Headquartered in Bangalore, Capillary Technologies is a provider of cloud-based software solutions that help businesses to engage with customers through mobile, social and in-store channels. The company has raised $15.6 million as fund from Qualcomm Ventures and others.

Technology advocates are quick to adopt solutions that make headlines and easily abandon them when the fizz dies away. However, 'cloud computing' has held ground despite the vagaries of the technology landscape, and seven years since its inception has permeated consumer lives from an enterprise IT solution standpoint. Cloud computing has molded the relationship between technology users and providers as a paradigm in computing where services and data are drawn upon from shared resources in data centers that can be accessed over the internet.

Traditionally, cloud computing has been perceived as a great business leveler. Cloud has played a very significant role for small and medium businesses to compete globally with enterprise rivals by removing the need for upfront capital investments. Larger organizations have struggled to rely on the cloud computing model, especially when it comes to migrating mission-critical applications, however this attitude is beginning to change. According to leading research firm IDC, global spending on public cloud services alone is expected to approach $100 billion by 2016.

Cloud in India

Cloud computing presents itself as a potential for high growth and lower costs; however the transition to cloud is not as breezy as it appears. As the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) has observed, usage of cloud services is more of a risk-based decision than it is technology-based, cloud computing impacts the format of running a business. Organizations are pushed to not only make strategic alignments but also operational makeovers while transitioning to cloud based systems, which some technology evangelists predict will have far-reaching implications on the economy as well.

India being a home ground for the Amazons of the IT services industry and with a growing scale of entrepreneurs, cloud adoption has seen a phenomenal growth of over 25 percent year-on-year. Cloud enthusiasts are upbeat about their forecasts; a recent study by Zinnov projected the cloud computing market in India at around $400 million with a positive growth outlook of reaching $4.5 billion by 2015 – a growth rate four times the global average. Small and medium enterprises – key contributors to the Indian economy – are likely to be one of the main drivers for economic growth through their adoption of cloud services. The Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) expects this disruptive offering to create 100,000 jobs in India in the near future as against the current 10,000.

Barriers to cloud adoption

Though cost cutting is a key driver to transitioning to the cloud, a prime challenge that customers face is lack of a strong case in justifying the costs incurred in making the switch to cloud based systems. Businesses need to factor in the existing cost of IT infrastructure with the fixed and variable costs of migration while constructing a business case to demonstrate value. Despite the double digit rate of adoption, steadfast adoptability of cloud has been hampered by various reasons such as data privacy or 'loss of control' over data, seamless integration of cloud services with legacy data management systems, security issues, lack of knowledge about cloud usability among SMEs and internal resistance to change.

India – emerging capital for cloud service providers

Adoption of cloud is a two-way process – both by the users and the providers offering cloud services. Indian service providers have already invested significantly in ramping up their offerings over the cloud to service the thriving global and domestic cloud seekers. In a report titled 'The India Cloud Market Overview', IDC observed that the Indian cloud market is slated to exhibit a 50 percent growth for the next three more years.

New entrants in the cloud market stoke innovation and are being harnessed through Centers of Excellence by the Indian Government that has initiated several policies to strengthen the cloud ecosystem. The Government of India is leading by example through adoption of cloud computing for its ambitious Unique Identification (UID) project – a generalized online service that offers real-time verification of the identity of Indian residents through biometrics or demographic profiles.

Future of Cloud

Cloud is a definitive enhancement in the way businesses function. 54 percent of IT professionals in India consider cloud computing as a business priority with over 80 percent organizations believing in its benefits to compete more effectively in the market. The following are the future trends companies can look out for:

• Proactive Application Monitoring

With predictive technology, robust proactive application monitoring is possible with heightened accuracy, reduced downtime, and ramped up disaster recovery strategies.

• Zero Downtime – Higher Uptime

Low power processors are revolutionizing data centers the world over by reducing costs of management and hence driving acquisition of more data centers, guaranteeing a 99.9 percent uptime. Cloud providers are fast adopting this format to guarantee better uptime to customers.

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