Srinidhi has over 25years of rich experience, Pre-Sales, Design, Architecture, Transformation, and Service Delivery for Managed IT Infrastructure Hosting & Cloud based Solutions. He is driving technology transformation for verticals: BFSI, Retail, HealthCare and other verticals and helping CXO to Move towards Digital transformation.

Why are increasing number of enterprises opting to migrate to cloud platforms?
Cloud migration improves business efficiencies and unlocks business growth by enabling greater digital services. Cloud platforms enable enterprises to create new business models and experiences using proven approaches to modernize operations and processes. Reduced costs, increased business agility, improved security, and faster data recovery, along with more transparent insights into data and analytics are also some of the benefits for enterprises, that encourage them to migrate to the cloud.

At present, Indian industries including manufacturing, BFSI, automobile, retail, and the PSUs, are going through their digital journey, where they are digitizing their platforms for their customers. With the cloud, they get enhanced power to digitize efficiently. The cloud has become the fabric of the IT infrastructure of most industries today, as they are embracing it in a big way.

"At present, Indian industries including manufacturing, BFSI, automobile, retail, & the PSUs, are going through their digital journey, where they are digitizing their platforms for their customers"

What are the challenges to cloud migration and what role do managed services play here? How can IT leaders ensure efficient digital operations for hybrid IT?
While migrating to cloud platforms can be exponentially beneficial for enterprises, there are multiple challenges that organizations face during the journey. One of the biggest challenges is the skill gap that exists which prevents them to migrate to cloud on their own. There’s also a high risk of losing direct control of workload and other issues like higher costs and security.

An efficient hybrid IT infrastructure is one that is agile, has a strong management and monitoring system, enables interoperability and is simple to understand. This is where a managed IT infrastructure services provider comes into play, one that helps in end-to end operations, so that organizations are able to focus on their business goals. Managed service providers play an integral role in migrating to cloud as they come with appropriate expertise in simplifying and managing complex IT infrastructure. They counsel the organizations in choosing the right cloud infrastructure (public, private, hybrid), depending on the nature of business and the requirements.

Since the service providers directly work with hyper scalers, it not only enables them to leverage the most advanced technology, but also the skilling certifications that they offer, to ensure that the workforce is well equipped to manage the IT infrastructure. They also help in building a robust security and resilience plan, as well as an efficient and agile business disaster recovery plan.

One of the biggest challenges is the skill gap that exists which prevents them to migrate to cloud on their own. There’s also a high risk of losing direct control of workload and other issues like higher costs and security

What are the benefits of moving to public cloud platforms?
Public cloud provides agility, advanced technology landscape, and speed. Building a DevOps pipeline on cloud takes just a couple of hours, as compared to building it on premises which takes a month. Moving to a public cloud platform helps in optimizing operational costs, where organizations opt only for the tools and services specific to their business. It also allows them to utilize the most advanced resources provided by hyper scalars, which further allows them to deploy their resources towards the most mission critical operations and automate a large part of the crucial but time insensitive activities. Public cloud platforms also offer automated, scalable disaster recovery programs to support business continuity.

How can organizations optimize their investments value for hybrid multi cloud environments?
To optimize investments value for cloud, it is important to have a well-organized Cloud Management Platform. Apart from this, an effective FinOps strategy should be in place. Knowing what technology to implement and the timing is critical. This is where IT infrastructure services providers come into play. With their expertise and experience, they counsel organizations to adapt, implement, and evolve the best technology required for their respective infrastructure and manage their FinOps.

Please provide an overview of the cloud practice at Kyndryl.
We have a strong cloud practice at Kyndryl divided into four parts engineering services (Cloud Centre of Excellence), service offering for pre-built reference architecture, and capability and capacity across hyperscalers (certifications). We also have an Experience Centre where we give a look and feel of cloud migration to our customers. Kyndryl has expertise in managing the most complex mission critical and revenue generating applications across the full lifecycle. Our solutions are highly secure and resilient, weaving best-in-class services into our offerings and putting security at the forefront of every engagement.

We are continuing to further strengthen the practice with powerful partnerships with hyperscalers including AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud, where we leverage their technology as well as skilling certifications for our talent. For example, we expanded our relationship with AWS to support their new security solution for enterprises and specific customers. We are helping our customers leverage our association with Microsoft and Dell to deploy and manage integrated hybrid cloud solutions.