BackIntelligent cloud will define Digital India’s success
Firms need to look to the future and understand the potential of another major wave in technology that is on the waycognitive computing
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A couple of weeks ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Silicon Valley seeking the support and counsel of US technology companies, including International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), to make his dream of a Digital India a reality. The “Digital India" initiative has great potential to improve the technology infrastructure in a country predicted to be the third-largest economy in the next 10 years by the World Bank.
One of the key technologies that is critical to fulfilling the promise of Digital India is cloud computing—running all sorts of business applications in data centres that are built for the rapid delivery of computing resources rather than on desktop or laptop computers.
Already, Indian start-ups and established enterprises have been adopting cloud computing. As a result, cloud is predicted to be a $3.5 billion market here by 2016, according to research firm International Data Corp. (IDC). The Indian developer ecosystem is growing rapidly and the ecosystem needs an industrial-strength platform to build, manage and run its cloud applications.
Offering flexible consumption models is critical to Digital India—especially for regulated industries that require a high degree of data control and oversight, such as finance. Flexible consumption gives clients control over where they build, test, deploy, run and manage their cloud applications.
But is that enough for a truly Digital India? I don’t believe so.
Companies shouldn’t see cloud computing in isolation. Instead, they need to look to the future and understand the potential of another major wave in technology that is on the way—cognitive computing. Cognitive represents an entirely new model of computing that includes a range of technology innovations in analytics, natural language processing and machine learning.
Industry analyst firm IDC predicts that by 2018, half of all consumers will interact regularly with services based on cognitive computing. Cognitive systems are able to ingest vast quantities of data, understand it, learn from interactions with data and humans, and help businesses make better decisions.
Imagine what your business could do with a cloud infrastructure supporting applications that can augment human intelligence?
The power of cognitive computing for Digital India: Prime Minister Modi’s mandate for Digital India revolves around three key pillars: Infrastructure as utility to every citizen, government services on demand and digital empowerment of citizens. Now imagine an e-health system where millions of Indians can use cognitive cloud technology in new and meaningful ways to expedite disease diagnosis and treatment.
To see how this works in practice, look at Watson Health, a new business unit at IBM. Its centrepiece is the Watson Health Cloud. This is a platform—open to a large and growing ecosystem—where application developers, physicians and other medical and healthcare providers can find and share data, can use dozens of pre-made cognitive components to build new applications, and can combine forces to launch new research collaborations and improve patient outreach and engagement.
Another good application of cognitive capabilities delivered via the cloud in India would be to deliver government services information across mobile platforms, ensuring the right information is available when and where it is needed, especially for citizens without home Internet service.
These are just a few examples of how cognitive computing can mobilize Digital India. India’s manufacturing, retail, financial services, telecommunications and government sectors all have the potential to be transformed by cognitive cloud applications.
India is currently the world’s fastest growing economy with a rich ecosystem of developers, start-ups, large enterprises and ISVs (independent software vendors) accelerating its digital transformation. I am eager to see India embrace the new frontier in cloud computing led by cognitive capabilities to improve people’s lives.
The author is senior vice-president of IBM Cloud.
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