Oracle understands the need of cloud acceptance, implementation, and beyond

Oracle recently announced Oracle Alloy, a new cloud infrastructure platform that enables service providers, integrators, independent software vendors (ISVs), and other organizations such as financial institutions or telecommunications providers to become cloud providers and roll out new cloud services to their customers. Here, Kapil Makhija, vice president - technology cloud business, Oracle India, discusses India’s cloud acceptance and more. Excerpts: 

Elaborate on India’s cloud acceptance. What are the key industries leading the digitization process?

India has emerged as a key player in the cloud race over the last few years given the massive acceptance towards the technology. Businesses - big or small - have been able to embrace the cloud approach to fulfil key goals and gain competitive advantage in their specific sector along with business resilience. To support this, IDC’s report states that the overall Indian public cloud services market is expected to reach $13.5 billion by 2026. With such a heightened cloud acceptance in the country, organisations are also able realise low costs, higher efficiency and better productivity across their business units. Additionally, there is a significant rise in cloud native application development given the rise in customer demand and the need to be competitive in the technologically driven space. This is also echoed by a report by IDC which states that 40% of organizations will use applications built on cloud-native technologies by 2025 to ensure workload mobility. This cloud wave is witnessing a ripple effect across sectors in the country including public sector, SMBs, BFSI, Retail, Education amongst many others which are keenly accepting cloud to accelerate innovation. As these organisations become cloud-first, we are also witnessing them leveraging advanced cloud strategies including multicloud and hybrid cloud depending upon the type of business and the related requirements. Additionally, as they do so, there is also a rising acceptance of emerging technology including AI/ML.

What is the importance of customizing and controlling cloud by organisations across sectors?

As we move to cloud-first world, businesses are understanding the nuances of cloud and wish to expand the flexibility that comes with it. ‘One size fits all’ is no longer the ideal and accepted method in the cloud world by most of the businesses who wish to have a competitive edge. With this shift, there is heightened understanding and need of customizing cloud strategy based on the unique requirements of a business. The popularity of multicloud and hybrid cloud is a testimony of this approach and according to a research, the global hybrid cloud market is expected to reach 262 billion U.S. dollars in 2027.

Even beyond this, a significant pillar of India’s growth - the public sector too needs to digitise its offerings and mode of delivery. However, being in a highly regulated space with data sovereignty requirements given the sensitivity of the data, it becomes daunting for these organisations to ensure a complete digitization process without brining the utmost amount of customization. These organizations want take their most mission critical workloads on cloud while maintaining data and service control. It becomes critical to provide these organisations with that support to ensure a wholesome public service delivery. For this, the government has shared a list of MeitY empanelled Cloud Services Providers who are eligible to offer services to governments and public sector firms.

At Oracle, being a MeitY empanelled cloud provider, we are supporting public sector’s digitization. We manage cloud for organizations right from logistics and commerce to healthcare amongst many other sectors. We have also recently launched Oracle cloud alloy and OCI dedicated region in India and globally which are two enablers for a smooth cloud transition for the public sector.

Elaborate on Oracle’s focus for accelerating cloud in India

With an experience of over three decades of understanding the market, we have always aimed at being an enabler of innovation and technological advancement in the country. With a massive customer base in India, Oracle understands the need to be present for the customer consistently throughout cloud acceptance, implementation, and beyond. Everything that we do comes with a customer centric approach and our solutions are always streamlined and customized to what the businesses would want for increased efficiency. We start supporting our customers right from migration with Oracle Cloud Lift Services providing guidance from cloud engineers on planning, architecting, prototyping and managing cloud migrations. In addition to that, we aim to strategic advisors for our customers throughout their cloud journey. We provide essential software updates and new releases and also provide support tools and 24/7 services for customers who need support in mitigating risk. We also offer options like a universal credits program, pay-as-you-go, and Oracle Support Rewards, which are aimed at customers having superior cloud economics. At Oracle, we also offer the industry’s lowest egress cost for outbound data transfer which results in lower overall investment for them. In addition to that our partner strategy is also completely targeted towards with ensuring customer success and we constantly engage with our partners to ensure seamless delivery.

Oracle has launched Cloud Alloy. Talk about the product and its key benefits to the India market

Having a customer centric approach, we have always believed in giving options and power over cloud to our customers. With this new product ‘Oracle Alloy’ we aim to enable service providers, integrators, independent software vendors (ISVs), and other organizations to become cloud providers. We have ensured that this product offers the same 100+ infrastructure and platform services that are available in OCI’s public cloud. The primary goal of this offering is to tailor the cloud experience and meet the specific needs of markets and industry verticals. Additionally, we have always viewed our partners as an extension of us and with this a partner effectively becomes a regional cloud service provider. We allow them to sell cloud subscriptions structured similar to OCI’s commercial model or they can also customize pricing and service availability for their markets. To further accelerate this product, we are also offering Cloud University programs to onboard, train, and certify providers to run, manage, and operate their Oracle Alloy. In an era data localisation amid sovereignty, we foresee the public sector or any other sector with regulatory requirements taking advantage of this product and address specific regulatory requirements.

This product is truly relevant for India considering it is a big market for this offering and Oracle is talking to a lot of people already.

What are the key industries that will benefit from this?

This product is relevant for any and every industry however it is truly revolutionary for sectors with regulatory requirements including public sector. We have witnessed a heightened need for applications and services tailored to the unique needs of companies within this sector. It is also highly beneficial for end-customers who increasingly want cloud environments that live closer to them. This could primarily be for performance, growing data-sovereignty reasons or simply to leverage familiar relationships with existing trusted service providers.