CII Cloud Summit

Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) organised CII Cloud Summit, Cloud- The bedrock of digital transformation on June 29, 2022 in New Delhi.

CT was the exclusive media partner.

Industry leaders and business thinkers from across the globe participated in the one day summit. Vishal Awal, Chairman, CII Cloud Summit and VP. & Managing Partner – Telecom, IBM India & South Asia welcomed the gathering, and Lt Gen (Dr) Rajesh Pant, National Cyber Security Coordinator, Prime Minister’s Office Government of India was the chief guest.

The event was organized into four sessions. The CII-Deloitte paper, Cloud- The bedrock of digital transformation was released.

At the inauguration, Vishal Awal, Chairman, CII Cloud Summit and VP & Managing Partner – Telecom, IBM India & South Asia said, “The next generation winners would be the enterprises that rapidly reinvent themselves by seamlessly interweaving AI and exponential technologies with the hybrid multi cloud adoption to become truly digital.”
 
In agreement, Romal Shetty, President – Consulting, Deloitte India added, “Some of the biggest valuations that are happening across the world is platform play, and it gives power to the cloud as it cannot be copied. Cloud is enabling Indian companies becoming world class and beating their counterparts across the world.”
 

Anupam Mishra, Head of Technology & Solution Architecture, AWS India and South Asia opined, “Cloud has democratised technology, so that each and every person is able to use technology without the need of large amounts of funding, or a large workforce.”

 

Manoj Paul, Managing Director, Equinix India said, “While cloud is the bedrock of digital transformation, data centres are the bedrock for cloud service providers.”

Prateek Garg, Chairman, CII Regional Committee (NR) on Digital Transoformation & AI and Founder & Managing Director, Progressive Infotech added, “With 5G setting in, the application architectures are poised to be redone. The application itself will go through a metamorphosis in the years to come.”
 
Lt Gen (Dr) Rajesh Pant, National Cyber Security Coordinator, Prime Minister’s Office Government of India was emphatic that, “While cloud provides all the advantages, including platform infrastructure, software, cost wise, main risk is on cyber security for both clients and CSPs. Incident response is a serious issue.”

Awal in his vote of thanks concluded that, “As the pace of change accelerates, and competitive, competitive pressures rise, Cloud is the only answer that can enable enterprises of all sizes to embrace change rapidly with agility and to drive value faster, across every dimension of the enterprise.”

In the first panel discussion of the day, “Getting to Cloud-Faster, Better and Certainly Cheaper” moderator, Vivek Mathur, Partner, Deloitte India lauded the Indian organizations for the usage of public cloud, and making it all completely seamless.

Neeraj Athalye, Managing Director – India Subcontinent, SUSE Software Solutions said, “As cloud adoption increases, and 5G becomes popular and many new use cases start becoming live, a lot of open source technologies will be deployed.”
 

Haja Jahabar Siraj A, Partner, ISA Service Line Leader Hybrid Cloud Management, IBM Consulting commented, “As we set up the cloud environment for our clients, it is the cloud containerized platform that allows the requisite digital transformation, speed, agility, and most importantly, scalability.”
 

Jatinder Singh Pabla, Senior Vice President Sales, STT GDC India is confident that, “Cloud services in India, a USD 4 bn market with almost all hyperscalers present have a huge potential.”

 
The topic of second panel discussion was Responsive Supply Chain with Cloud, Monojit Mazumdar, Partner, Deloitte India moderated the discussion. He brought to the fore that with cloud, a dynamic system can be built where change is the only constant and a static system has a high possibility of failure.

Anuj Bairathi, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Cyfuture India reiterated, “Cloud is one of the most disruptive technologies of the century. If Indian Government permits digital currency, this will become even more easier. This is what the future holds for the cloud.”

Kalyan Muppaneni, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Pi Datacenters said, “Supply chain is not a technical problem, it is a business problem and Cloud is an enabler.”

Karan Kirpalani, Cloud Head – India, NTT Ltd. “Manufacturing involves many, many components, that are in spec, delivered on time, in adherence to a budget. Cloud makes it a lot more agile, and a lot easier than a centralized location, where suppliers, distributors, transportation, vendors, and consumers all try to connect to a central location, to a bunch of servers and disks, on premise in a factory somewhere. That is no longer a scalable model anymore.”
 
Rupinder Jeet Singh Chandhoke, Lead Alliances, AdaniConneX said, “Cloud, as a technology cannot solve each and every problem. Bringing all the data of managing inventory, meeting the ever increasing demand with a core sustainable infrastructure, in real time has to come in the supply chain, as well. It has to be enabled through technology, in a manner, that we create that entire ecosystem, right from, bringing in creating green computing at the essence and value upwards to the supply chain context.”

The third panel discussion, Crossing the Talent Chasm-A New Way. Responsive Supply Chain with Cloud was moderated by Debasish Chatterjee, Partner, Deloitte India. He said, “No doubt, cloud is the bedrock for digital transformation, and infrastructure is the bedrock for cloud, yet talent is the one that is making things happen.”

Ankur Malhotra, Director, Corporate Affairs & CSR, Hewlett Packard Enterprises said, “No doubt, there is huge demand, and the talent is gearing up to fulfil that demand. However, a 35-40 percent deficiency in terms of the talent pool remains.”

Manoj Dhanda, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Microhost enlightened, “Our experience has taught us, that alongwith good financial remuneration, the youngsters look for flexibility, an opportunity to learn quickly, by failing and experimenting, then getting motivated. We have managed to retain our people to a large extent.”
 
The seminar wrapped up with all in agreement that post Covid, aspirations have changed. While many candidates look for options to work from home, others give huge weightage to a good working culture, a good environment, and working with a fun loving team. And ESOPs is not the sole way to retain the best talent in the team.

CT Bureau