Amongst key barriers Indian companies face with cloud today is the difficulty of moving out of a platform and changing vendors. They can mitigate such risks by running a microservices architecture and choosing a solution such as VMware, which pervasive technology and skillsets make VMware Cloud highly interoperable and portable.
The global pandemic has accelerated cloud adoption around the world as organisations look to online solutions to help drive their digital transformation. The same can be said in India, where businesses want solutions that can streamline their IT operations and look for stable, scalable, and flexible infrastructures that are highly secured.
Most startups and young companies have opted for cloud-first or cloud-only strategy, while other enterprises will move towards a hybrid cloud model that allows them to maintain their on-prems investment as well as tap the benefits that cloud platforms deliver.
Retaining an on-prem infrastructure also is essential for regulatory compliance and to provide better control of their data.
In addition, adopting a multi-cloud strategy is gaining traction amongst Indian companies as it enables them to choose the most suitable platform based on their application and business requirements, observes Galaxy’s Senior Director, Cloud Practice, Purvesh Dharmashi. He points to Amazon Web Services (AWS) as amongst the most popular cloud platforms.
Amidst their diverse cloud adoption, local businesses are highly anxious about vendor lockin and often seek out platforms that are agnostic, Dharamshi notes.
And their concerns are not without merit. Cloud platforms in the market today typically run on their own set of rules and policies, making interoperability potentially a big challenge for cloud adopters, he explains.
"Each cloud has its own way of working and interoperability can be a big challenge," he notes. "Adopting a multi-cloud model also requires having multiple in-house skillsets to manage the diverse environment and this poses a major issue."
Any journey to the cloud requires proper planning and a strategy that is aligned with the organisation's business goals, he says, and a key component of this encompasses application modernisation as it will bring about greater agility and reduce time-to-market. This will enable companies to roll out new business services faster.
To achieve this, Dharmashi recommends Indian organisations develop applications that operate on a microservices architecture.
He acknowledges that re-engineering traditional applications can be an arduous task, but it is a necessary process to build applications that are more agile and suited for the cloud. This will better enable businesses to more rapidly roll out new functionalities and features and future-proof their IT infrastructure.
He outlines key traits their applications should have:
- Can run seamlessly on either private or public cloud
- Have cloud burst capability and return path
- Should not be based on locked native services, which make portability difficult
- Built on platform that the IT team understands; can manage and control
- Adopt security-first design principles
To further ensure their cloud platforms and applications are interoperable, he advises Indian businesses to adopt a virtualisation platform that is available in their data centre as well as on most public clouds.
They also should seek out cloud infrastructures that allow them to run both their traditional and containerised applications seamlessly on the same platforms.
In addition, to better facilitate a multi-cloud strategy, Dharamshi stresses the importance of adopting cloud platforms that can reduce their learning curve. This will help them focus on rolling out new functionalities and features more quickly, instead of having to develop new skills to manage the cloud platforms.
All of these put VMware Cloud in good stead as it provides a familiar architecture with which IT staff can easily manage as they transition to a new cloud environment.
The pervasiveness of its technologies and skillsets also pips VMC on AWS as a highly interoperable cloud option, he adds.
Working with an experience cloud specialist such as Galaxy will further ensure Indian organisations adopt the best practices and solutions for their business needs. "We provide a STEPS model to help customers navigate their cloud journey, which encompasses laying the foundation to ensure a successful deployment, identifying the right technology solutions, and running tests to validate the design and resolve any potential issues," as per Saurabh Jain, Director- Technology, Cloud Practice at Galaxy.
Recognised as a VMware Partner of the Year in India, Galaxy's HYCL0 Cloud is powered by VMC on AWS and offers an integrated solution for production, test and development. It also offers robust solution to extend your data centre to the cloud or establish a disaster recovery site powered by the cloud.
Contact a Galaxy representative today to begin your cloud journey with VMC on AWS.
