Cloud adoption in 2020 got accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic by several years, and the Indian enterprises, irrespective of sizes, fast-tracked their decisions, to shun the legacy infrastructure and operations moving in piecemeal or in full, to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)-powered Cloud.

For Cloud players, 2020 offered a great opportunity for selling scalable and secure cloud-based solutions while keeping data within the territories of the country.

As per an IDC survey- November report, 60+ percent of the Indian organization plans to leverage Cloud platforms for digital innovation, as the firms re-strategise their IT spending due to Covid-19 result.

When most of Indian organizations adopted Cloud at some stage, said the IDC report, the current pandemic situation enabled them to spend more on public cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solutions, and software-as-a-service (SaaS).

Shailender Kumar, Regional Managing Director, Oracle India, said that the several Indian businesses like Polycab, Religare Broking, and Mphasis moved on to its second-gen cloud services in the country, amid the rising demand for secure, enterprise Cloud services in the pandemic.

Kumar said, “Buoyed by rising Cloud demand and to aid better disaster recovery and regulatory compliance, we made our second local cloud region available to customers in India. Our cloud business is growing well and is on the right track in the country. There has been an uptick in business sentiment in India and a vast number of small and medium businesses (SMBs) and startups are now turning to the Oracle second generation cloud infrastructure for high performance and growth," on pandemic-induced lockdowns and uncertainty elaborated Kumar.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), the Cloud Computing Business of e-commerce giant Amazon, said that in between pandemic, it has seen an acceleration in terms of customers’ adopting cloud, and how they are using the cloud in the country.

Apart from banking and financial services, other areas where AWS has seen huge traction in India include media and entertainment and automotive sectors.

AWS will invest $2.77 billion to set up a chain of data centers in Hyderabad, said the Telangana Government last month.

Amazon will introduce Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region with three Availability Zones (AZs), and it expects to start operations by mid-2022.

A Google Cloud reported that this month there is more than one in two retail executives in India state their company is accelerating Cloud adoption in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and Google Cloud won some key customers in India this year.

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said to one report, "We have always been bullish on India and you will see more investment coming from us towards that direction. India offers a great opportunity where Google Cloud Platform (GCP) with its latest agile, secure and scalable offerings can help enterprises, SMBs and the growing startup ecosystem amid the government's call for digital transformation.”

In the beginning of this year, Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai committed $10 billion for driving India to digital pathway and the company will open its second GCP in Indian region – Delhi next year.

IT industry’s renowned body, Nasscom said that in November, in collaboration with Cloud technology for India’s SMEs, it is growing businesses. It accounts for 28-30 percent of the country’s Public Cloud market by 2025.

Debjani Ghosh, President, Nasscom, said, "As India aims to become a Cloud-first nation and with the government's push for Cloud adoption by MSMEs, it will be crucial for SMBs in India to think of themselves as digital enterprises and lead the E-revolution for India.” 

SMB is affected severely by the Covid-19 pandemic and they struggled with liquidity crunch, where lack of demand and lack of an alternative struck the most.

Nasscom said, “The progress policies and awareness programmes can accelerate cloud adoption at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic has already fast-tracked digital transformation of companies in all vertical.”

A fact stays that 97 percent of mid-market firms considered technology importance for business growth and most were already experimenting with cloud, AI, and emerging technologies.

Sandip Patel, General Manager, IBM India/South Asia, said, "The uncertainty triggered by Covid-19 is making them relook at their own IT setup to ensure that they fix the gaps which could hamper their ability to operate remotely. This segment is usually more agile in their decision making and hence we are seeing several new engagements and discussions started already."