IBM says data and security solutions drove double digit growth of its cloud business in India

• In an interview with Business Insider, Subram Natarajan, chief technology officer, IBM India/South Asia, calls hybrid cloud a reality that enterprises have woken up to.
• IBM is betting on the $1.2 trillion hybrid cloud opportunity by 2020, and India is a big part of it.
• In the last quarter, IBM’s India cloud business grew by double digits – with data and security leading the growth.

IBM is betting on the $1.2 trillion hybrid cloud opportunity by 2020, and India is a big part of this growth. In the last one year, its global cloud revenue hit $20 billion with an overall increase in revenue by 11% in Q3. With Red Hat acquisition, IBM believes it can grow faster.

In an interview with Business Insider, Subram Natarajan, chief technology officer, IBM India/South Asia, calls hybrid cloud a reality that enterprises have woken up to. Hybrid cloud management is when enterprises have set up a combination of cloud servers – public, private, Bare-metal etc., to store their data.

“Our cloud business rests on four strong pillars. First, hybrid is the way to go. Second, many of our customers are using multi-clouds for multiple business purposes – be it HR, payroll, etc. Third, because of the way the cloud artefacts are being consumed, the need for having an open framework around the cloud architecture is super critical. Fourth, security has always been something people think about but an after thought. It has now become a fundamental DNA of every cloud strategy,” said Natarajan.

Its Indian cloud business too grew by double digits – with data and security solutions leading the growth.

Gartner predicted that enterprise information security spending in India will be worth $1.8 billion in 2019 after growing by 12.4% in 2018r. “The rise in advanced cyberattacks, ransomware and malware attacks has put cybersecurity as a top investment priority for Indian CISOs, therefore increasing spending on security locally,” said Prateek Bhajanka, principal research analyst at Gartner said earlier.

‘Innovation is faster on cloud’

IBM’s clients also believe that cloud can aid innovation.

“Innovation happens much faster on a multi cloud environment. In an age where we are dealing with multiple types of data coming in from different sources, the question is how do I cash in on the data make the most out of it. With multi-cloud we amplify and solve this problem,” said Natarajan.

Natarajan says that cloud transcend across SMEs and large enterprises or even government as its need-driven.

“In India, the adoption is growing across industries; however fast growth is seen in BFSI, telecom, manufacturing, automobile, government, retail and distribution,” he said.

But dealing with data on cloud servers also brings up the question of security. With hybrid cloud and possible integration of the cloud servers, leaks are a serious threat.

To this regard, IBM recently announced IBM Cloud Pak for Security. “It provides a platform to help more quickly integrate your existing security tools to generate deeper insights into threats across hybrid, multi-cloud environments, using an infrastructure-independent common operating environment that runs anywhere. You can quickly search for threats, orchestrate actions and automate responses—all while leaving your data where it is,” said the company.