“Cloud Computing has Become a Platform for All the Innovations” Says Ayush Mittal

Starting an IT business or running an existing one is rife with many non-trivial aspects that are overlooked. The general perception remains that a company should keep the lights on even though it has limited business value. The need to persist with the routine can be made an obsolete and forgettable thing provided the right tools are available to the organizations.  Many surveys report, companies feel, being connected to the digital infrastructure is important in serving their clients better and most of them believe they are not equipped with the right IT infrastructure. DXC, a multinational IT service company empowers businesses with the required agility and scalability by leveraging high-end technologies like IoT, Cloud computing, analytics, etc. Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with Ayush Mittal, Vice President, Global Transformation lead at DXC Technology.

1.How is DXC contributing to the Cloud Computing industry of the nation, and how is the company benefiting the clients?

 DXC, as a leading global service provider, is massively contributing to the Digital India campaign by supporting customers and organizations in their digital transformation journey – all by harnessing the power of the cloud and engineering capabilities and furthering them with required business agility and scalability. We are, in fact, the pioneers in running a private cloud for our customers in India, providing computing as a service with all leading technologies.

DXC has migrated and managed large computing, storage, and databases across the private and public clouds.

DXC's Cloud Right™ framework empowers customers to make the right technology investments at the right time and on the right platforms while proving 3Xmore beneficial than any other industry's cloud adoption approach. Furthermore, our full spectrum of technological capabilities, experience, and broad partner ecosystem ensure we bring together the right strategy, governance, security, data, applications, and platforms to execute the right cloud strategy for your enterprise with the right amount of transformation support along the way.

2.How do you plan to revolutionize the Indian market?

 DXC has a relentless focus on innovation. Our Global Delivery Network (GDN) model is a key construct that allows our customers to benefit across key dimensions—talent, scale, delivery excellence, and innovation. DXC India is the company's largest GDN, enabling transformation and innovation for our clients across the globe. As a leading Visa Service provider with the required Infrastructure, applications, and a secured environment using various technologies across private and public clouds we could transform and scale our clients' business during the post-COVID travel requirement surge.

DXC's robust partner ecosystem benefits the customers in terms of cost and agility. We have a strong focus on industry solutions using Cloud Platform capabilities and combine these approaches with our advisory-led Cloud Right Framework, which are the key drivers for us to capture the Indian Market and work with customers to achieve business outcomes.

In fact, we built a private cloud for one of our clients, providing infrastructure-as-a-service, enabling on-demand computing for businesses to grow. This futuristic approach using Cloud Right Framework ensured that the client's IT estate could expand using Hyperscale systems and deploy multi–peta byte storage services as needed.

3.How are disruptive technologies like Cloud Computing impacting today's innovation?

As companies move rapidly on their digital transformation journey, they are looking for ways to increase agility, business continuity, profitability, and scalability. Cloud computing has become the basis and platform for all the innovations in different industries, further letting enterprises across industries choose their adventure and innovate at scale. 

As I stated earlier, DXC is highly invested and focused on innovations delivering ready-to-deploy innovative cloud solutions for the customers. Our Robotic Drive solution solves the most significant challenges in Autonomous Driving (AD) development. Typically, saving 3-6 months of implementation time per AD/Robotic Drive Component for our Global Automobile Customers with less design and development effort of $3-5Mn savings depending on customer maturity stage.

Our cloud partners also play a crucial role in our co-innovation strategy. DXC's Smart Factory solution is a strategic investment between DXC and AWS using cutting-edge technology and services, including platforms like IoT, machine learning, and analytics. This helps enterprises (Manufacturers and Producers) with a 20% increase in Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), a reduction in defects of end products by 27%, reduce variations and prediction maintenance.

4.According to you, what is the future of Cloud Computing in India? How has the adoption of Cloud Computing in India evolved over the last few years?

With digital innovation leading the top business objectives for Indian organizations, India continues to be among the fastest-growing market for cloud services. 

The 'Digital India' campaign led by the Government of India is an initiative to ensure the country is digitally empowered in the field of technology and government services are made available to citizens electronically supported by robust online Infrastructure. And this adoption of cloud computing technology to expand its e-governance initiatives throughout the country is one of the many examples of how cloud computing is being employed and has evolved over the last few years. 

DXC is proud to have partnered with one of the government-owned financial institutions to scale up business through a secured digital banking platform, helping them cater to >50M customers and manage an account opening run rate of 440K+ accounts per day.

Having said that, during the crisis, remote education, digital payment, and virtual workspaces became a norm across the country, including in rural areas, which resulted in a surge in cloud infrastructure requirements. However, considering the scale and size of the country, cloud adoption in India will continue to build the infrastructure and develop skilled resources. The future cloud market in India will be dominated by enterprises increasing their investment in technologies like IoT, Edge Computing, and other next-gen technologies. So, it will not just remain the cost play for enterprises in India – it will move to a value play.

5.Briefly describe your role at DXC India and your journey in this highly promising sector.

As a Global Service Line Lead for Cloud and Infrastructure Services at DXC, I'm responsible for driving the global transformation of the Cloud and infrastructure services business, enabling growth, scaling the global delivery model leveraging DXC's Global Delivery Network (GDN) with India being the largest one. I also work towards building and scaling Global capabilities in cloud, network, mainframe, and data center infrastructure transformation/modernization, using automation, analytics, and AI capabilities. Additionally, I focus on developing a strong partner ecosystem to build and deliver leading solutions for our clients. 

6.What are some of the challenges faced by the Cloud Computing industry today?

Enterprises are gaining experience with the cloud, but challenges remain. According to the NASSCOM report, India has an unmet demand of 30% for open cloud computing positions which poses a major challenge for cloud projects in India. As I said earlier, with India taking the lead in cloud adoption, the country's cloud talent pool and skilled resources play a vital role and need to grow massively for its success.

The progress of cloud adoption within the country will improve access to data seamlessly. This integration and evolution shall demand high bandwidth with reduced latency, which shall be the key to progression. Further, many of DXC's customers in India are Government and Financial services clients who still see public cloud service as only for peripheral support applications, with core applications to be restricted to private cloud data centers. 

With hybrid multi-cloud gaining momentum within enterprises, the challenges of managing complex multi-cloud architectures arise. Multi-cloud tooling becomes essential for managing cloud resources cost-effectively and ensuring strong governance and security.

Another major challenge enterprises face post-cloud adoption is managing their cloud spending. Cloud spending is a major issue and becomes more critical as cloud costs continue to rise. At DXC, we help our customers use automation and FinOps to analyze their cloud spending and optimize expenses for efficient use of cloud services.

7.How do you see DXC and the cloud computing industry ahead?

 DXC embarked on Hybrid Cloud Journey long back and plans to further penetrate the public cloud adoption with clients, riding on its expertise in effective application transformation and adoption of cloud technologies. DXC has its own cloud delivery centers across major regions having expertise across public cloud providers, and we have been able to showcase the benefits of cloud technologies, transform the application, adapt to the new age of digital growth, and provide security services to customers. 

With key changes in the government and IT policies towards embracing cloud technologies, such solutions will be highly consumed across various e-governance programs where scale and flexibility are of major concern. With the current growth of start-ups and fintech in India and the need for in-organic growth, cloud service providers are the first choice for infrastructure and platform services. Further, with the high rate of usage of mobile devices and applications across India and its penetration in rural India, it is only predicted that the need for such adaptive cloud technology is expected to grow multi-fold. Enterprises are looking for a trusted partner with expertise and skilled resources to support them across all stages of the cloud transformation journey. DXC Cloud and Infrastructure services have been repeatedly recognized as a Leader by analyst firms such as ISG, IDC, and Everest Group, which is a reflection of our delivery capabilities, innovation, skilled workforce, and ability to deliver business outcomes to our customers. Our customers continue to choose DXC as the right partner to design, build, run, and optimize their IT environments. DXC—the right partner to do Cloud Right™