BHUJBALVIEW

The cloud is a platform on which software is delivered on demand for a charge or for free. Google docs is a collaborative cloud offering. ‘Collaborative’ because a lot of people can work together on powerpoint/ word/ excel sheet. It is directly related to SaaS. Let me explain in lay man terms - a plate is of no use if there’s no food to serve on it! In this example, the plate is the cloud aka the platform, & the food is the software. Now the reason why this concept of ‘cloud computing’ has emerged is that there is a data explosion out there & considering the future there is a paucity of storage devices. Now, with this cloud platform, software can be distributed as a service on demand (just like u jus hav to switch on 1 button to turn on the TV). Now what this results in is – convenience, time saving & cost saving (businesses will have to only incur operating expenditure instead of capital expenditure).

Now my consensus is that, in todays day & time, anything that offers convenience (that makes humans lazy) works! Irrespective of whether Indian CIO’s like the cloud or not, have the resources to invest in the cloud services or not (coz many would have invested in on site software already), whether small businesses have the manpower to manage these cloud services or not ; the cloud is here to stay.

Many Indian CIO’s will obviously have invested in on site software(CRM & the likes) but that doesn’t mean that they’ll not be customers of cloud services. For eg. Today u see a lot of the 25-35 age group eat maggi, a lot more than this age group ate 10 years ago, & that’s because today’s 25-35 year old were evangelized/ exposed or were maggi customers when they were kids. Similarly, whether or not Indian CIO’s will invest in the cloud, they have to be targetted because they are the future users.

Small businesses will soon realise that subscribing to cloud services allows them lot of efficiencies in terms of time, energy & money. If IT manpower is the problem they’ll have, managed services providers will solve their problem. In the coming years, the cost of avaling these managed services will also come down.

So I say, The cloud is here to stay & that’s from the viewpoint of no research report, just my perspective.