportunities for the sales team.
Indian firms see a silver lining in Cloud in pandemic-hit year.
Organisations that neglect the adoption of the cloud may face challenges harnessing the full advantages of advanced technologies such as Gen AI, the report noted…reports Asian Lite News
The rising cost of Cloud continues to be a concern as larger organisations in India achieve cost optimisation of only 20 per cent from the cloud while medium and small-scale organisations fall short of meeting their cost-saving goals, a report showed on Thursday.
Around 75 per cent of organisations also encounter a talent gap to enable cloud journeys as the release of the technologies is faster than its adoption and man-power readiness for it to be implemented and sustained, according to the EY-FICCI report, titled ‘India’s cloud and data revolution: From adoption to enabling innovation’.
About 78 per cent of organisations in the country are currently implementing cloud strategies for modernising the technology stack and infusing intelligence into business applications.
Organisations that neglect the adoption of the cloud may face challenges harnessing the full advantages of advanced technologies such as Gen AI, the report noted.
“With 80 per cent of Indian organisations adopting the cloud to enable a range of business capabilities such as intelligent applications with Gen AI, native functional and data products, and highly intuitive orchestration platforms the imperative is clear: embrace the cloud not merely as a tool, but as an enabler of transformative change,” said Abhinav Johri, Partner-Technology Consulting, EY India.
India is evolving into a hub for cloud-first companies, with major cloud regions located in Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Pune. Indian GCCs (Global Capability Centres) have become cloud engineering hubs for global companies.
The success of Generative AI is closely tied to cloud computing, as it relies on large datasets and robust computing infrastructure, both of which are inherent features of cloud technology.
According to the report, the adoption of Generative AI is expected to lead to increased data usage and greater consumption of cloud resources.
“As India’s cloud-first companies spearhead innovation and sustainable growth, leadership means charting a course towards more resilient, digitally-driven future, effective data and analytics shall be instrumental,” said Alexy Thomas, Partner-Technology Consulting, EY India.
Worldwide cloud infrastructure services spending increased 19 per cent to $66.4 billion in Q1 2023….reports Asian Lite News
The top three Cloud services providers — Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud — collectively grew 22 per cent in the first quarter to account for a 64 per cent share of customer spending, a report said.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) was the leading cloud service provider in Q1, accounting for 32 per cent of total spending after growing 16 per cent year-on-year, according to market research firm Canalys.
Microsoft Azure remained the second largest cloud service provider, with a 23 per cent market share after it grew by 27 per cent year-on-year. Google Cloud grew 30 per cent in the March quarter and accounted for 9 per cent market share.
Worldwide cloud infrastructure services spending increased 19 per cent to $66.4 billion in Q1 2023.
While cloud remains one of the fastest-growing segments of the IT market, customer investments continue to slow in the face of persistent macroeconomic uncertainties, with growth falling below 20 per cent for the first time, the report noted.
All the cloud hyperscalers were adversely affected, with their growth falling by four percentage points from the previous quarter.
In response to slowing growth, they announced staff layoffs and other internal cost cuts in their cloud divisions.
Regionally, APAC saw the weakest performance as customer spending reduced in Mainland China, impacting many of the Chinese hyperscalers.
Canalys expects global cloud services spending to continue to be slow through the second half of 2023.
“Enterprises are benefiting from the hybrid cloud model, but moving workloads between on-premises and cloud platforms can be costly for them,” said Alex Smith, VP at Canalys.
Dell most trusted brand in India, China's Mi ranked 2nd: TRA.
A company spokesperson told TechCrunch that Dell Technologies “has completed the acquisition of Cloudify…reports Asian Lite News
Dell Technologies has acquired Israeli startup Cloudify that is known for cloud orchestration and infrastructure automation.
According to reports, Dell spent close to $100 million in buying the startup to boost its its cloud services business, specifically its offerings in DevOps.
A company spokesperson told TechCrunch that Dell Technologies “has completed the acquisition of Cloudify.
“This transaction allows Dell to continue to innovate our edge offerings,” said the spokesperson.
In a US SEC filing, Dell refered to issuing of Class C common stock “in respect of certain outstanding and unvested options to acquire the ordinary shares of Cloudify Platform Ltd., an Israeli private liability company.”
Cloudify is an open source, multi-cloud orchestration platform featuring unique technology that packages infrastructure, networking, and existing automation tools into certified blueprints.
Originally the startup was spun out from GigaSpaces in 2017. The startup raised less than $8 million, according to PitchBook data.
Cloudify’s environment-as-a-service packages infrastructure, networking, and automation tools into certified blueprints that it says its customers can use to manage heterogeneous cloud environments at scale, and to help bridge the gap between DevOps and IT service management (ITSM).
Cloudify includes in its technology ecosystem such partners as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, F5, Wind River Software, and ServiceNow.
India may lose $118 billion in GDP contribution and five million job opportunities by 2026 if businesses and government are late to Cloud adoption…reports Asian Lite News
Large-scale adoption of Cloud has the potential to contribute $380 billion to the countrys gross domestic product (GDP), creating 14 million direct and indirect employment opportunities by 2026, a Nasscom report showed on Wednesday.
However, India may lose $118 billion in GDP contribution and five million job opportunities by 2026 if businesses and government are late to Cloud adoption, the report warned.
With global players heading towards new systems like 3D printing, IoT, robotic automation, slow or low adoption in Cloud may result in Indian industries losing competitive edge and India may lose its attractiveness among investors, expats and new businesses.
According to the report, titled ‘Future of Cloud and Its Economic Impact: Opportunity for India,’ an all-round effort can result in a sustained growth of 25-30 per cent of Cloud spending over the next five years.
“To ensure large-scale adoption of Cloud and Cloud-based services will require multi-stakeholder collaboration to address mindset challenges and perceptions in cloud adoption, incentivise SMBs to transition to Cloud, scale talent through re-skilling and up-skilling and amend Cloud-related policies to ease deployments,” explained Debjani Ghosh, President, Nasscom.
At the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 44 per cent, the Indian cloud market has outpaced global market in terms of growth rate, owing to a growing digital population, inflow of investments, digitisation of enterprises and favorable government policies, are accelerating India’s cloud growth.
Although India is still at the nascent stages of cloud adoption compared to mature markets, the shift to cloud has become inevitable since the pandemic and is playing a pivotal role in helping Indian businesses and government accelerate their digital transformation journey through infrastructure, platform, and software solutions, said the report.
Large-scale cloud adoption has the potential to fundamentally improve citizen services and drive digital inclusion in areas of healthcare, access to financial services and democratize education for all.
It can also stimulate innovation and open new opportunities for entrepreneurship in India, while at the same time help companies build improved commercial products, promote R&D, and contribute to India’s Global Innovation Index.
“Cloud computing has proven to be the foundation for digital transformation, technology-led innovation, business growth, and positive social impact at scale in India,” said Rahul Sharma, President, AWS India and South Asia (Amazon Internet Services) WWPS.
Cloud-based initiatives like MyGov Saathi, Curfew ePass, Covid-19 repository, Aarogya Setu and CoWIN are few examples of the role of Cloud in enabling timely launch of citizen services among government.
“It’s the only way to navigate the headwinds we are confronting today. This is not some abstract concept,” said Nadella…reports Asian Lite News
Nearly 95 per cent of all new digital workloads will be deployed on the Cloud by 2025, Microsoft’s Executive Chairman CEO Satya Nadella has said.
Addressing the company’s annual conference ‘Microsoft Inspire 2022′, Nadella said that Cloud is foundational to how organisations will be competitive going forward.
“Every customer I speak with is clear-eyed about aligning their IT investments to scale with demand. Moving to the cloud allows them to just do that – converting their spending from CapEx to OpEx”, Nadella told the partner community.
“It’s the only way to navigate the headwinds we are confronting today. This is not some abstract concept,” he added.
Microsoft is set to add 10 new data centres in 10 global markets to deliver faster access to services and help address data residency needs, Nadella informed.
The demand for cloud solutions is estimated to exceed $1 trillion by 2025.
Microsoft announced new benefits with the �ISV Success Programme’, to help independent software vendors (ISVs) innovate rapidly, build well-architected applications, publish them to our commercial marketplace and grow their sales.
“Currently in private preview, and broadly available in fall 2022, the program is intended to be the pathway to ISV success in the Microsoft Cloud Partner Programme,” said the company.
Participants can get access to nearly $128,000 in benefits to utilise productive, modern and innovative developer tools to accelerate software production.
The company also announced Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty, designed specifically for the government sector.
This new solution enables public sector customers to build and digitally transform workloads in the Microsoft Cloud while meeting their compliance, security and policy requirements.
“Public sector customers can harness the full power of the cloud including broad platform capabilities, resiliency, security, and scale, while having greater control over their data, residency, and transparency to its operational and governance processes,” said the tech giant.
On Artificial Intelligence, Nadella said that by 2025, 10 per cent of all data will be produced by generative AI models.
“Analytics is moving from backend processes to being critical part of the product experience,” he said.
Cloud is India’s best bet to aid faster innovation at scale in 2022…writes Shailender Kumar, Senior Vice President and Regional Managing Director, Oracle India
What the world, and each one of us, experienced in the past two years, has taught us important life lessons. At the same time, it has demonstrated development and progress, which will have a long-term positive impact on society, industry and governance.
As a result of the ongoing economic and humanitarian crises, we have all been witness to a major shift to digital as organisations showed resilience and realignment in their businesses. Now, as the country advances its agenda of building a digitally knowledgeable economy, it must also look to create a self-sustaining model of development and progress.
Business leaders and economists are talking about the recovery of the Indian economy. Optimistic projections from the World Bank (projecting growth of 6.5 per cent by 2023) and according to some economists, business in India has now exceeded pre-pandemic levels, indicating a swift recovery. India’s growth story lies in the hands of select defining sectors like healthcare, government, banking and finance, manufacturing, e-commerce, retail among others.
The pandemic has brought numerous changes in the way growth and scalability are outlined. This means uprooting traditional processes, reskilling and most importantly, pivoting business practises.
In its recent reports, Nasscom estimates that with a more aggressive talent building roadmap, India can increase its cloud talent pool to between 1.7 to 1.8 million and in the process, become the world’s second largest cloud talent hub by 2025. It is estimated that the demand for cloud experts will exceed 2 million.
Numerous companies in sectors like healthcare, pharma, life sciences, telecom, education, banking, and insurance have advanced their use of cloud and have acknowledged the numerous benefits it has brought to their businesses.
Gartner’s recent forecast states that end-user spending on public cloud services in India is estimated to total $7.3 billion by 2022, an increase of 29.6 per cent from 2021.
Along with cloud technologies, new innovative solutions based on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are expected to rise too, which will help create a well-rounded digital ecosystem.
It is estimated that by 2025, the IT industry will contribute up to $350 billion, amounting to 10 per cent of India’s GDP, says MeitY. The growth in the IT space will continue to be driven by use of emerging technologies and this will help industries become progressive and be more efficiently run.
A prime example of leveraging cloud to utilise its full potential is health-tech firm Medexpert Software solutions. Started in 2018, the organisation is helping to ‘uberize’ healthcare delivery. The company runs its health management system on next-generation cloud infrastructure.
Through this technology, they extend support to healthcare delivery organisations like super-specialty hospitals and neighbourhood clinics, to improve business agility and deliver a better healthcare experience to patients.
IFFCO too has implemented cloud technology and is relying on advanced IT systems to support their sustainability efforts, including one of their recent initiatives — ‘Nano-technology’ fertilisers. These eco-friendly fertilisers are able to reduce the use of conventional chemical fertilisers in half, while boosting crop outputs.
Witnessing the recent acceleration in the acceptance of technology, it is quite evident that 2022 will continue to be disruptive. Multi-cloud is going to be the way of the world. Businesses today are already evaluating multi-cloud models where they can gain maximum benefits from a trusted set of cloud providers.
And why not? Globally, organisations are expected to spend an incredible $1.78 trillion on cloud and other digital transformation technologies in 2022, according to Statistica.
For us, as technologists and a major cloud provider, this is an exciting time. We are in the midst of a huge digital revolution. Perhaps what is most exciting is that the economic value created will be proportional to the extent of digital transformation this country will witness — as cloud technologies stimulate innovation and improve efficiencies, while protecting institutions’ and citizens’ most valuable data assets.
Indian businesses are prioritising speed as their key competency this year, to recover growth faster. CEOs want to leapfrog innovation cycles. So their focus clearly is on faster, data-driven innovation. And there’s increased awareness on why cloud is the best engine to aid faster innovation at scale.
Only cloud services can accelerate India’s move towards becoming a digitally empowered society, bringing about a smarter, more inclusive future for everyone.
(Shailender Kumar is Senior Vice President and Regional Managing Director, Oracle India)
Australia and India are the next two largest countries in terms of security spending due to the presence of large number of businesses…reports Asian Lite News
Driven by increased cloud adoption and massive work-from-home migration, Australia and India will account 26 per cent of the overall security spending in the Asia-Pacific region in 2021, according to the IDC.
Australia and India are the next two largest countries in terms of security spending due to the presence of large number of businesses catering to domestic as well as international customers.
Overall, spending on security hardware, services, and software in Asia/Pacific is expected to reach $23.1 billion in 2021 — an increase of 12.6 per cent over the previous year.
IDC expects investment on security related products and services to grow at a five-year CAGR of 13.3 per cent over the forecast period (2019-24) and reach $35 billion by 2024.
“In Asia/Pacific, investments on security-related products and solutions (endpoint security, VPN, and firewalls) will experience double-digit growth in 2021 due to the increased spending by both governments and enterprises (particularly in the banking, telecom, and professional services industry),” explained Sharad Kotagi, Associate Market Analyst at IDC IT Spending Guides, Customer Insights ans Analysis.
The industries that are seeing the greatest increase in security spending this year are state/local government (18.5 per cent), transportation (13.9 per cent), and retail (13.7 per cent) — driven by increased focus on data security, e-commerce, work from home, digitalization of logistic monitoring, payments, and contracts.
