Cloud 4C on cloud trends during the pandemic

EITN:  Please briefly explain what Cloud4C does, the markets it is in, and the industries it targets.

Sridhar: Cloud4C is a global cloud managed services provider serving enterprises in their digital journey. It currently serves 4,000 customers in 25 countries and 52 locations, including 60 of the Fortune 500 Global multinationals. Cloud4C’s product offerings include cloud (public, private and hybrid), community cloud services (banking community cloud, SAP community cloud), cloud migration to public cloud platforms (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud), end-to-end cloud managed services, disaster recovery services and managed security services. We offer a unique service offering in the form of cloud managed services providing consulting, architectural and deployment support for most prominent public cloud players.

Our global footprint gives us a strong understanding of the global regulatory frameworks and compliances and we work with our clients to help them meet the security and compliance standards for each country. Cloud4C has offices located across the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific. We are currently cementing our presence footprint in Asia-Pacific, with a special focus on the markets of Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia & Vietnam

EITN: Please share more about the CoE you announced with Google Cloud for SAP workloads?

 Sridhar: The Centre of Excellence (CoE) partnership with Google is not limited to only SAP workloads; our collaboration extends to other aspects including hybrid cloud, Application Modernization, DC exit for customers, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solutions on Google Cloud Platform, Data Analytics and Open Banking API.

The Centre of Excellence with Google Cloud, aims to help businesses modernise mission-critical IT within Cloud4C’s SAP service portfolio.

We will offer organizations a clear path to build, run, and manage their critical SAP workloads on hybrid and multi cloud environments with full flexibility, agility and security, offering a huge benefit for businesses. The CoE will also support customers in their modernisation journey, as they level up their mission-critical IT infrastructure and applications and leverage advanced Google Cloud’s artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and analytics capabilities at scale.

The partnership will also help organisations to make the most of Cloud 4C’s end to end SAP capabilities through multi-cloud support, multi-cluster/unified management, centralized policy management and infrastructure management capabilities.

Cloud4C is the largest and the oldest SAP Partner offering SAP Managed Services across many countries and has dedicated SAP services including Switch2Cloud, S/4 HANA implementation and application management services, exclusively focusing on greenfield, brownfield and hybrid packages as well as end to end AMS offerings.

EITN: Can you share about trends of cloud adoption in the APAC region?

Sridhar: The Asia-Pacific comprises over 30 countries, with each country being at different technology maturity stages – with some countries being more ready for cloud adoption than others. The region is predicted to be the fastest-growing market digitally with compound annual growth of 117% for the next 3 years (according to the GlobalData report).

In particular, Southeast Asia is eager to embrace cloud adoption in 2021 to unlock strategic values and tap onto their business potential. More local governments are implementing policies to encourage cloud adoption among businesses. Cloud adoption is proven to accelerate innovation, increase industry growth and boost customer engagement.

Following 2020, there is a much better understanding of cloud as almost every enterprise has shifted online. However, moving onto cloud requires skills, training and experience and companies are faced with the challenge to train employees fast. Many organisations opt for hybrid cloud as they can run businesses on both public and private servers. Hybrid cloud requires less intense training which allows for faster and seamless cloud adoption for enterprises.

EITN: How do you see cloud adoption panning out during this pandemic and after the virus is no more a threat?

Sridhar: COVID-19 brought forward the real importance of digitalisation and simply accelerated cloud adoption. CIOs now know that the digitization of their company is no longer an option or choice but a necessity. It’s still too early to predict the impact of the vaccine and the potential to return to ‘normal’, but it is safe to say that some of the changes brought on by the pandemic are here to stay. After nearly a year of working from home, remote learning and social distancing, businesses will continue operations through remote or hybrid working styles and adopt a cloud-first strategy.

We anticipate most deployments to be a combination of public cloud and a private environment or Hybrid Cloud. Hybrid cloud solutions offers companies the scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness of public cloud combined with the security and compliance benefits of private cloud.