Digital infrastructure to drive 49% of business revenue in India by 2027

While businesses in India believe that they will continue to face challenges owing to high energy prices, followed by high inflation and growing geopolitical tensions in the next 12 months or so, they are expected to generate as much as half (49%) of the revenue from digitally connected products, services, and customer experiences by 2027, according to a new study published on Wednesday.  

The report titled ‘CIO Technology Playbook 2023’, launched by tech companies Lenovo and AMD, jointly with market research firm International Data Corporation (IDC) that polled 900 CIOs and IT decision-makers in 12 markets across Asia Pacific, including over 150 from India further noted that the advent of multi-cloud environments and rapidly expanding edge infrastructure are adding to greater IT operational complexity.  

To accelerate their digital transformation and modernise legacy IT infrastructure, 49% of CIOs demand an improvement in cyber resiliency and 47% said automating digital infrastructure management as the top investment priorities this year, the study said.   

Additionally, security concerns have urged 63% organisations to repatriate workloads back from public cloud to private cloud and traditional data centres in the last 12 months.  

According to the study, multi-cloud will gain prominence in Asia over the next 2 to 3 years. Businesses in this region will continue to run more than 50% of mission-critical workloads on traditional data centre infrastructure, systems and platforms, and private cloud infrastructure, it said. 

"With the rise of digital capabilities, businesses are leaning towards data-driven innovation to drive effective business decisions,” Amit Luthra, Managing Director, India, Lenovo ISG told Tech Circle adding that “CIOs today have a bigger role to play”. In the changing business landscape, they are striving to stay on “top of rapid innovations in cloud, edge, artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) that must meet the existing infrastructure with as-a-service offerings”. 

In fact, the study shows that India is the most aware market in Asia Pacific, with nine out of 10 organisations are using or are planning to leverage As-a-Service flexible IT infrastructure in the next 12 months.

The study also noted that improving customer experience is a priority for businesses across verticals such as manufacturing, retail, logistics, transportation, and energy are increasingly focused on delivering a superior customer experience to drive success in the digital economy. Over 88% of the organisations in the region are either using or are planning to use AI/ML applications in the next 12 months. 

Another study published in November 2022 by market research firm Gartner said that CIOs expect IT budgets to increase 5.1% on average in 2023, with top areas of increased investment including in cyber security, data analytics, cloud and artificial intelligence. However, nearly 95% of CIOs struggle with developing a vision for digital change, often due to competing expectations from different stakeholders, noted Gartner. 

Moreover, CIOs continue to struggle to hire and retain IT talent to accelerate digital initiatives, as Sanchez Reina, VP analyst at Gartner noted “talent shortages is also another big hindrance to digital”. However, the study identified numerous sources of technology talent that are untapped. For example, only 12% of enterprises use students (through internships and relationships with schools) to help develop technological capabilities and only 23% use gig workers. 

Luthra too believes that industry-academia collaboration and engaging with the right technology partners can help address the skills gap.