Seeding cloud success - Why AI and edge computing matter to CIOs

It is hard to put a value on the cloud, but one estimate suggests that the cloud could increase the EBITDA of Forbes Global 2000 companies by $3 trillion by 2030. Stating that there can be no business strategy without a cloud strategy, a leading insights provider estimates that by next year, more than 95 per cent of new digital workloads will run on cloud-native platforms.

In a short time, cloud computing has evolved from a cost-efficiency driver to an agent of business transformation, innovation, and competitive advantage. Yet, Indian organisations spend a paltry $17.5 per employee on public cloud services, less than a tenth of the global average.
The barriers to cloud adoption include lack of understanding, legacy integration issues, inadequate skills and suboptimal economic models. But with the right approach to technology, governance and operations, Indian enterprises can address these challenges to unlock the cloud transformation benefits.

Evaluate the industry cloud platform option

A Vertical or Industry Cloud Platform (ICP) offers software, platform and infrastructure as a service catering to the business, data and compliance needs of an industry. It offers highly specialised and customised services than a generic platform, integrates better with existing systems (e.g., data sharing solutions), enhances processes and applications adaptability, and supports cross-industry innovation.
Examples include Financial Services Cloud, offering insights for personalised planning and engagement, and Microsoft Cloud for Retail, improving supply chain resilience and superior shopping experience.

Focus on FinOps and governance

FinOps – derived from Finance and DevOps – provides an operational and cultural framework enabling enterprises to extract greater business value from the cloud. While FinOps combines financial management and cloud engineering to improve understanding, allocation and management of cloud spending, its focus is not on cost control but rather, on revenue/business value improvement.
This is achieved through collaboration across finance, technology and business to set up and enforce policies and processes for tracking, analysing and optimising cloud costs. Hence FinOps is also a culture that promotes timely, data-driven, collaborative decision-making and collective financial responsibility.

Cloud governance puts in place the guardrails – in the form of rules, processes and tools – required to regulate cloud interactions in line with company policies and regulatory compliance mandates. Governance seeks to check unauthorised, unacceptable and unmanaged cloud usage, to mitigate risk and streamline cloud activity across the enterprise.

Cloud transformation governance programs should be well-designed and proactively implemented to be fully effective. Also, cloud governance is an ongoing effort, requiring regular monitoring, assessment and adjustment to stay on top of evolving technologies, risks and regulatory expectations.

Integrate AI for more
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the cloud combine to yield significant synergies: the cloud provides the massive computing and storage resources, and the scalability, flexibility, and resilience needed to run AI models effectively. On the other hand, AI automates many of the processes in cloud services delivery, including patching or capacity scaling, in addition to anticipating failure and cyber-attacks and performing routine tasks, such as service consumption tracking and billing. Combining as cloud AI, the two technologies enhance business agility, adaptability, insights and efficiencies.

There is virtually unlimited potential for deploying cloud AI. For example, insurance companies use it to process data gathered from connected wearable devices, such as fitness trackers, to price medical insurance premiums based on healthy behaviour. In the healthcare field, an AI-powered cloud solution can streamline administrative tasks like scheduling and documentation to give healthcare practitioners more time for patient care.

From analysing consumer sentiment and spotting market trends to forecasting demand and predicting equipment breakdown, AI-powered cloud solutions enhance efficiencies, improve customer experience, and enable better decisions in every area. Further, cloud AI takes innovation to a new level by performing massive computations with speed and cost efficiency, enabling organisations to ideate, experiment, iterate, prototype, and refine like never before.

Give it an edge

Like AI, edge computing also creates great synergies with the cloud, attending to local, time-sensitive computing tasks, such as real-time surveillance or autonomous vehicle navigation, while leaving advanced analytics and complex computing to the public and private cloud. By processing data close to its point of origination, such as user devices or local edge servers, edge computing counters issues, such as latency, bandwidth consumption, and delayed response, seen in centralised data centres.

Cloud computing is fundamental to business success but needs the right conditions to deliver its potential. FinOps and governance, AI and edge computing can make a big difference in cloud transformation outcomes in Indian organisations.

Saju Sankarankutty

---

Saju Sankarankutty is Senior Vice President and Unit Technology Officer - Cloud and Infrastructure Services at Infosys