India is one of the fastest-growing global markets for public cloud service providers. This is because big corporate companies, netizens and medium and small-scale industries across the country have been opting for solutions hosted in the cloud to achieve their deliverables.
The research firm, International Data Corporation (IDC), stated that the cloud service market that included XaaS (anything as a service) generated revenues of $4.6 billion for the second half of 2021. It is expected to grow to $36 billion by 2026 at a CAGR of 24%.
In 2021, cloud computing services were led by SaaS, followed by infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service. Public cloud spending continued to increase, with the top two companies holding 45% of the public cloud services market.
The report, Worldwide Semi-annual Public Cloud Services Tracker, stated that the demand would further grow during the financial year of 2022, with corporates making digital innovations their top business objective. The demand is driven by the need for agile, fast and flexible digital solutions. It added that companies need to leverage data intelligently and use cloud-based technologies to achieve their objectives.
Post-Covid-Era will lead to More Cloud Usage
There has been a demand for cloud-based security applications as companies expect more people to return to offices after a two-year break due to Covid. At the same time, there is also a jump in demand for cloud-only applications that help bring ideas to the market faster, catering to customers’ needs.
Gartner, another leading research company, expressed similar views in its report in November 2021. It predicted the spending by end-users on public cloud-based services would reach $7.3 billion in 2022, a jump of 29.6% year on year.
The report further stated that corporations realized the value of public cloud services during the Covid pandemic and will continue to spend more on these tools, which reduce capital expenditure.
Cloud computing got a boost during the Covid years, and initiatives like Aarogya Setu, CoWin and Covid-19 Data Repository helped the government tide over the health crisis. The tools helped the authorities streamline data on the active caseload across the country, the number of people vaccinated, and individuals’ personal health check information.
The evolving policy ecosystem in the country is also aimed at promoting public cloud growth. The government is collaborating with private IT players to train and build a skilled cloud workforce. It has started initiatives like Megharaj and Cloud Vision for India 2022 to achieve this goal.
The government is also investing in developing the National and State Delivery Gateway, AIRAWAT, TechSaksham and other initiatives to help the common people gain from cloud computing.
IDC has also reported that 60-70% of IT companies and 70% of infrastructure products and applications have begun using cloud-based tools, increasing the demand for engineers proficient with the cloud.
