BackUsing XaaS: Everything as a Service
XaaS has immediate applications for Digital India, where the 'X' covers governance, health, education and more, all of which can be cloud services
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The India of my youth has been transformed into a digital nation in less than a generation, and now leads the pack of emerging nations.
Today, technology is a mammoth enterprise in India as leading companies acknowledge its wealth of local talent and its strategic location to the Asian market.
India has harnessed the innovations and disruptions in technology over the last decade to clinch its place as a global information technology (IT) development hub.
I am a passionate believer in the power of research and product and solution development; it is the driver for market expansion and economic growth, both for enterprises and the region. Successful companies like Oracle that thrive over the long term, understand the value of a strong and well-funded IT development department, especially one that is global.
The marketplace today is without borders, and organizations flourish when they engage the best of regional strengths and perspectives to produce technologies and solutions that cater to their market segments.
Our confidence in India has only increased over the past two decades, and we’ve backed it up with increasing investments. Our assurance was validated recently by a report that ranked India with the highest Baseline Profitability Index (an indicator of return on investment).
As India continues to adopt technology at a rapid pace, both at the consumer and industry levels, businesses are reaping the benefits of moving to a digital model. Up to 20 million small and medium enterprises across the industry now leverage cloud-based digital business and automation tools at a fraction of the cost of home-grown IT.
At the enterprise level, major players in the telecom, IT and automotive sectors are investing in the cloud for their next-gen IT. In fact, two-thirds of Indian chief information officers expect a majority of their IT operations to be cloud-based in 2015. This is great news.
Continuing the technology adoption trend, the visionary Digital India initiative by the government brings together innovative and cutting-edge technologies to service one of the world’s largest customer bases—the citizens of India. The digital infrastructure includes cloud-based utilities and cloud-delivered governance, infrastructure, health and education services to be delivered to millions of customer end points.
Technology industry leaders will play a vital role in the successful deployment of this massive undertaking, and will help chart the course in technology incubation, solution management and thought leadership.
The government has acknowledged the vital role of the industry in this project, and companies with deep experience with cloud platforms and services and managing massive customer bases have the advantage in public-private collaboration. The initiative will precipitate huge employment opportunities both in the public and private sectors, and here again the industry will play a critical role in training a technology-centric workforce. India has the advantage of a huge pool of young workers who can be skilled for a knowledge-based economy.
Industry leaders have already recognized this need and are establishing in-house training and educational infrastructure, while also partnering with educational institutes to provide industry and “real world" perspectives and experience to round out the curriculum.
Using digital and cloud-based solutions to make these ventures effective and geared for success, the expectation is that the resulting high-calibre workforce will feed back into both the public and private sectors. Cloud computing is changing business and service models by introducing XaaS—“Anything/everything as a Service". Widely deployed across the industry, XaaS can be applied to education, moving it out of classrooms and into homes and workplaces, on demand.
Global developments and research are available to students who expand their horizons much beyond the walls of a classroom. Using technology to improve the quality and reach of education helps IT development flourish and serves the needs of the industry as well as the nation as a whole.
XaaS has immediate applications for Digital India, where the “everything" (or X) covers governance, health, education, agriculture, information and more, all of which can be provided as a service on the cloud. This extensively tested and customer-deployed model will allow the government to effectively manage its governance programmes.
Additionally, it can also help manage the ecosystem of manufacturers, vendors and service provides, which will necessarily have to work together on this mammoth programme.
I’m strongly convinced that today’s innovative technologies will generate further research and development for the next generation of innovation. It is a cycle that we must nourish in a deliberate manner, if we are to stay the course as industry leaders.
Technology will continue to disrupt, enhance and improve the human condition; companies and countries that fully appreciate the impact of IT development and actively work to foster it are the ones that will stay on the global forefront. India is well positioned for this and I look forward to the nation achieving its massive potential.
The author is president of product development at Oracle Corp.
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