Cloud services, being cost effective, scalable and agile are growing at a slow but steady pace in India. For years enterprises and the security community have debated over its maturity and the readiness for its adoption . Major concerns such as security and confidentiality of data have marred its large scale adoption for many decades. Surprisingly, the cloud delivery model is being used to deliver a growing number of security-critical tasks. Irrespective of all the concerns, Cloud Services is an inevitable choice in today's dynamic environment.
According to the Enterprise Cloud Adoption Survey by the Everest Group, over 56% enterprises consider cloud as a strategic differentiator and about 58% of enterprises spend upwards of 10% of their IT budget on cloud services. The inherent ability to increase operational efficiency is accelerating the demand for more such services. Today Cloud Services are broadly offered in three medium popularly known as IAAS(Infrastructure as a Service) , PAAS ( Platform as a Service) & SAAS(Software as a Service ).
In India, According to "2015 Top markets report on Cloud computing" by international trade administration " over 250 million Indians today use web connected devices, which generally rely on cloud services for applications and other functionality. As Internet access, e-commerce, mobile device usage, and business adoption continue to expand, the growth in cloud-related spending in India should outpace that in the rest of the world" . Research firm Gartner believes that by 2018 public cloud spending in India will reach nearly $2 billion, from $638 million in 2014. Other estimates are similarly upbeat, IDC predicts $3.5 billion will be spent on cloud services in total in India by 2016 – growth of over 400 percent from the 2012 level. Finally, Forrester expects the software-as-a-service (SaaS) market in particular to roughly double in value between 2014 and 2020, when it will be worth $1.2 billion.
Despite optimistic predictions and overwhelming market potential, however, a variety of challenges have held India’s back in realizing its cloud potential even as adoption continues growing. Some of the most critical and current problem is the country’s Internet infrastructure (i.e., bandwidth constraints and fiber optic weaknesses) and the inconsistency of its power supply in some areas. Other key concerns that are preventing organizations, especially public sectors is regarding security of their confidential data. IT regulations in India have been very strict and requires that the organization must store their data locally(In India), As many cloud providers have their data centers located outside India, the current scenario discourages firms to adopt for cloud services.
Fortunately, the government is aware of these challenges, and its ambitious Digital India program aims to address some of the infrastructural and policy weaknesses, though it remains to be seen if this will lead to significant improvements.
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