Cloud, a catalyst to drive business agility and efficiency: 11th VARINDIA EIITF
Agility is the ability of a business to adapt rapidly and cost efficiently in response to changes in the business objectives of the corporate along with the ideas of flexibility, adaptability, and coordination under one umbrella.
It is true that disruption brings technology innovation and advancement. Several Small and Medium Businesses (SMEs) have now seen the result that it is cost-efficient to buy Cloud services as opposed to maintaining and periodically upgrading systems on-premise. An additional benefit is that Cloud services are also automatically upgraded by the service provider. The Cloud has made it easier for businesses to connect with their audience, Cloud-based applications have simplified the process of integrating social media, web and email marketing campaigns. Cloud solutions are combining people, data, systems and processes for a real-time view of what is going on. On this backdrop, the 11th edition of Eastern India Information Technology Fair (EIITF) took place at Hotel HHI in Kolkata. This year the topic centered around “Cloud Is Transforming The Business Of SMEs ”.
The session witnessed with the presence of industry celebrated names Manjit Nayak, Director-STPI-Kolkata, Nirupam Chaudhuri, Director-NASSCOM, Man Mohan Goyal, Advisor IT Corporate, Tide Water Oil Co., Sanjay Chhajer, President- COMPASS, Sourav Das, Chief Digital & Information Officer- Essel Mining & Industries, Kripadyuti Sarkar, CIO, Ambuja Neotia, various senior leaders from the industry and also from the VAR fraternity.
The event started with the keynote of Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Publisher & Chief Editor, Kalinga Digital Media & VARINDIA. While delivering his speech he said, “We have seen a lot of digitalisation which has happened and that has led to a lot of growth in Indian IT companies. They have got a significant pipeline now and it looks lucrative. The overall IT services sector at this point is going through golden times that we have not seen in the past. The businesses are reaping the benefits based on the value propositions of cloud offerings, despite the ongoing pandemic. Companies that have adopted cloud services have been able to accelerate their time to market, innovate faster and scale more efficiently. India is one of the largest public cloud markets in the APAC region, and one of the fastest growing, projected to touch US$8 billion by 2023. The potential for deeper penetration of public cloud in India becomes all the more evident given that the market is still in an early stage in terms of public cloud and IT spending.”
The evening followed with the auspicious lighting of lamp ceremony in the presence of Manjit Nayak, Director-STPI(Kolkata), Nirupam Chaudhuri, Director-NASSCOM, Man Mohan Goyal, Advisor IT Corporate, Tide Water Oil Co, Sanjay Chhajer, President, COMPASS, Sourav Das, Chief Digital & Information Officer- Essel Mining & Industries, Kripadyuti Sarkar, CIO, Ambuja Neotia, Sandeep Pradhan, CIO, Exide Industries, Sanjeev Sinha, President IT, India Power Corporation, Arnab Sarkar, Territory Manager, Aruba (A Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company), Amit Sutradhar, Enterprise Account Director, TeamViewer, Girish Mamtani, National Manager Commercial, Viewsonic, Sanghamitra Pyne, Head IT Generation, CESC Ventures, Sandeep Sengupta, Founder, ISOAH Data Securities, Manik Paul, CIO, Century Plyboards, K L Lalani, Chairman, Lalani Infotech and Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Chief Editor, VARINDIA.
Manjit Kumar Nayak, Director-STPI
SMEs impacting the socio-economic growth of the country
"SMEs are the backbone of the country. Today the SME sector contributes almost seven percent of the country’s GDP. SMEs are not only developing the country’s economies, it is also creating a lot of jobs. It will give a lot of investments, infrastructure support, technological support and their contribution is tremendous. SMEs contribute around 40% in the various sectors, including the service sector. SMEs are having a lot of social economic impact continuing from tier 1 to the village level but if we are talking about the technical segment, this of course is happening in town and city areas. During the pandemic situation the technology adoption, Cloud computing system, the security system have become vital and gained much importance. We have to adopt this for the sustainability, the growth of business and the industry.
Today’s analysis shows there is a definite growth in the software activities and software related services where India is holding the number one position in the global market. But in the electronics hardware manufacturing side, we are a little behind that is why the government is committed to focus on that segment. Hopefully we are doing more products and tomorrow will capture the global market."
Nirupam Chaudhuri, Director, NASSCOM
“We are united and resilient together”
“We are absolutely cognizant to the fact that digitalization is the only way to go. We are absolutely working hand in hand with leaders, especially leaders from our community in eastern region. We of course work with the Department of IT, but beyond that, in this Bengal Summit, we had an engagement with MSME department. They have given a list of 500 clusters to us, we have started off with 50 clusters, where we are doing sensitization. Clusters like gems and jewellery, leather, handicrafts and textile, a lot of clusters in different parts of our state and Northeast. So, basically these clusters would require state-of-the-art solutions, if not at least basic technology support which will help them to be Cloud enabled so that they could actually be able to do the proper tracking and make sure that they are meeting customer expectations. I think this is where all of us need to play a good role. In various other states as well across India, we are going to some top clusters and we require your help to work with us, not only sensitization but also helping in the process of solving those problems and there is definite business opportunity. The key message is that we need to work together. We also need to make sure that the pain that we have experienced in the last few years, we will learn from this and we are united and resilient together.”
Amit Sutradhar, Enterprise Account Director, TeamViewer
“Everything we do is built upon to save costs, money and energy”
“We started in 2005. We are a cash rich, profitable firm, headquartered in Germany. We have had fantastic growth over the years. In the last three years, we have acquired a few companies in Europe who are head-runner for AR business. We call ourselves a green company because everything that we do is built upon to save cost, money and energy. Starting from supporting a laptop at home, to supporting a Ford mechanic who is sitting in Germany and fixing a Ford machine. My business is divided into three parts, a simple remote support solution, enterprise class business where we integrate and connect everything from laptop, desktop, mobile phone etc., service everything in a single platform and the last part is the augmented reality part. We support people who are working on the field, in factories, in logistic companies and anywhere. We can integrate single sign on, user indication, mass deployment, audits and reports, an agnostic solution, so you do not need to code anything. It is all there. You just buy it and connect it and use it.”
Arnab Sarkar, Territory Manager, Aruba (A Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company)
Digital transformation boarded everyone on a train to success
"Agility is one of the basic things we have learned in the last two years. Then there is safety and security - these are the terms that are popping up in the market. Data is the new gold or oil in the market. So all organizations, whether it is large corporate, SMEs, small business, startups, we all are data hungry. We are after data because of making better decisions for two major aspects. The first is increased revenue for any organization, whether it is a startup or a big corporate or an SME, and at the same time, we need to be cost effective. That is how we can balance it. That is the expectation from IT today. IT is no longer a legacy.
With digital transformation we get on a train to success but at the same time with success comes great challenges. It is not just about having the data; it is about how to maintain the data. Edge is where we are sitting today. Edge can be anywhere it can be in a movie theatre, in a mall, in your house. Now-a-days a lot of SMEs or small companies instead of going big in terms of infrastructure investments they are giving an endpoint device to their employees as they can work from anywhere. So there is phenomenal data being created at the edge."
Girish Mamtani, National Manager Commercial, Viewsonic
“Our core values have been customer focus”
“We are basically a 35-year-old company. We have been in this display business since 1987. We started off our operations from the US, where we are headquartered, and today we have 1200 employees globally present in 100 countries. Our vision is to basically see our brand promise. So, whatever we do, we do it with passion about displays, creating niches when it comes to end users. From content creators to plain simple operators, we have displays for all of them. We have the interactive panels and cloud-based software which is called myViewBoard, which, during the COVID period, saw almost 4 million downloads. Our core values have been customer focus. We have been working on technologies in a very anticipatory mode. When it comes to monitors, which we started off with, we started creating different fields. We were the first company to go LED, somewhere around 2011, when most of the displays were LCD based, which had CCFL backlights. When it comes to transforming to energy efficiency or creating a much better product, it is ViewSonic at the forefront. We have a growth mindset, which obviously takes through new technologies, teamwork and agility.”
Manmohan Goyal, Advisor- Tide Water & Oil Company
CIOs along with VARs aided the industry during the time of crisis
"It has been a long time for all of us and we have been communicating with each other over the digital media, but it is not the same thing. A one on one interaction, exchange of ideas and thoughts, sharing experiences as to how you came out of this very major pandemic situation which affected all of us is important. Prior to the pandemic some of us were unaware, but according to the report which I had heard from different CIOs of all major corporations in the East as well and other parts of the country, that they all adapted very swiftly. As far as the large corporate are concerned and even the SMEs, they were able to adapt very well. For the first 10 days, they might be wondering what to do but they came back really quick which is commendable, it is because of the amount of hard work that all the CIOs did. A lot of us were to work together to support the SMEs who wanted support in this time of great crisis. They all came out and in fact, even the VARs came out and suggested a lot of innovative low cost solutions, which got all the companies out of the crisis that they were facing and as a country we did very well. "
Sanghamitra Pyne, Head IT Generation, CESC Ventures
Cloud: A cost saver technology for SMEs
“Fundamentally while adopting Cloud we think about the cost whether its capex saving going into opex, so upfront investment would be less. But from an SME standpoint there are certain other things which definitely add-on the sigma to the cost saving. The cost of maintaining in-house or on-premise IT infrastructure to carry out business in an ecosystem where the investment is capped by the cost of capital by the enterprise turnover. In that scenario an SME trying to have a full-fledged business running out of on-premise infrastructure and maintaining the appropriate cyber security measures, trying to keep up with trends, having a team which looks after it and getting an insight – these additional features apart from the upfront capex and the necessary cost of capital that I believe really adds on to the cost which an SME has to bear. So, that is a cost saving, some of it is tangible and some are hidden when the organization either opts for an IaaS, PaaS or some solution straight from Cloud.”
Sanjeev Sinha, President IT, India Power Corporation
“I am in the power industry and we are implementing around 3,50,000 smart meters in one of the regions in Madhya Pradesh. The smart meters come to a central repository called the head end system. We chose Cloud for it because when we are starting to install it we have a very small number of smart meters and do not need too much computing power. So this is one example where we started very low because the number of smart meters was very less and as we grow we scale up. With this we need higher infrastructure. So basically what we are looking at is an infrastructure on demand and therefore Cloud was the answer not only infrastructure wise but also for cost. So we reach a certain cost when we have full-fledged 3,50,000 smart meters installed, till then we saved a huge amount of cost and we did not need to invest a lot of money. We require three years to install 3,50,000 smart meters and we will incur that cost at the end of those three years. So the first three years we save a huge amount of money.”
Kripadyuti Sarkar, CIO, Ambuja Neotia
Cloud provides the flexibility to scale up and down
“Ambuja is a real estate company where during a project there is a huge data usage by our customers to see the 3D diagrams of the projects, holograms etc. During that phase there is a spike in the consumption from the users. After two to three months when the project promotions are phasing out then we have to scale down the entire IT infrastructure. So this kind of scale up and down is a flexible scenario that a CIO has in Cloud. If we invest in on-premise IT infrastructure in the same case then we have to identify the usage of the unused part. So that is where Cloud gives the flexibility from the cost, utilization of the capital and also from the saving of capex perspective.”
Sourav Das, Chief Digital & Information Officer, Essel Mining & Industries
Essel Mining & Industries saves a lot of cost after Cloud adoption
“We started our Cloud journey in 2020, just before the pandemic. We started with main applications like ERP, SAP etc. When we started, based on calculations we had a target of 67% of cost savings. Now, two years down the line we have migrated tens of applications and we have achieved more than what we have forecasted at that time. There are a lot of tangible and intangible costs and benefits that we need to look into and if we add all of that then that kind of numbers we can definitely achieve.”
Sandeep Sengupta, Founder, ISOAH Data Securities
Organizations need to be careful about the type of data they are putting up on Cloud
“You have to be very clear about what type of data you are putting on the Cloud. Sooner or later India will have a Data Protection and Privacy Act. If you put the data on Cloud and there are several backups and you do not know where the data is and suddenly as per the data protection rule if someone asks to delete his/her data then that will be a big challenge. Then the cost will include four percent of the annual global turnover. So if you are not thinking about it right now that can be 40x plus the cost. So if we are not careful about what type of data and how we are putting it on the Cloud, it can be a disaster in the long run.”
Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Chief Editor, VARINDIA
“SMEs are increasingly moving their operations to the Cloud and the platform has proved to be a game-changer for them”
“The digital era has brought an unprecedented change to technology, business and society. Beyond managing IT, CIOs lead and inspire their teams and business stakeholders through transformative business models, practices and cultures.
India is racing towards its goal of becoming a digital-first economy, and one of the technologies helping the country to accelerate the pace in this direction is Cloud computing. In addition to big businesses, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are increasingly moving their operations to the Cloud, and the platform has proved to be a game-changer for them.
The technology has changed the way IT processes are executed, and it has the potential to create measurable impacts on business. While any business would want to reduce costs, the key factors promoting Cloud as a choice for serving clients are ease of administration, disaster recovery and archival abilities. The cloud has also matured over the years. It is no longer an untested or risky product, and small businesses need not worry about proactively adopting the technology.”
Award Winners
Best VAR, Eastern India - Lalani Infotech Pvt. Ltd.
Best Reseller, Eastern India - Saboo Computers Pvt. Ltd.
Best Sub- distributor, Eastern India - Galaxy Computech Pvt. Ltd.
Best Solution Partner, Eastern India - Embee Software Pvt. Ltd.
Best System Integrator, Eastern India - Wizertech Informatics Pvt. Ltd.
Best Security Partner, Eastern India - Macaws Infotech
Best Make in India Brand, Eastern India – Ensonic Computech Pvt. Ltd.
Key Take-aways:
The technology has changed the way IT processes are executed, and it has the potential to create measurable impacts on business. While any business would want to reduce costs, the key factors promoting Cloud as a choice for serving clients are ease of administration, disaster recovery and archival abilities. The cloud has also matured over the years. It is no longer an untested or risky product, and small businesses need not to worry about proactively adopting the technology.
Digitalization of businesses, which is the need of this hour, has always posed a major challenge. But with Cloud, this can be an easy sail. The functioning of any business is highly dependent upon the information that is available to it. The cloud environment may even be subjected to more cyber-crimes, and therefore security becomes a big concern. Overcoming these concerns, the cloud is fast becoming an asset for corporate IT, by replacing the conventional IT infrastructure.
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