Author: yotta@manage

How can a SAP-certified partner make a difference to your SAP deployments?

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As businesses undertake organisation-wide digital transformation efforts, the combination of SAP and the Cloud has emerged as a preferred solution. Additionally, the prevalent business environment has further accelerated this trend. As a result, companies need agile and scalable SAP deployments. For this, they are turning to third-party service providers who act as outsourced partners for offering end-to-end SAP solutions.

However, a cluttered marketplace and time pressure to greenlight deployments can complicate the process of choosing the right SAP partner. An effective workaround for this issue includes reliance on certifications issued by SAP for select service providers. Offered for solutions across their portfolio, these certifications are based on a robust framework and audit conducted by SAP. Among other advantages, the certified partners help customers unlock the maximum value from their SAP deployments.

Key SAP certifications

  • Cloud and infrastructure operations: Focused on infrastructure and cloud services, this certification highlights a portfolio of offerings tailored for SAP customers. Cloud services from certified providers include on-demand infrastructure and cloud services for related SAP products.
  • Hosting operations: Offering customised hosting packages and operating and maintaining SAP applications, certified MSPs need to demonstrate experience and the relevant technical expertise pertaining to SAP administration skills.
  • SAP S/4 HANA solutions operations: This certification encompasses all processes related to the management of SAP S/4HANA solutions lifecycle, including maintenance, daily operation, and functional support.
  • SAP Business Suite solutions operations: This certification focuses on all processes related to the management of SAP Business Suite lifecycle, for example, SAP ERP, including maintenance, daily operation, and functional support.
  • SAP HANA operations: This certification testifies the highest level and quality of operational standards for solutions pertaining to SAP HANA business data platform.

Certification process

To obtain these certifications, service providers need to demonstrate operational capabilities that include quality and knowledge management, IT services management, and project management. SAP uses a robust framework that evaluates potential service providers to ensure they meet SAP’s exacting standards before issuing certificates.

  • Application: The process begins with the service provider’s application for initial certification. Based on the scope, SAP sends a quotation and upon confirmation from the partner, they begin the certification process.
  • Questions and answers: SAP sends a questionnaire to the service provider, followed by a Q&A session to address any queries that the service provider may have.
  • Return, review, and preparation: On receiving the completed questionnaire, SAP reviews it and prepares the audit. This is followed by an agreement on the next steps and schedule.
  • Onsite audit: Based on the scope and schedule, SAP conducts an onsite audit against the submitted documents. If required, SAP conducts a follow-up that may include an update or submission of additional documents from the service provider.
  • Completion: Based on the onsite audit report, SAP may conduct a call with the service provider to highlight the potential areas for improvement, if required. After successful completion of this process, SAP issues a certificate. Certified service providers are granted a status logo for two years. To maintain the validity, service providers need to conduct a certification audit upon expiration of the certification period.

Benefits of SAP certifications

SAP implementation is a critical function for any enterprise, and this makes it imperative for them to receive the highest level of service and availability. Hence, at the most basic level, certifications help service providers build trust and confidence among enterprise customers.

  • Expertise: In an age with limited budgets and access to specialised talent, IT functions are constrained. As a result, large turnkey projects such as SAP deployments suffer and become obsolete much faster. With stringent ITIL standards, training and knowledge management, certified outsourced partners are required to demonstrate and continuously upgrade their know-how. This provides enterprises with the much-needed expertise as well as operational and domain knowledge that they can trust with confidence.
  • Agility: In today’s environment where technology is evolving at a break-neck speed, it is challenging for internal IT functions to keep pace. Between additional IT investments and continuous training for staff, SAP deployments can get complicated. In such a scenario, certified MSPs help reduce delays and enable clients to derive the maximum value from their SAP deployments with speed and agility.
  • Reliability: Certified MSPs are required to follow stringent SLAs to deliver highest uptime under all conditions, this reduces disruption in business operations and downtime for critical functions. Additionally, proactive support and access to experts allow MSPs to deal with complications, making the SAP deployment responsive and reliable.
  • Flexibility: With data at its core and a bouquet of applications, SAP deployments require constant updates and hardware investment as businesses expand. In such a scenario, an organisation’s internal IT team can struggle to keep up. The need for additional resources or the lack thereof often leads to complications and delays, which makes SAP deployments expensive or ineffective. With outsourced operations offering on-demand services, organisations can scale up or scale down their infrastructure, thus affording them a high degree of flexibility.

Why Yotta?

Yotta has received five SAP certifications that include Cloud and Infrastructure Operations, Hosting Operations, SAP Business Suite Solutions Operations, SAP HANA Operations, and SAP S/4HANA Solutions Operations. These certifications confirm that Yotta meets most of the requirements of SAP operations services. As discussed earlier in this article, these certifications offer several advantages for end-users, as compared to non-certified solution providers.

This, combined with our multi-domain experience, including Uptime Institute certified Tier IV data center and single-window SAP services, allows us to offer best-in-breed SAP solutions to meet your business needs. From SAP implementations to migration to complete Application managed services, our robust infrastructure and continued service and support enables us to deliver end-to-end SAP capabilities that are both, effective and reliable.

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Why adopting Hybrid Cloud architecture is becoming a norm in the enterprise world

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For the last decade or so, cloud computing has been the focus of CIO and IT decision makers’ conversations.  The pandemic that began in 2020, worldwide, however, has been an inflection point for organizations, large and small, across sectors, fast-tracking adoption of digital and cloud-led technologies, ensuring only companies who adapted to this pace of digital transformation will survive. Remote working has seeped into the mainstream culture and more than a year later, work from home seems to be here to stay. In such an environment, business leaders need technology platforms and tools enabling businesses to operate efficiently without disruption.

Cloud technologies are at the heart of this change, as security conscious businesses look for newer and emerging avenues to accelerate their digital transformation, while securing prized and sensitive business information and workloads. As per IDC Worldwide Semiannual Public Cloud Services Tracker, India’s public cloud services market, including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS), touched $1.6 billion (INR 11,680 crore) for the first half of 2020. Furthermore, it states that the overall India public cloud services market is likely to reach $7.4 billion by 2024 (INR 54,020 crore), growing at a CAGR of 22.2 percent for 2020-24.

The exponential rise in data, however, demands the computing and processing needs of cloud architecture be elastic for data deployment models. This is where a new model of cloud computing comes to the rescue: Hybrid cloud. Hybrid cloud is a computing environment that combines a dedicated Compute instance or private cloud hosted in service provider DC or at captive datacenter with a public cloud, allowing data and applications to be shared between them.

Hybrid model is here to stay

As per a recent survey by IBM Institute of Business Value (IBV), hybrid cloud adoption among Indian businesses is expected to grow by 49% with the average organisation using nearly six hybrid clouds. With the increased full hybrid, multi-cloud platform technology and operating model at scale, businesses can derive 2.5 times the value compared to a single platform, single cloud vendor approach. In a nutshell, when computing and processing demands increase beyond an on-premises datacenter’s capabilities, organisations can use the cloud services to complement its existing capabilities, instantly scale capacity up or down, avoid time and cost of purchasing, installing, maintaining new servers that they may not always need.

In the coming years, Indian enterprises that are ready to bet big with an appetite for risk, will see returns from the hybrid cloud infrastructure, which is secure, interoperable, open, and free from vendor lock-in. In fact, organisations are already achieving business transformation by leveraging hybrid, multi-cloud platform technology. According to Gartner, majority of the large and midsize organisations have adopted an approach to IT that’s build on hybrid multi-cloud i.e. on-premises cloud combined with more than one public cloud.

With market dynamics shifting, partly due to the ongoing pandemic crisis, customer experience will ultimately define the brand-consumer relationship. And with a hybrid cloud infrastructure, enterprises can mine unlimited, unstructured data and run business analytics on them, especially in the retail sector. For example, India’s online retailer Myntra has been using its cloud and AI data to analyse customer preferences during the last year or so. With this, Myntra has been able to help brands by providing insights on what consumers really want, in addition to helping them move stocks quickly during the lockdown.

From an organisation-employee perspective, what we are currently seeing is a culture where every action and decision is rooted in remote working. Organisations must keep employees, where they are, while keeping them safe. Therefore, tools such as work from anywhere cloud services such as Desktop-as-a-Service/Virtual desktop infrastructure and Network-as-a-Service became must have services amid COVID-19 crisis. They also enable enterprises to align their workloads, on-premises or on cloud that is in sync with latency issues, regulations, data sovereignty and legacy data systems. In other words, for companies looking to build on their digital strategy centered around maximizing existing on-premises investments, an effective multi-edge hybrid approach by keeping the business objective and operational efficiency same is more important than ever.

Colocation providers can help accelerate your Hybrid Cloud strategy

Today, companies no longer want to deal with maintaining and operating a captive data center due to heavy upgrading costs and security concerns. Migrating to highly scalable colocation data centers is emerging as a customer preference.  Additionally, customers are not just looking for rack spaces but an end-to-end solution provider who can take care of all their IT needs such as cloud, network, security, etc.

As enterprises pivot to hybrid cloud architectures, data center service providers, particularly with colocation services, are now using innovative ways to integrate their platforms with hybrid models. Global data center operators are investing in developing an ecosystem of solutions that enable clients to assemble and deploy hybrid cloud solutions on top of their traditional infrastructure.

Sensing the underlying opportunities, most of the leading data center players are developing an architecture that can evolve over time and scale up in response to newer market needs. Today, they offer public cloud as well as provide seamless integration and migration services with the likes of AWS/AZURE/GOOGLE/ORACLE cloud. And with the help of innovative models like ‘Everything-as-a-Service’, these service providers are not only serving large enterprises and cloud operators with their robust infrastructure but also offering managed services to SMEs, SOHOs, and Start-ups.

In conclusion, for businesses looking to take back power in their own hands, by custom designing their own IT infrastructure, with a practical approach realigned with their past, present, and future in mind, it’s worth making an investment in the hybrid cloud architecture.

Opinion: How govt’s focused approach is making ‘Cloud Vision for India 2022’ a reality

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Cloud is not just a lever for controlling costs, but also a huge catalyst or transformational agent for being the foundation for enabling quick adoption of emerging technologies such as AI and Blockchain.

India is an aspiring and incomparable nation when it comes to digital ambitions and scale. Landmark projects like Aadhaar, the Aarogya Setu app, or DigiLocker, are just some of the examples of India’s digital prowess.

Given the scale at which government departments operate, cloud is the perfect platform for accelerating e-governance initiatives. From a policy point of view, already a series of initiatives have been taken to ensure that India has a strategic advantage concerning the cloud.

The Government of India has announced GI Cloud (now called ‘Meghraj’) – an initiative to ensure optimum usage of IT spending by the government while simultaneously giving the impetus to improve the adoption of e-governance initiatives using the cloud. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has created a reference architecture to guide government departments to build their cloud deployment architecture with recommended components and activities.

The National Digital Communications Policy 2018 envisions establishing India as a global hub for cloud computing, content hosting and delivery, and data communication systems and services. It aims to do this by enabling regulatory frameworks and incentives for promoting the establishment of international data centers, content delivery networks, and interconnect exchanges in India.

Similarly, the National Data Center Policy, which aims at making India a Global Data Center hub, promotes investment in the sector, propels digital economy growth, and enables provisioning of trusted hosting infrastructure to fulfil the growing demand.

The potential of the cloud

In India, cloud computing has ensured the success of national initiatives and schemes such as Swachh Bharat Mission, e-Hospital, National Scholarship, My-Gov and e-Transport. One of India’s most landmark initiatives, the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) uses a multi-cloud architecture to ensure scalability. Today, the GeM serves over 50,000 buyer organisations and has a listing of over 19 lakh products and more than 80,000 services.

NIC’s SaaS-based service, S3WaaS, has empowered district administrators to create, configure and deploy scalable and accessible websites without much effort and technical knowledge. Another successful example is DigiLocker, a cloud-based platform for the issuance, sharing, and verification of critical lifelong documents or certificates. With more than 57.13 million users and 4.27 billion issued documents, DigiLocker has proved to be one of the biggest success stories of cloud in the government.

Last year, understanding the critical importance of the cloud in providing the foundation for enabling the growth of emerging technologies such as AI, India’s national policy think-tank organisation, NITI Aayog, suggested the creation of an AI-based cloud computing platform called AIRAWAT (AI Research, Analytics and Knowledge Assimilation).

Similarly, the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI), announced last year that it had gone fully digital with the launch of a unique cloud-based and AI-powered big analytics platform. All project documents and correspondences related to NHAI will be stored in a cloud-based data lake, which is linked with GIS tagging and a unique project ID, so that project data can be retrieved easily from any location.

The Indian Railways has given the responsibility of deploying open source Hospital Management Information System (HMIS), an integrated clinical information system, for its 125 health facilities and 650 polyclinics across the country for improved hospital administration and patient healthcare, using a cloud platform.

Emerging use cases of cloud

With the cost of providing compute and storage capabilities coming down drastically, it makes much more sense for government departments to leverage the cloud. The other big reason is the quick pace of adoption for emerging technologies such as AI, ML, Big Data Analytics, or IoT.

In India, many states have proactively taken several pro-cloud initiatives. For example, the Government of Maharashtra in 2018, became the first state to unveil a public cloud policy. Looking at the benefits of cloud-based storage, the Government of Maharashtra mandated its departments to shift their data storage requirements to the cloud.

Similarly, in October 2020, the Government of Telangana announced that it was making it mandatory for all its departments to deploy their existingor new applications on the cloud except for those applications that contained sensitive or confidential data.

Another classic example is Smart Cities, wherein various state governments are leveraging cloud and other digital technologies to provide next generation services to citizens. Madhya Pradesh was the first state to launch India’s first cloud-based Common Integrated Data Centre, Disaster Recovery Centre and Integrated Control and Command Centre (ICCC).

The ICCC is enabling the Madhya Pradesh state administration to monitor and administer multiple city civic utilities and citizen services across seven cities in the state through a central cloud. Now, other states like Gujarat, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Telanagana, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Uttar Pradesh are following the suit.

These examples highlight why the move to the cloud is now essential or critical for government departments. Due to the capacity constraints, there are instances where the state data center has faced challenges in scaling up and meeting the requirements in a time-bound manner, which has led to poor application downtime and poor user experience.

Key trends that government departments should look out for

Today, the Covid-19 pandemic has made it imperative for accelerating digital delivery of public services. This has put immense pressure on government departments to quickly roll out new platforms or initiatives. With support for emerging technologies such as AI, ML or Blockchain, the cloud is the perfect platform for testing out new innovations.

The cloud is also a proven platform for automation – a critical need in government departments today, as they grapple with challenges related to skilled manpower and scaling up to meet public demand for services. For example, AI-powered chatbots can answer common queries easily, while RPA can be used to automate routine tasks.

The pandemic has also made remote working a reality now. This is applicable to the government sector too, as it also needs to give government employees the same flexibility as given to employees from the private sector. The cloud is perfect for giving employees secure and reliable access to government applications and data.

The cloud allows government departments to acquire resources based on actual requirements, with the capability to increase or decrease computing resources as per demand. Globally, and in India too, government departments are increasingly feeling challenged in containing costs and providing the required infrastructure.

For instance, the state-owned Bank of Baroda has become the first public sector bank to consider Work from Home policy for a section of its employees. For Bank of Baroda to leverage staff resources better, the cloud will prove to be an excellent platform for creating flexibility without significant corresponding investments.

This flexibility opens up several possibilities – one can think of organisations such as Income Tax which receives huge load for filing returns in the last few days of the deadline given by the government. There are many such examples of departments across the government, which receive seasonal demand spikes. Another notable example is the dedicated web portal called Co-WIN (COVID -19 Vaccine Intelligence Network) which has been launched recently.

This is a complete cloud-based IT solution for planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of the Covid-19 vaccination program in the country. While we keep hearing about technical glitches in the Co-WIN platform or the portal getting crashed (when millions of people recently rushed to register for the COVID vaccination), one cannot deny the fact that without the cloud, an initiative of this scale and size would be unimaginable.

As the above examples show, the cloud today is not just a lever for controlling costs, but also a huge catalyst or transformational agent for being the foundation for enabling quick adoption of emerging technologies such as AI and Blockchain. Today, the question for government departments is not why you should adopt the cloud, but when and how fast you can use the cloud to your advantage.

How cloud provides a robust foundation for emerging technologies like AI & ML?

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As businesses thrive in today’s highly competitive and continuously evolving marketplace, innovation has become paramount for organisations across the spectrum of industry verticals. Changing customer expectations and the need for delivering top-notch customer experiences mandates organisations to reimagine business processes at every touch point.

Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic has significantly transformed customer engagement, with digital platforms at the core. This omni-channel digital environment will continue to remain a crucial part of the post pandemic world. As customer interactions move to digital, a vast data pool is created from multiple touch points and at various stages of the customer journey. Future-ready organisations have realised the importance of this data to make informed decisions and enhance customer experience with personalised offerings.

In the backdrop of this disruption, organisations are increasingly looking at leveraging emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Data Analytics and Internet of Things (IoT) to take customer experience to the next level. For instance, application of AI-driven analytics is enabling organisations to derive meaningful insights from the data collected through customer engagements on digital platforms, thereby allowing them to better understand customer needs and provide tailored offerings.

Let’s understand how the focus on emerging technologies is impacting cloud adoption.

Cloud at Core – Backbone to Emerging Technologies

It’s important to note that innovating with emerging technologies requires an agile, flexible and highly scalable IT infrastructure, especially with the amount of data that is generated. Legacy systems and traditional on-premise IT infrastructure lack scalability, agility and compute power to test and deploy modern use cases around emerging technologies. However, cloud comes to the rescue with its agility, hyper scalability, and compute power, thereby providing a robust infrastructure backbone and enabling IT teams to scale up and scale down as needed, run business applications, and ensure quick roll out.

Future-ready organisations, as part of their digital transformation journeys, have embraced cloud as the core of their IT initiatives. According to a Gartner report by 2024, more than 45% of IT spending on system infrastructure, infrastructure software, application software and business process outsourcing will shift from traditional solutions to cloud.

The report further acknowledges that emerging technologies such as AI, IoT, edge computing and advanced data analytics are seen as the next wave of disruption; and cloud serves as the foundation for these technologies’ use cases for businesses.

These trends clearly indicate that cloud delivers an ideal environment for business applications based on emerging technologies and how a cloud-first strategy is the first step towards a digital-centric business model.

Let’s look at how these emerging technologies will shape cloud adoption trends.

  • Rise of Intelligent Businesses: The key to becoming an intelligent enterprise is data. Valuable insights derived from this data results into business intelligence and one of the biggest distinguishers of any organisation. In this direction, organisations need to run cutting-edge AI-ML based analytics over their data pool and garner insights. This is possible only on cloud as it provides immense storage and compute capabilities as and when required. Cloud enables end-to-end data analytics, from storage of data to generating actionable insights.
  • Automated Environment: The need for automating business processes has been more prevalent in the last one year. As remote working became the new reality, organisations were pushed to adopt automation, which would ensure seamless operations even in times of disruption. This also opens doors to enhanced workforce productivity as automation of time-consuming manual processes and allows them to focus on more important areas and innovation. Cloud’s ability to automate itself and scale up and scale down depending on the workloads significantly reduces the burden on IT teams.
  • Reimagining Cloud with AI: This novel technology is increasingly finding its place in digital transformation roadmaps of organisations. In order to fully enable an AI-driven business, it’s crucial that organisations make AI accessible to its entire workforce. Availability of AI toolsets on cloud allows employees to learn from the insights and make customer engagements more meaningful. Hence, a cloud infrastructure which is powered by AI will be among the primary considerations for organisations.
  • Cloud Enabled Hyper Connectivity: With developments in the areas of autonomous vehicles, smart city infrastructure, 5G and IoT enabled intelligent Edge, the realms of cloud are expanding beyond mere availability. Cloud is the platform that makes reality of a hyper-connected world possible as it forms the foundation where different technologies connect and talk to each other. Smart cities’ integrated command and control centres leverage the power of cloud enabled dashboards to monitor and analyse data coming from a vast network of IoT devices deployed across cities. As 5G becomes a reality, there will be an influx of new datasets which will reside and get analysed on cloud. Similarly, as more and more people get connected on IoT devices, organisations will have to prepare their cloud infrastructure with the greater computation capabilities.

Innovations Bringing Cloud at the Center

In a post-Pandemic world, organisations will continue to innovate as part of their digital transformation roadmap and emerging technologies will continue to define their efforts. In line with this direction, IT leaders will focus on building a cloud infrastructure that equips their business with the tools and capabilities needed to bring the best out of technologies such as AI, ML, 5G, data analytics, and IoT among others.

Another Gartner predicts that the rapid pace of innovation in cloud infrastructure and platform services (CIPS) makes cloud the de facto platform for new digital services and existing traditional workloads alike, which is why 40% or all enterprise workloads will be deployed in CIPS by 2023, up from only 20% in 2020.

As observed above, with more and more workloads moving to cloud platforms and everything transitioning to as-a-service, cloud adoption will be redefined by its capabilities to perform intelligent tasks and serve as a one-stop platform where all technologies connect with each other seamlessly and enable a truly modern digital experience for all stakeholders.

Connectivity is key to enabling digital transformation

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Today, business and IT leaders increasingly focus on leveraging digital technologies and innovation to keep their organisations productive, efficient, relevant, and, most importantly, forward-looking. The need to transform how they do business has led to the proliferation of the technologies like cloud, AI/ML, Big Data Analytics, and IoT; and the current unprecedented situation has made all these technologies mainstream, as enterprises are looking to take advantage of all the digital innovation happening around them.

For organisations to remain competitive, they must embrace digital transformation and the requisite infrastructure needed to achieve it. As business leaders are putting digital transformation at the center of their growth and profitable strategies, the digital infrastructure’s role that manages it has become more important than ever.

This is where flexible, resilient, scalable, secure, and high-speed connectivity that is easy to manage and deploy will not only bind all the pieces of the digital transformation together but also act as the core of business continuity. And the current distributed workforce scenario has further amplified the need for every organisation to be supported by a resilient connectivity solution.

The backbone of digital infrastructure

We all would agree that data is the lifeblood of digital transformation, and connectivity enables this lifeblood to flow. This means data flows through the network infrastructure multiple times, whether it is created in the cloud, on-premise data center, IoT devices, or a remote location. Suppose any organisation is looking to leverage the value and derive insights from this data. In that case, the underlying network must provide the appropriate levels of protection, resiliency, security, speed, and compliance for the data.

And this is the reason why managed service providers, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and IT services firms are looking to bolster their connectivity resilience so that they can serve and support their customers in the best possible way. Just like cloud computing introduced utility service models for processing power, intelligent network and connectivity have brought flexibility and agility to the way organisations get connected to the world.

As far as data centers are concerned, they are seen as a connectivity hub offering their colocation customers tremendous possibilities while building their networks. The success or failure of any colocation data center largely depends upon the strength of its interconnect options. While enterprises look for cost savings pertaining to power or cooling or benefits associated with data security when they co-locate servers in a data center, the right connectivity services can act as key enabler in transforming their business.

Enabling business agility

In the current scenario, enterprises are opting for carrier-neutral data centers that provide the best option for networking data and help build customisable network solutions. These data centers offer customers access to multiple Cloud Service Providers and ISPs, giving flexibility they need to scale and adapt to changing business needs.

Apart from enabling business agility, carrier-neutral data centres’ network services also address the data connectivity needs of enterprises of all sizes. These services ride on a high capacity, high performance, and neutral network, which seamlessly integrated with a national and global network powered by multiple ISPs, Internet Exchanges, Content Distribution Networks (CDNs), carriers, and other network service providers so that organisations can build their communication networks to deliver the optimum end-user experience.​

Interconnectivity & low latency is key

Building resilience into the networks any enterprise depends on is more important than ever and that’s why carrier-neutral data centers ensure their connectivity solutions does not fail and, at the same time, help in orchestrating the critical interconnectivity any business requires.

The focus of most of the data center service providers is always on supporting customers to ensure their business is strengthened by secure, resilient infrastructure and fast, flexible connectivity, enabling them to bring their data, applications, and customers closer. In this endeavour, the leading service providers are trying to create a data center interconnect network on a dark fibre to help customers hosted on multiple data centers. This, in turn, will help such customers opt for low latency network.

When we talk about data center connection, everything boils down to speed and performance. In their quest to offer all the advantages to the customers, data center service providers must ensure that the connection is not getting hampered by latency. This is where cross-connections prove beneficial, wherein cross-connect cabling that shares bandwidth between Internet Service Provider and server reduces the number of hops between carriers. By avoiding all other network switches, no extra latency is added, which provides businesses with fastest connectivity possible.

The continued reliance on connectivity 

Technological innovations are driving a new paradigm for enterprises and coaxing them to embrace digital transformation. In such an environment, business success is largely dependent upon ensuring a resilient network connectivity.

Most importantly, business leaders must ensure their digital strategy delivers the required RoI, and at the same time, innovation outcomes allow them to disrupt. All these can be achieved by having a resilient interconnectivity strategy. The new normal is that organisations must achieve always-on, always-available secure connectivity across enterprise applications, data, and systems if they strive to compete in today’s dynamic business environment.

From the data center perspective, organisations must go with a colocation provider that offers high levels of data center connectivity. While evaluating data center facilities, enterprises should also assess the interconnect and infrastructure capabilities to ensure they receive the right connectivity solutions needed to grow their businesses and better serve their customers.

Source – https://etinsights.et-edge.com/connectivity-is-key-to-enabling-digital-transformation/

Thriving in the new normal with everything-as-a-service

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Everything-as-a-Service (XaaS) encompasses Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

The current pandemic has accelerated the pace or adoption of digitalisation in our professional or personal lives. As more and more organisations are embracing digital-first strategy, they continue to see the benefits in terms of business agility, eliminating redundancy, and driving efficiency. Besides, they are increasingly investing in new technologies to churn out business intelligence, build new business models, and create business value.

This trend of digitisation, automation, and the connected world is a double-edged sword for enterprises of all sizes. On one side, it is opening a big market for the businesses to reach out to the customers spread across the world; on the other side; they are creating huge competition for themselves.

With this global landscape in front of organisations, in terms of opportunities as well as threats, it becomes imperative for them to be innovative and offer the best quality product and services to the market. The success or failure of businesses, however, largely depends upon their ability to scale up or scale down in the shortest possible time as well as provide the best of the customer experience.

Rise of ‘As-a-Service’ model

How do organisations manage this dilemma of scaling up or down and not making long-term CAPEX and OPEX commitment?The straightforward response to this is that enterprises should look at adopting ‘As-a-Service’ model. Besides digitisation, consuming everything on ‘As-a-Service’model will ensure that they are scaling up or down faster and maintaining a profitable, cost-efficient business house. This model will also help them deliver new and innovative services and seamless customer experiences.

Cloud is one such phenomenon, where service providers are taking a risk on their customers behalf, invest millions of dollars to create the infrastructure, and convert that infrastructure into services. Enterprises need to put their applications on to the cloud and consume whatever suits them. In this model, being termed as ‘Everything-as-a-Service’ or XaaS, services rendered and delivered completely reside on the cloud with virtual access to almost everything.

‘Everything-as-a-Service’ encompasses Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), which simplifies the deployment and integration of cloud services. With more and more services are being delivered on the cloud, providing virtual access to everything, and with digital technologies like AI/ML and IoT playing a critical role in building these services, ‘Everything-as-a-Service’ will gradually become a necessity for a truly digital-native enterprise.

The industry is witness to the adoption of SaaS technologies that replaced on-premises applications to an extent. However, big or small enterprises are still stuck with legacy technologies and are piling on more without thinking about how that will affect the fast-changing business models. Looking at how many micro-service applications are yet being developed in-house and enterprises’ struggle to think beyond their legacy infrastructure, cloud vendors are approaching such organisations (having captive data centers) with a promise of delivering everything on ‘As-a-Service’ model.

A true differentiator for enterprises

Another trend being witnessed in the market, where the best of the OEMs, ISVs, SMEs, and SOHOs, are working in the advanced technology space and coming up with the best tech products and innovative services. The infrastructure providers partner with these companies while adopting their technology, integrating it with their infrastructure, and orchestrating and delivering all these to the customers’ large segment on ‘As-a-Service’ model. This kind of partnership is bound to help businesses focus on their core expertise and handle their IT needs cost-effectively, as all the services will be available to them at zero CAPEX investment and zero OPEX commitment.

According to research reports from IMARC, the global XaaS market is projected to reach $344.3 billion by 2024, expanding at a CAGR of 24 percent during 2019-2024. The increasing adoption of cloud-based monitoring, coupled with the growing need for scalable storage services, represents one of the key factors strengthening the growth of the global XaaS market.

The report further suggests that organisations worldwide are currently undergoing a digital transformation, which has resulted in the robust growth of corporate data. Cloud-based solutions offer affordable and efficient options for data storage, which is further contributing to the market growth. In line with this, the reducing cost of subscriptions with improved bandwidth and connectivity is also anticipated to bolster the market growth.

Enterprises are seeing XaaS as a game-changing business model, as it is helping them with a broader user base, creating and delivering more customer-focused solutions, exploring new markets, and cross-selling products and services

Hence, one cannot deny the fact that ‘Everything-as-a-Service’ has the potential to transform the landscape across industries, making them more efficient and optimal in resources utilisation. With the tangible benefits of XaaS observed by industry experts, it is gradually being adapted to create new business models and scale existing models through innovation.

XaaS has become a primary driver in technology initiatives undertaken by enterprises. The rapid evolution and adoption of the cloud have led to the fast acceptance of the XaaS model.

The future belongs to XaaS

While the world has turned upside down over the past one year, the COVID imposed digitisation in our professional and personal lives helped everyone stay afloat. During this critical period, business organisations truly realised the value of the XaaS model among other digital technologies, as the adoption of it helped them sail through the disruptions and, at the same time, maintain business continuity.

When we look at the growing use cases of cloud, AI, ML, and IoT or citizen privacy concerns which will also make data to be locally stored in the domestic data centers– all these trends indicate that India will need a big dose of infrastructure in terms of data centers, cloud, and supporting services and everything must be made available on ‘As-a-Service’ model.

Source : https://www.dqindia.com/thriving-new-normal-everything-service/

Celebrating Women Leaders of India Inc.

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On the occasion of International Women’s Day 2021, Yotta is proud to celebrate women power, by putting the spotlight on exceptional women who have made a mark for themselves, either as a Business or IT Leader.

Recognizing their effort of excelling in their chosen fields, converting every obstacle into opportunities, and assuming leadership roles in their respective organizations, we are delighted to feature some of the leading Women Leaders of India Inc. who chose to follow their passion and dreams and today, they have truly become an inspiration and mentors for many aspiring women professionals.

As these women leaders set examples before the society and the world at large, let’s get to know more about their growth journey.

Aneesha Pant

“I don’t feel anyone else can influence your growth. It is up to us to make a mark for ourselves and not expect the society or anyone else to give you any special privileges. Only skillset, performance, and attitude should be the benchmark for hiring and not gender or diversity.”

Aneesha Pant
CTO, YES Securities

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Annie Mathew

“I do not believe women shy away from any challenge, let alone that of managing technology. With so many calls on their time, prioritising is logical and unfortunately, technology operations tend to be very demanding across a 24×7 cycle.”

Annie Mathew
CIO, Mother Dairy

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Binita Prasad

“While a female leader has to face a lot of challenges, there are numerous ways to overcome them. We need to focus on finding ways to eliminate obstacles rather than wasting time on reactions”

Binita Prasad
Head – IT, Sany Heavy Industry India Pvt. Ltd.

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Deena Mehta

“Culture of inclusiveness and diversity comes from a common goal. And every obstacle has an opportunity hidden in it. If you can overcome the obstacle by providing an acceptable solution that cannot be discarded easily, then your progress is assured.”

Deena Mehta
MD, Asit C. Mehta Investment Intermediates Ltd.

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Glory Nelson

“The secret sauce to success is a blend of passion and dedication. If women are passionate about their work, they can reach to any kind of leadership role.”

Glory Nelson
Chief People & Tech Strategy Officer, Xebia

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Jijy Oommen

“Organisations with greater workplace diversity achieve better results, as women lead with empathy and make better and faster decisions that give companies a serious competitive edge.“

Jijy Oommen
BFSI Technology Leader

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Mehjabeen-Taj-Aalam

“Women need to play to the strength of their own skillset, instead of matching the style of their male counterparts. If you are offered a new role or a challenge, do not underestimate your competencies or get tentative about your eligibility – see learning as part of the job.”

Mehjabeen Taj Aalam
Technology Head – Digital & Customer Engagements, Tata Capital

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Priti-Rathi-Gupta

“It is a well-known and accepted fact that women bring diversity in skills as well as higher Empathy and Ethics Quotient. We, as women, have been gifted with unique qualities that make our lives, workplace, and the world a better place. Go, use these qualities abundantly.”

Priti Rathi Gupta
MD, Anand Rathi Shares and Stock Brokers Ltd., and Founder, LXME

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Ritu Madbhavi

“My success can be attributed to being passionate about what I do, attention to details, and proper planning. Women professionals need to work without expecting special treatment and deliver results like any other colleague. The recognition will be purely on merit basis.”

Ritu Madbhavi,
Group CIO, FCB Ulka Advertising

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“My passion, attention to details, and self-belief helped me succeed” – Ritu Madbhavi

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Q. As a Woman Leader, how challenging has it been for you to succeed in your chosen field?

Surprisingly, I have never experienced gender bias of any kind. The challenges that I have faced are similar to any other male colleague. Given the dynamic nature and the speed at which technology has been evolving, one has to keep abreast with the latest developments in the IT field and identify ways to fit technology to your organisational needs.

Q. How have you been able to convert obstacles in your career path into opportunities?

My success can be attributed to being passionate about what I do, attention to details, and proper planning.

Q. Tech industry is dominated by male leaders. How women can excel, assume leadership roles, and make a mark for themselves?

Again, I would like to emphasise that I personally have never experienced gender bias. I do feel that women workforce has to stop thinking of the women versus men comparison. They just need to work without expecting special treatment and deliver results as any other colleague. The recognition will be purely on merit basis.

Q. How can we create a culture of inclusiveness and diversity at a workplace?

I think there is a need to develop a culture of tolerance and empathy. It is extremely important to make people comfortable at a workplace. As a leader, you should be approachable, and your team members should feel comfortable discuss anything with you.

Q. Any interesting anecdote that you would like to share that has inspired or kept you motivated in your career?

Many moons ago, after my son was born, I was freelancing and doing corporate IT training. Almost 2 decades after that, a CIO walked up to me in a conference and said that he had attended my training sessions, basis on which he was promoted to the position of the CIO. It was a very special moment for me.

Q. Which is one woman personality you admire the most and why? Your message to the aspiring Women Leaders?

Rather than naming a famous personality, I want to give an example of a friend. She lost her father at a young age and was brought up by her mother who did odd catering jobs to make ends meet. Unfortunately, soon after marriage she lost her husband and found herself in a difficult position of supporting her old mother and young daughter.

Leveraging her mother’s contacts and cooking skills, she started a catering business, gave her daughter a good education, and sent her abroad for higher studies. Today, she runs a flourishing business and has a team under her. She is a living example of a woman who beat all odds and succeeded in life.

My message to aspiring women leaders is that please look ahead calmly and plan meticulously. Do not get discouraged by the difficulty that life throws at you. Carve your own path.

“My success can be attributed to being passionate about what I do, attention to details, and proper planning. Women professionals need to work without expecting special treatment and deliver results like any other colleague. The recognition will be purely on merit basis.”

“Women do not shy away from any challenge” – Annie Mathew

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“I do not believe women shy away from any challenge, let alone that of managing technology. With so many calls on their time, prioritising is logical and unfortunately, technology operations tend to be very demanding across a 24×7 cycle.  

For women to succeed in any field, a support ecosystem that recognises their unique challenges is essential. When women work against subconscious conditioning and believe that their careers are as critical, they will co-opt their family and extended network into being their partners in this journey.

Traditionally, women tend to be more self-sacrificing and likely to give up their aspirations for the perceived larger good. Millennials seem to be challenging these mindsets and it is only a matter of time before women step up to claim their right not only to education but also to a fulfilling career.”

“Obstacles do not block the path, they rather create it” – Priti Rathi Gupta

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Q. As a Woman Leader, how challenging has it been for you to succeed in your chosen field?

Financial services is a male-dominated field, where the incumbent service providers and large majority of the users are men. Amongst the businesses, that I set up and led, Commodity Futures, was a “men-only” and largely unorganised sector. This has been by far my biggest challenge, as going to Agricultural Mandis by a woman was quite an exception.

Professional success can be achieved by passion, hard work, building the right skills, and self-belief. And women need a double dose of all these to succeed professionally. Shattering a glass ceiling is not just a phrase.

Q. How have you been able to convert obstacles in your career path into opportunities?

“Obstacles do not block the path; they create the Path”.

I believe all successful businesses are built on the back of a unique problem that they solve. When you see the world through this lens, then obstacles look like opportunities. Being a woman in this domain gave me the advantage of designing products and services for the underserved category. Lxme, a financial platform for women, was born out of the latent need that a woman could only identify.

As a woman, I have also got the opportunity to represent my organisation on various business boards, councils, and associations. It is now a well-known and accepted fact that women bring diversity in skills and higher Empathy and Ethics Quotient.

Q. Tech industry is dominated by male leaders. How women can excel, assume leadership roles, and make a mark for themselves?

Women in Tech is now a rising phenomenon. To further propel it, these are a few steps that should be taken:

  1. Women should mentor and create diversity in the teams they lead.
  2. Gender equality in any field is a conversation that must include men too. The fact that women bring along with the required aptitudes, emotional intelligence even in the products that we build is a marked differentiator. Men in leadership positions should strive for gender diversity to enhance quality as well as productivity.
  3. Women in this field need to constantly work on two areas, Upskilling and Networking. Finding time for these is a must.

Q. How can we create a culture of inclusiveness and diversity at a workplace?

The following has worked for me while building organisations:

The first step is for organisations to recognise the enormous benefits that inclusivity and diversity bring to the business. Innovation, holistic customer service, and product designing are some outcomes that add to the bottom line of the company.

The cultural ethos of any organisation flows from the top and should percolate right to the bottom rung of the organisation. Leadership and executive teams should be created with diversity in gender, religious, race, and age.

Honouring and acknowledging varied employee needs, cultural and religious practices are effective HR tools that any business can incorporate. Respect and equality are non-negotiable protocols.

Building effective and clear communication channels to make the workplace safe and harmonious have always helped.

Building a multi-generational workforce keeps the organisation agile and evolving, particularly in creating diversity. The young are always more idealistic. For the millennials and the Gen Z, equality is a given norm.

Q. Which is one woman personality you admire the most and why? Your message to the aspiring Women Leaders?

Sheryl Sandberg is on top of the list. A woman in Tech, with an innate sense of empathy, who has created a woman-to-woman peer organisation.

To aspiring women leaders, I would like to say that nothing is perfect, but imperfection is an opportunity. We, as women, have been gifted with unique qualities that make our lives, workplace, and world a better place. Go, use these qualities abundantly.

“It is a well-known and accepted fact that women bring diversity in skills as well as higher Empathy and Ethics Quotient. We, as women, have been gifted with unique qualities that make our lives, workplace, and the world a better place. Go, use these qualities abundantly.”