The market for data center services and cloud services has grown rapidly. Enterprises & organizations including government entities strive to have assured access to public cloud resources – even though they run their on-premises data centers. In the hybrid and multi-cloud regime, a large number of players offer services in this domain. In a recent interaction with Md. Qaisar Alam of Digital Edge Magazine, Piyush Somani, Managing Director & Chairman, ESDS Software Solution, talks about his company’s overall strategy around addressing the Indian cloud market.
Do you think that cloud computing is the most happening development in India attracting a lot of investments in either establishing new data centers or expanding the existing ones?
Yes, the very existence of global tech giants, nurturing India’s strong engineering skill base, and the recent digital transformation in different sectors of India attracts investments in data centers and cloud computing. Cloud computing offers numerous benefits, and when combined with advanced technologies and automation, enhances the end-user experience.
At the onset of the ongoing pandemic, businesses and their workforce adopted remote working, which has made us realize that technology, automation, and cloud computing are necessary. It was projected that India would be leading the automation adoption in the near future, which has been impacted due to the global shutdowns induced by the pandemic.
Businesses migrate their vital data, application services on data centers and cloud compute with the sole purpose of safeguarding their business with digital security. As a part of our portfolio, ESDS offers a one-stop solution for IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service), SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) and managed services.
We host applications on our cloud platform (eNlight cloud suite) and make them available to end-users over the Internet (as SaaS and IaaS) on a monthly subscription model, allowing clients to develop, run and manage their applications. While, under the managed services category we enable companies to migrate their data on our cloud environment and fully manage it on day to day basis.
Across the globe, many countries are adopting data localization norms to safeguard and protect against data breaches. The Government of India also looks forward to introducing the Data Protection Bill, which emphasizes data localization and privacy. Last year, MeitY released an initial draft of the Data Center Policy, which will play a significant role in setting up Data Centers. To address concerns related to establishments and promote Data Localization, the Government can collaborate and invest in indigenous Data Center providers like ESDS.
Have you got your data centers in India? Where are they located? What are the salient attributes of these data centers?
Presently, ESDS has got three data centers based in Nashik, Mumbai, and Bengaluru. Soon, we plan to set up one more data center at Mohali. All the data centers of ESDS are designed by keeping in mind the Tier-III standards and have maintained an uptime of 99.97 percent since establishment delivered through our innovation in cloud and data center solutions. Our patented Intelligent vertical auto-scaling cloud technology allows (a) efficient handling of unexpected loads, (b) scales up RAM, CPU and bandwidth (c) effective use of virtualization technology (d) quick and easy way to scale resources and (e) maximum uptime and performance with auto-scalability.
Through eNlight DRM – a disaster recovery monitoring solution – ESDS collaborates with customers to strategize disaster recovery plans, analyse risks, business impact, etc. and ensure bespoke system recovery. ESDS assumes responsibility for implementing the disaster recovery plan in the event of a crisis.
In your views how big is the present market size of cloud services in India?
The Indian cloud market witnessed a significant adoption during the FY2020. Due to the COVID pandemic, everything went digital and online. Students were learning online; businesses conducting virtual meetings, movies, and television shows migrating to OTT platforms. The emphasis on cloud was driven by digitalization and increased usage of online platforms.
Businesses having on-premise legacy systems & hardware faced many problems during the pandemic. They faced ransomware attacks, electrical breakdowns, data corruption, along with increasing security issues. The reinforced lockdown crippled the businesses by hampering their production on numerous factors. Companies realized that cloud would be the way forward and on-premise and colocation models had huge data risks during the pandemic. The SaaS market in India is expected to witness huge success in the years.
Is security the biggest issue for enterprises & organizations as 80-90% of their employees still work from their homes – hooked to corporate networks?
Yes, security indeed was a significant concern during this pandemic. At ESDS, we have safeguarded our system and hosted data with various in-house developed security solutions like VTMScan, eNlight WAF, and eNlight WebVPN, which are also offered as SaaS services.
Data security continues to be the major challenge as there has been a significant shift of the business networks to the Internet. Previously, people having on-premise or colocation servers had MPLS networks, but now their shift to the Internet is becoming inevitable. The increased growth of businesses to a digital base also contributes to the rising concerns for data security. It has now become the need of the hour to add more security layers to our business. ESDS has a security operations center or SOC which is responsible for detecting, preventing, investigating, and responding to cyber threats. Further, eNlight is built on multiple layers of security and is, therefore, able to deliver enterprise-grade security. Cloud service providers have evolved faster than their on-premise counterparts, making security offerings the most sought-after solution available in the market.
What are the verticals, which you focus on with your cloud services?
Presently, the primary focus of ESDS is on the government ministries and companies and corporate entities across sectors such as banking BFSI, financial services, manufacturing, ITES, telecom, real estate, pharmaceuticals, retail and education. Our MeitY-empaneled and STQC-audited government community cloud has been hosting applications and data of government and PSU organizations. The amalgamation of cloud hosting with advanced technologies is geared to transform the post-pandemic era.
What are the cloud services you offer to enterprises & organizations in the country?
For the manufacturing companies and enterprises with their own deployed SAP HANA ERP, ESDS offers a dedicated community cloud, SAP HANA community cloud developed by SAP SE, whose primary function is to store and retrieve data as requested by the applications. Our SaaS offering also included HIMS (hospital information management system). Our in-house developed iPASERP solution is for district governance and planning of budget for the entire state.
What is the channel strategy of your company for addressing the cloud market during these challenging times in India?
The channel business is an efficient way for scaling out in the market. ESDS has partnered with SIs (systems integrators) to provide solutions and technologies in smart cities for implementing smart housing, smart parking and smart lighting among others.
However, even during the lockdown period, we had a limited number of employees coming to the office. Our technical team monitored and ensured the smoother functioning of our data centers across all our locations. The efforts put in by ESDSians were recognized and appreciated.
Qaisar
