The Cloud as a disruptive computing standard has been gaining currency for years now and, as more employees and businesses find themselves restricted to their homes and at remote locations in the wake of the global Covid 19 pandemic.
More and more workloads and business-critical functions will migrate to the Cloud to ensure the business can continue to function as usual.
The pandemic has forced many Cloud computing providers and telecom companies through a rapid digital transformation journey by embracing the Cloud and spurring greater mobility. These companies are finding new ways to respond to new challenges by accelerating their evolution journey and moving beyond the usual core area suspects like providing network connectivity and creating distinctive service offerings, into the technology services market, an ever-expanding new area.
Because of their position on the Cloud maturity curve and well-established distribution and retail store networks, their customer-care and billing experience and exposure, and finally strong partnerships on the ground, the telecommunications industry has been best positioned to create optimized Cloud services for their customers.
Many of these organizations have moved their critical business applications such as email, web hosting, contact centre, CRM, ERP, collaboration, and HR to the Cloud, which is facilitating, among other things, business continuity in this pandemic-riven world, with employees being able to access information related to their work remotely, safely and privately, while organizations are able to optimise productivity and minimise client disruptions.
The uptick in the adoption of cloud-based services that began pre-pandemic a few years ago triggered by the limitations of on-premises systems appears to have found a second wind in a situation like the pandemic, demonstrating how Cloud computing models are perfect to address challenges and opportunities emerging from trends like remote work and virtual business, our new normal.
This movement towards the Cloud is also showing with ample evidence on the ground how it can minimise business risk even during a pandemic while saving time and money and ultimately delivering value than ever thought possible.
Let’s look at some emerging trends today. The appeal of IoT adoption, for instance, remains broad and covers companies across numerous industries and of all sizes. One technology that is poised to advance IoT in a big way is 5G. With 5G technologies, companies can expect far higher levels of data throughput, better reliability, and far lower levels of latency.
Of all data analysis and computing models available in the market today, the Cloud, Edge, and Hybrid processing models, in particular, are finding favor with business organizations given that they hold great capabilities to improve efficiencies and lower the complexity of dealing with the volumes of data that IoT infrastructure is creating today or is likely to in the future.
The Cloud computing model holds the key for technology-led transformation for businesses of all types and sizes, especially in resource-scarce settings and economies. Its utility-based pricing model, for example, is helping businesses save significantly on their capital expenditure, something that was always dependent on setting up expensive on-premise database/computing servers and related infrastructure.
Edge Computing allows for data from IoT-enabled devices to be analysed near the source of the data, often considered to be the ‘edge’ of the network. By processing the information locally it allows for faster responses back to the data source or end-user application immediately and helps reduce the cost of system development and operations.
It allows IoT-enabled devices to connect even offline or in low bandwidth environments and also offers greater flexibility while implementing a network security mechanism that can create layers of encryption depending on the importance of the location of the data.
Finally, a Hybrid Cloud is a cloud computing strategy or approach where end-users combine different cloud environments connected to each other and these can be public or private clouds or simply virtual infrastructures. This model is designed to operate independently and all data shared across an organization’s communication platforms are heavily encrypted.
In a 5G scenario, with MTM communications becoming a reality through IoT, cloud-based services can reduce resource requirements and increase efficiencies, something that is crucial for a resource-scarce economy like India. The COVID-19 pandemic is providing enough opportunities to adopt 5G-IoT connectivity on a ubiquitous basis, with collateral benefits for much of the wider Indian subcontinent, for communities often left unserved or untouched by the telecom revolution.
The current blueprint of India’s new development paradigm is centered on the development of mega smart cities. India is already integrating IoT into its existing physical and digital infrastructure pushing its social, economic, and market forward via a 5G-led and IoT-enabled customer or citizen experience.
Ajay Dhar, global chief product officer of Techcloudpro
