IT is seen as a change enabler among businesses in India

BANGALORE, INDIA: The VMware Cloud Index 2013 study reveals that nearly nine of every 10 (89 percent) respondents in India believe that Cloud Computing, or ‘as-a-service' approach, is relevant to their organization and nearly eight of every 10 (79 percent) respondents in India say they currently have a cloud-related initiative in place within the organization, or are planning to implement cloud, or ‘as-a-service' approach, in the next 12 months. The study was conducted by Forrester Research across 12 Asia Pacific countries.

An interesting trend is that Indian organizations are turning to IT to help them grow the business in the current economic environment. IT is seen as a change enabler and source of business value for organizations by 85 percent of the respondents. In terms of the top business priorities in India over the next 12 months, 87 percent of IT decision makers said improving the quality and capabilities of their products and 85 percent said addressing the rising expectations of customers and improving customer satisfaction.

The study also shows that the current perception of IT remains positive in India with 63 percent of respondents noting that the perceived credibility, influence and power of the CIO in their organization is increasing.

The software defined and mobile cloud era in India

In terms of priorities for IT over the next 12 months, improving IT agility and responsiveness to business demands was high at 82 percent and operational efficiency was noted by 80 percent of respondents. Additionally, server consolidation via virtualization continues to be a strong priority at 77 percent.

Respondents in India are also aware of and are planning around new and evolutionary priorities. A software-defined approach to implementing and managing datacenter resources (servers, storage, networks) was stated by 71 percent of respondents. Furthermore, mobility and consumerization of IT was also noted by 71 percent as expected to create a lasting impact for organizations over the next two-three years.

Fast provisioning and zero downtime from networks(80 percent) and storage(81 percent) have been identified as key areas for IT to address over the next 12 months in the study. 68 percent believe if their company doesn't improve the way they deliver or ‘provision' these services to the business, they risk falling behind competitors. Nearly half of the respondents also view internal resistance to change hindering cloud or ‘as-a-service' adoption within their organization.

Consumerization of IT gains acceptance across Indian businesses

While 71 percent of IT decision makers are concerned about end users accessing corporate systems and applications from mobile devices, 73 percent believe that their IT organization are able to keep up with the end user computing needs of their employees. In fact, 65 percent claim to already have a formal strategy in place for supporting end user computing clearly showing that Indian businesses are acting to cater to the needs of the new age worker.