Choose the right model of cloud adoption: Golok Kumar Simli

According to the experts, there are several trends in cloud that the industry needs to keep an eye on. Some of them are hybrid cloud environments, automation in multi-cloud and hybrid cloud settings, cloud-native technologies, etc.

Here, Golok Kumar Simli, Chief of Technology, Passport Seva, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, has his take on the cloud trends for 2020. Excerpts:

DQ: What are the current road bumps in cloud deployments?

Golok Kumar Simli: The way we are witnessing the demand in terms of usage and delivery of services, schemes or benefits be it the government, public or private sectors, the traditional approach and in-premise data center IT platform has its own limitation. That resulted in the cloud model of IT/software resources capable of dealing with sudden demand, elasticity, provisioning and orchestration. It’s a proven fact now.

However, the biggest challenge and road bump to cloud deployment is to choose the right model of cloud adoption, which enables the customer end-to-end visibility, vendor independent, desired level of privacy and security, clarity on cost model, and well blended with regularity and legal compliances.

DQ: What are the emerging opportunities in cloud deployments?

Golok Kumar Simli: What I foresee is that the enterprise and government sectors are aligning themselves with the emerging technologies, be it Big Data, Analytics, RPA, IoT or IA. As I visualise, the three Ds (demand, data and diversity) will thrive and drive all of these emerging technologies, which would slowly become a common realty in our day-to-day life.

Cloud would be one of the best enabling platforms, addressing the new era of digital transformation and digital reach to common masses as a whole, where, every new technology, be it IoT, IA, RPA, BI and Big Data, will have its own existence and add value to the ecosystem as a whole.

DQ: How will automation increase in multi- and hybrid cloud settings?

Golok Kumar Simli: We have come a long way, right from digitization to consolidation to automation. Multi-cloud and hybrid cloud models would not only help an easy and smooth migration into the cloud platform, but it would also ensure data security of sovereign and strategic information that departments want to keep within themselves and on a traditional data center.

Moreover, such flexible model would also help in data localisation principle adhering to regulatory compliances of the Government. Containerisation of application will also play a big role hosted in a multi-cloud/hybrid-cloud platform. This makes the path easier for the department without any dependency to a particular cloud provider.

DQ: How do you see monitoring and measurement become an IT leadership priority?

Golok Kumar Simli: I always believe and have experienced how close monitoring, measurements and driving from the front by IT leadership has resulted in better and faster deployment, assured service quality, expedited outcome and helped in defining visible data points with traceable audit resulting into informed decision making process over long run.

DQ: When are we seeing cloud-native technologies consolidate?

Golok Kumar Simli: Though PaaS has its own benefit for the client, without having to worry about storage and compute infrastructure with rich blend of VAS, be it database, monitoring or measurement, but a cloud-native architecture probably may scores over PaaS in terms of application-specific build, micro services, auto-learn-response, portability, language agnostic, innovation, DevOps 2.0 and much more.