'Indian SMEs are Showing Great Interest Towards Cutting Edge AI, IoT and Cloud Computing Solutions'

A candid conversation with Faiz Askari of SMEStreet, Dr. Christopher Richard, MD & Chief Cloud Architect, G7CR Technologies India Pvt Ltd, highlighted cutting edge trends of cloud computing and it's adoption levels among SMEs.

Here are edited excerpts:

What industry segments are likely to adopt your solutions. Please highlight your business priorities.
We work in the cloud for the B2B Segment, this means we are the IT infrastructure providers. Irrelevant to segment, vertical and business size, if you need a server or you need to host any application of yours, we are the right people to connect with. We will help keep your cost minimal, keep your applications highly available, secure and ensure you never lose data irrelevant to the disasters that may occur in the surroundings. In addition, we also help as consultants to ensure you are using the most modern development techniques and technologies to adapt to modern scalable cloud infrastructure. The best part of the offerings is you don’t pay for any of the value-added services, you only pay for your cloud consumption. Our priority is to drive value for partners\Customers with the main focus to ensure their growth and bind our growth with the same. So far this has found us growing at 100% year on year for the past 3 years and our business focus is to continue the same path and continue to believe that the growth of our customers is our growth and hence, this year too, we continue to focus our investments into customer growth.

What were the top technology trends for SMEs in 2019?
The Top was by far the cloud adaption by the SMEs, we have seen plenty of SMB’s grow to Enterprise businesses in the shortest possible time frames in 2019. We have found SMEs today discussing, understanding and adapting to the latest technology trends, in terms of Service-Oriented scalable architectures for their application and IP, to the implementation of Machine learning and best practices for Dev Ops, We have also seen more and more interest in compliance and data security than we have ever seen before.

How important cloud computing adoption has been for Indian SMEs?
To the SMEs in India just like every other part of the world, adaption to digital transformation is no longer an option, it is a must to survive in the competitive and gloomy economy trends that found demand dropping across the globe. With increased competition and decreased demand, survival is only for the best, and to be the best, technology and automation along with digital transformation is not just a discussion, it is an action that needs to be implemented fast. The cloud makes the fast happen even faster with no Capital expenses involved.

• How moving to the cloud has helped SMEs improve their operations and productivity?

Cloud has helped all lines of businesses scale faster. Go to market is no longer a 4-6 months process of procuring hardware and setting up infrastructure. Cloud has become an important ingredient for growth. Here is what a couple of our partners have to say about how Cloud has impacted their business:

1) "Flamenco Tech’s key focus is to create a better workplace experience by leveraging IoT & AV solutions. We help organizations experience higher ROI and operational excellence with our comprehensive IoT enabled Infrastructure management systems. Our systems are designed for easy integration with third-party devices and at the phase we are growing, Cloud definitely helps us go to market faster without all the additional operational overhead and our people can focus on innovation while our hosting needs are taken care of" says Bala Chitoor Co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer of FlamencoTech India Pvt. Ltd 

2) "Trust soft is ranked among Top Core Banking Solution Provider Globally. We provide Core Banking in Commercial Banks, Micro-Finance, Co-operative Banks, Credit Societies. Our intent is to help these organizations achieve high operational excellence through digitization. Cloud has definitely helped us in driving this vision, our partners no longer need to worry about upfront investments, building IT capabilities but instead focus on their core business. All in all, Cloud is becoming a major catalyst for technology automation and digitization" says Mandar Deo, Technical Director Trust Systems and Software.

• How a reduction in the investment cost on the technology/ data center can boost SMEs for accessing technology.   
  Firstly, the cost of hardware is eliminated, secondly, the cost of software licenses is reduced significantly and also gives you access to the latest. The strategy for most software vendors have traditionally been to get the SMB to pay for a 1-time license, giving him all the comfort that is a 1-time cost and 2 years later, this one-time investment on that license is outdated and thus forcing him with another one-time investment to buy the latest version. With the cloud, this is not the case. You pay a small monthly cost for the license that you use and only for the number of minutes you use it and you can get all the latest versions as they become available. Most SMEs realized this and many decided to move to open source only to learn that open source came with its own hidden costs and problems. In simple, in a world where nothing is free, cloud is the best option. It is not free but it is reasonably priced and you pay only when needed and only for what is needed. Today an SME can build a simple application in days, bring it to live in hours and pay only per minute when needed to be used. Not only does cloud help SME get more agile, with the reduced CapEx spend, but they can also utilize this Capex under other budgets that can bring more faster growth.