IT Priorities 2022: Cloud-first mindset growing in India

India’s red-hot cloud computing market is set to receive a shot in the arm next year with companies in the subcontinent pushing cloud spending to the top of their IT priority list, a new study has found.

According to the 2022 TechTarget/Computer Weekly IT priorities survey, nearly half of more than 300 respondents in India are expected to spend more on cloud services, including cloud applications, storage and computing, in 2022.

Also, 65% of IT leaders in India said their organisations are now cloud-first, which entails adopting cloud services in areas such as edge computing and the internet of things, as well as customer experience and business continuity.

The optimism surrounding cloud spending in India comes amid the pressure for companies to build more resilience in their business. In 2020, India’s spending on public cloud services reached $3.6bn, a figure that is expected to swell to $9.5bn by 2025, according to market research by IDC.

India’s growing appetite for cloud is also paving the way for greater use of automation. More than eight in 10 cloud-first organisations in India are already leveraging automation, even though some may still operate on-premise infrastructure.

To manage their hybrid IT footprint, 44% of Indian organisations are eager to roll out hybrid cloud infrastructure management tools in 2022. They are also more likely to look for artificial intelligence capabilities in such tools to identify anomalies and address issues before they occur.

The rise of cloud has had a knock-on effect on demand for software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) solutions as organisations support increasingly cloud-based workloads and look for ways reduce their reliance on multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) connectivity.

According to the study, 42% of respondents in India plan to spend on SD-WAN, followed by intent-based networking and WAN acceleration. At the same time, they are considering secure access service edge (SASE) offerings to bolster the security posture of their growing cloud footprint.

Being cloud-first is not just about making cloud-based infrastructure investments – Indian organisations are also at the forefront of building cloud-native applications. Nearly half of respondents put continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) at the top of their software development priorities, followed by DevOps and containers.

Indian organisations are already using cloud services in a big way. Tata Capital, for example, is using virtual assistants such as Amazon Alexa to deliver services, while the National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange has migrated 50 applications to Amazon Web Services since 2018.

In terms of security, cloud-based security remains high on the agenda, along with vulnerability management and threat detection. With a hybrid workforce, part of which will return to offices come January 2022, Indian organisations are also pushing endpoint detection and response (EDR) capabilities to the forefront of their endpoint security initiatives.

Many Indian organisations have already received buy-in from stakeholders to shore up their cloud capabilities and other IT investments in 2022. Nearly eight in 10 are increasing their IT budgets, higher than the Asia-Pacific average of 64%. Just 3% plan to reduce their technology spend in 2022.