SaaS can meet Indian IT industry challenges

Dataquest and BMC recently organised a webinar together on Rise and Rise of SaaS.  During the webinar, the Indian IT industry discussed the challenges around us in a panel discussion organized by Dataquest.

Also, discussed how accelerating their companies tech journey to becoming an Autonomous Digital Enterprise with intelligent, SaaS-based solutions.

The participants were:

* Deepak Singla, Director Sales, BMC India

* Sunil Thakur, Director, BMC India

* Manjeet Singh, Senior VP, RAH Infotech Pvt Ltd

* MS Raju, CTO, Shriram Life Insurance

* Srikkanth Subbu, CISO, TVS Motor Co.

BMC is a global leader in software solutions for IT businesses. Deepak Singla, BMC, talked about the rise and rise of SaaS. Organizations migrate to SaaS for a number of factors. Scalability, reduced costs, faster time to innovation, security and compliance, where SaaS vendors manage security and compliance, and access and flexibility.

Every traditional organization is dependent on data centers. They have been looking at how they can expand data center capacity. Expanding capacity was a problem that SaaS solved. They have also reduced overheads and resources with SaaS. Now, they could focus on innovating their services. They also provided the ability for employees to work from anywhere, with better accessibility and ability to drive adoption.

SaaS has been around for a long time. The adoption has risen over the last 14 months. We announced BMC Helix. It is the convergence of IT services (ITSM) and IT operations management (ITOM) experiences.

We converged these to form the BMC Helix, which is built on the AI platform. There is now continuous automation. There are five tenets of BMC Helix: discover, monitor, service, remediate, and optimize. Helix is the industry's first end-to-end platform for service and operations experience. We are giving three cloud options -- AWS, BMC, and Microsoft Azure.

Everything is possible using a single Helix platform. There is pervasive intelligence to see around the corners. There is consumer grade experience for employees, customers, and partners. There are over 1,600 companies as customers globally. 100% use the latest version. It is the enterprise scale SaaS that you can trust. We have been rated a leader by Gartner for the seventh year in a row. The business relationship manager (BRM) is your strategic level trusted advisor. He/she will partner you to drive product adoption and business value realization.

Manjeet Singh, RAH Infotech, said the pandemic has changed everyone's lives. The Helix platform should help everyone to move forward in these times. Last year, we were not ready to accept Covid-19. Casualties were happening, but not around us. Today, we are feeling the scariness as they are happening around us.

We are also feeling the same in our data centers. Attacks have been happening regularly. We did not pay so much attention earlier. RAH offers the end-to-end solutions for cyber security. Users experience RAH the moment they use the data center.

The user has to bypass all the layers, gateway, geofencing, firewall, ADC, etc., on the data center. There are various layers in cyber security. Data is stored, and then backed up. You need to do asset monitoring across all the layers. BMC is helping us to mitigate some of the complex problems. We understand the customers challenges and pain points.

Seamless user experience

Sunil Thakur, BMC India, added that delivering a seamless user experience is extremely important today. Besides technology, it is also about scalability and elasticity. IT organizations have also understood and undergone a shift to app management focus.

Private cloud solutions have also become cheaper. When you let your data move outside your organization, the first thing that comes to mind is security. Also, sensitivity of the data, and cost. Risk mitigation is very important. Organizations generally go for a hybrid approach. As businesses become larger, this also grows.

MS Raju, Shriram Life Insurance, added that when companies move to cloud, they think whether they will get the comfort as before. People are still trying to do small experiments, as small apps are moved to the cloud. There is scariness regarding putting the entire apps to the cloud. We are also working on hybrid cloud, and look to move some of our apps there. Critical apps will still remain local. SaaS has many advantages, but companies are not yet moving to SaaS.

Thakur, BMC India, said there are some thoughts regarding security and SaaS. Public clouds provide huge resources to protect against threats. Almost $20 billion of the highly-regulated banking industry money is on the cloud. There is compliance, as well.

We talk about GDPR, etc. It is a very regulated industry. We include monthly vulnerability assessments, and threats, that are done by third-parties. Security is there because a lot of your data is outside your company. The people that you have outsourced to, they have higher levels of security compliance.

Srikkanth Subbu, TVS Motor Co., said there are some thoughts on security aspects. Cloud security is a very important area. A lot of things happen at the perimeter level. Cloud has several levels. However, the increase of attacks has been more, compared to earlier times. There is visibility and tracking of cloud that is required. Privileged access is another area. We need to have proper solutions across all these areas. There should be proper controls and regular assessment. Cloud also covers compliance. Still, we have to go further.

Thakur, BMC India, noted that we need to look at the planning stage. We asked the analysys to do a study on RoI for BMC Helix. The findings were amazing. If SaaS is done properly, the RoI can be 354%. Lot of things get regulated when you move to SaaS. There are many efficiencies that can be brought in, as well.

Enterprise and SaaS

Should enterprises adopt SaaS in their mission-critical list? Subbu, TVS Motor, said mission-critical is in production and manufacturing. Time and productivity should be managed well. Troubleshooting wil reduce in that case.

SaaS has started to take over the cloud computing market. MS Raju said it is growing. For every organization, digital transformation is important. New versions and technologies are coming into the SaaS model. SaaS model is pay-and-use. It will bring greater satisfaction to customers. All the organizations may come down the line in one or two years.

Regarding the migration to a SaaS-based model, Thakur said people need to have a phase-wise approach for migrating into SaaS. Some organizations may still keep ERP within the organization. Cost consideration also has to be kept in mind. If investments have been made into IT, it will be difficult to leave that and move to something different. For startups, you need to get into SaaS.

Does SaaS require a big-bang rollout or be phased? Subbu said it needs to be phased. Security should be added as required. Optimizing the multi-cloud capacity is also important. A proper plan should be there to integrate the cloud. Raju agreed that the phased-manner approach is preferable for organizations. The confidence given to the developers and management is there. Else, there will be some challenge!

Regarding a hybrid approach to clients, Thakur said organizations are moving from an infrastructure to an application point of view. Multi-cloud is very popular today. People think about where they can get the best performance. For BMC, we have written a lot of apps for cloud-native. The hybrid approach is more about how the customer is managing the organization. There may be some legacy.

There were issues earlier, regarding the use of the Internet. The end customer and employees deserve a better experience. Serving their needs through their channel of choice and UI experience is very important. By 2025, the huge amount of the workforce will be served anywhere, anytime. We should take advantage of the new-age technologies that are coming in to serve customers and employees.

Raju added that they have 50 years of experience in the IT journey. It is difficult to migrate to any new system. Ultimately, we have to give better experience to the customers and employees. Earlier, we used to ask for WFH. Now, it is work from anywhere. That has changed the game. We have to upgrade and deliver better services to customers and partners. Business will come. We moved in three days from office to WFH.

We need to see how we can get more customers. Adoption of mobility increased to 70%. The regulator also supported the migration a lot. We have to change, with technology.

Subbu said that we are moving to the future. Everything is WFH. There is a lot of improvement in all areas. They are digitized. There are lots of connected vehicles, as well. Technologies are improving, and so is computing. The SaaS model in 5-10 years should evolve. There is predictive AI/ML, and RPA.

Raju noted that SaaS model will move toward security, AI/ML, digital transformation, etc., for faster delivery of services. Once clarity is there, all the organizations will move. Data privacy is also coming. SaaS is a good solution for the future.

Thakur said at BMC, we worked on an organization and looked at what it will need to be successful in 2025. Agility, customer centricity, and a lot of reliance on data, were three key factors. These are the important tenets for any organization. We need to start thinking of the new factors. Technologies are critical, and they will be adapted, and adopted. Today, it is on top of the CEO's agenda to transform the organization and be ready for the future. Reliance on technology is extremely high as we move on to the future. Most organizations are going to be technologically-driven in the future.