Indian companies opt for hybrid approach in cloud adoption: Report

Indian organisations continue to invest in cloud technologies aligning with increasing commitment to digital transformation and artificial intelligence (AI) adoption. Compared to on-premise infrastructure, the cloud offers lower costs and the ability to rapidly scale. These advantages have prompted several companies to switch to a cloud infrastructure. 

A new study by consulting firm Ernst and Young (EY) has shown that 67% of the surveyed Indian companies are in the process of transitioning applications to the cloud. 

Similar results were observed by SalesEdge (sister unit of TechCircle) in a survey of 96,500 Indian companies, ranging from small enterprises to large conglomerates across sectors such as banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), infrastructure, and media. India Inc’s digital tech spending touched ₹2,258,349.1 crore (approximately $268 billion) with cloud continuing to be a major driver of this expenditure. In FY24 alone, spending on this technology formed one-third of the digital spending pie. In fact, from the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic (FY21), cloud expenditures doubled.

The EY report has also found that instead of entirely moving workloads to the cloud, companies prefer to adopt a hybrid approach. Up to 80% of the companies are managing enterprise applications partly in the cloud and partly on-premise, so to keep the approach secure and causing minimum disruption to operations. The hybrid approach also allows companies to mitigate the challenge of incompatible infrastructure.

Further, 90% of Indian organisations acknowledge that AI adoption would have been impossible without cloud migration, highlighting the cloud's pivotal role in advancing India's technological landscape.