On the occasion of geniSIGHTS stepping into the 5th year of operations, our HR Head, Mr.Sridharan J.S hosts an e-conversation session with Mr.KC Ayyagari, Engineer @ Google, Experienced Tech Sales Specialist and a Startup Mentor on ‘Steering ahead in the times of crisis’, how cloud infrastructure is at the forefront now for delivering customer satisfaction.

Hi Mr. KC; We are happy to host an e-conversation with you during these trying times.

Sridharan – The cloud ecosystem is a broad one, but there are some common trends that have emerged. Tell us some insights into how cloud infrastructure has changed in the last 3 years.

KC – There are many, but in my view, here are the 3 main trends I can think of:

1) Cloud-native – GenNext companies, startups, and SaaS companies, etc., are pioneering this.

2) Hybrid or Multi-cloud – This trend is picking because of the various factors but mainly because companies don’t want to miss out on innovation from any cloud provider. IT/ITES companies, Consulting companies, service industry companies, etc., are pioneering this.

3) Cloud Burst – Here is where companies are looking to use the cloud for expanding their on-premise infrastructure when needed. Legacy companies who already invested in their data centers, manufacturing, and retail verticals companies, etc., are pioneering this trend.

Sridharan – How is the sudden surge in cloud technology seen during the pandemic?

KC – Cloud computing is keeping us all connected to this pandemic. Many health care organizations started doing remote consulting, all the IT workforce started to work from home, individuals are using video calling services, retail organizations moved their entire orders to online, etc. All these are unplanned workloads for any organization and most of them have to depend on public clouds for the same. This brings to one of the main trends I mentioned above, i.e., Cloud burst. This is also the time where cloud providers also started re-evaluating their products and started releasing products to facilitate these changes all over the world. For instance, Google Cloud released products like BeyondCorp Remote Access; a service lets your employees and extended workforce access internal web apps from virtually any device, anywhere, without a traditional remote-access VPN.

So to say there is a surge in cloud usage and at the same time an increase in the number of different useful cloud services released by Cloud providers.

Sridharan – We know Cloud technology is the backbone for IoT and in order to evaluate data profitably, Analytics companies like ours are aware the hybrid cloud is increasingly becoming more important and Big data produced by the IoT devices are going to be provided by the cloud. What do you think will the demands be like in the upcoming 1 to 3 years?

KC- In general, as per McKinsey & Company, it is estimated that hybrid, multi-cloud is set to be a USD 1.2 trillion market opportunity by 2022. Usage of Cloud agnostic solutions like Kubernetes is on the rise. If you ask me why this is happening, there can be many factors like companies that want to use the best hardware available to the best of cloud services they can use.

Sridharan – Do you think a success factor for analyzing big data could be analytics itself that could provide a seamless link to the data hosted on the cloud?

KC- Today the Vs (Volume, velocity, and variety) of data even within a small startup is in terabytes. Data is as good as the time it is analytics. So yes, the success factor for analyzing big data could be analytics and a seamless link to cloud hosting makes this entire process faster irrespective of the size of Vs organizations are dealing with.

Sridharan – What are the do’s and dont’s for companies not in cloud wanting to move to the cloud, now, during the pandemic?

KC – These are some, I can think of:

• Act fast

• Be prepared for a Cloud burst if your apps are running on your private cloud.

• Start with or migrate to cloud-agnostic technologies like Kubernetes to build your apps.

• Use serverless services like Cloud Functions (in Google Cloud) where ever possible.

• Strengthen your DevOps practices. Make sure CI/CD is set up.

• Be prepared for anything and document everything in the company. Even though it’s hard to say this, it’s not good advice to just depend on your star employee for everything. Be prepared to give him time off or worst case sick leave.

• Listen to the customer. This is the time you need to understand customer trends more than ever.

• Plan your budget properly. Don’t move services to the cloud if you cannot pay for them. Move only the much-needed part of your product.

• Don’t just keep on releasing new features. Now it’s not the time. That comes later.

Sridharan – Are there any additional data security features introduced for the upcoming demand for the cloud?

Kc – Nothing I can think of, especially for cloud demand. Make sure your services are well protected, always irrespective of demand.

Sridharan- What are the new add-ons or features that we can see in cloud technology in the next 3 years?

KC – This is my view: I think we will see more services that support companies with remote connectivity, hybrid cloud, and multi-cloud.

Sridharan – Cloud computing has been a Top 3 trend in IT since it took root with the introduction of AWS’s S3 data storage in late 2006. Where is the cloud technology heading?

KC – In my view Cloud computing would be the defacto standard for running most of the workloads in any organization; big or small. Within the cloud, in my view, serverless computing and microservices are going to be the future.

Thank you for taking the time to have a conversation with us, it has given us a lot of insights.

Thanks again and stay safe!