Infosys sees big opportunity in cloud and cyber security

With Salil Parekh set to take charge of Infosys from January next year, the software major is betting big on cloud computing and cyber security to reignite growth.

India’s second largest software exporter, since its initial days, thrived on getting technology projects for Fortune clients, which involved writing or maintaining software codes for these companies.

However, the advent of cloud computing, has heralded significant shifts in the way technology is consumed, which, in turn has impacted business models of software exporters.

Public cloud computing

“Cloud and security are today our big bets, especially around public cloud,” said Narsimha Rao Mannepalli, EVP and Head - Infosys Validation Solutions & Cloud, Infrastructure and Security.

Public cloud refers to a corporation’s IT infrastructure sitting in third party locations, similar to the emails we use. Infosys works with tech giants such as Amazon, Microsoft , Oracle and Google to provide public cloud services.

Indian IT services companies like Infosys are following the technology sun, shepherding corporations to use cloud computing infrastructure, which requires minimal upfront investments and can pay for it on a subscription basis, thereby avoiding large scale complex IT implementations, something which formed the backbone of the $155-billion IT industry, since the Y2K scare.

Moving IT infrastructure

Mannepalli pointed out to the opportunities in moving old IT infrastructure to the cloud. “Most businesses are looking at some part of their landscape to move to cloud and most times tend to start with pieces that are not business critical and are easily doable without complexities,” he added.

Analysts predict that the global cloud market will be $240 billion by 2020.

While the opportunity is sizeable, Indian vendors have been shuffling their feet as more than 60 per cent of their current revenues come from maintaining old systems.

“If they have to transition into the new, their revenues from the old will get cannibalised,” said Sanjoy Sen, Doctoral Research Scholar, Aston Business School.

“What the industry needs is to look beyond managing business processes at lower costs to understanding where it can act as a business partner,” according to Sanchit Vir Gogia, Founder, Greyhound Research.

Indian companies cannot be completely blamed for their inability to get their clients to adopt cloud computing services as the large ones have been struggling to find that magic outsourcing pill.

This, industry watchers opine, is due to volatility in the global economy coupled with start-up-powered disruption of businesses.

Re-imagining biz

There is an opportunity to re-imagining business in a big way and unlike what most people think, for existing businesses this digital transformation exercise is probably a run over next 3-5 years, pointed out Mannepalli.

Post the Lehman crisis, many companies that started their business fund it easier to adopt cloud computing whereas for existing businesses, their size and complexity came in the way.

“It is not such a easy shift, there are lot more implications and complexities ready to deal with and much more opportunities to impact their own businesses.

Established businesses are taking on pilot work, taking on small pieces of their existing IT landscape to cloud and making comprehensive strategies to bring digital technologies and cloud to their business,” he said.

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