Accelerated cloud adoption can turn India into a technology hub

Context: The COVID-19 pandemic has given the needed thrust to digital transformations in areas of cloud computing, cybersecurity and big data analytics.

Cloud computing: making India a global hub for cloud solutions

• Potential:
  • Global: Public cloud services spending is estimated to grow at 18% annually to over $360 billion by 2022, from about $258 billion in 2020.
  • India: Market of $2.5 billion in 2018 (1%global share) and potential to grow to $7-9 billion.
    • Cloud Vision for India 2022: The government aims to establish India as a global hub for cloud computing, content hosting and delivery, as also data communication systems and services.
• Strength of India: Emerging as a growing source of data due to exponential growth in online transactions, both by businesses and consumers.
• Efforts by various stakeholders:
  • Promotion by private companies like IBM, TCS and Google.
  • The Frontier Technologies Cloud Innovation Centre: A public-private partnership by NITI Aayog and AWS, to address societal challenges through digital innovation.
  • Policy to enable the private sector to build data centre parks announced in 2020-21 union budget.
• Concerns:
  • A 10% rise in cyberattacks since 2018 and these have grown after the pandemic’s outbreak.
  • While over 60% of the small and medium businesses have adopted cloud, nearly 50% are still at a nascent stage, and only about 15% are advanced users: NASSCOM survey.
• Applications:
  • New cloud opportunities are emerging in areas like collaboration and contactless tools, security, artificial intelligence and analytics.
  • Conventional industries, like education and manufacturing, are fast-tracking its adoption.
• Way forward:
  • Cybersecurity at the core: of design principles and technology solutions.
  • Fostering innovation: By supporting start-ups and creating more centres of excellence.
  • Inspirational leadership across all levels: To take it to fruition with greater urgency with a focus on favourable policies, innovation capabilities, data strategy and government adoption.
  • Grow talent: to match our future skills (digital-ready) talent pool in order to meet rising demand.
  • Awareness creation: by showcasing best-in-class success stories that communicate the benefits in terms of return-on-investment and other metrics.

Conclusion: Cloud computing is not just a crucial innovation platform for companies and countries; it even helps address societal problems. India must harness its true potential.