Growing complexity of cloud infrastructure
Earlier this year Oracle surveyed over 1500 IT leaders from enterprises in several technology-focused markets including India. Perhaps surprisingly for some, 98% of Indian enterprises in the survey confirmed that they were using 2 cloud service providers and 33% were actually using as many as 4 cloud providers. The complexity extended beyond just adopting multi-cloud strategies. 96% also said that they were using SaaS applications from 2 or more providers and over half were actually consuming applications from five or more providers. That represents a stunning surge in the complexity (and sophistication) of the enterprise IT ecosystem among Indian enterprises. Speaking as a managed services provider focused on helping large as well as mid-sized enterprises get the most out of their infrastructure to meet their business goals, I see this growing complexity every day. Gone are the days when managed services were about providing IT support and break-fix services. This is now a role tightly integrated with enterprise strategy given that IT is the key enabler of everything from digital business models to customer experience strategies. Today, our footprint covers everything from advisory and technology evaluations to implementation, management, support, and evolution. As IT environments become parallelly more complex and crucial, I expect this function to become even richer and more strategic in the days to come.