Infosys aims to adapt to the growing influence of cloud technology
In the rapidly evolving landscape of cloud computing, traditional IT services providers are finding it challenging to capitalise on the cloud growth, with market leaders like Amazon Web Services and Salesforce.com dominating the scene. This is where the need for cloud brokerage is being felt by enterprise IT departments, as they grapple with issues such as lack of governance, coordination, and loss of buying power when business units buy Software as a Service (SaaS) on their own.
Gartner analyst Darryl Plummer, who introduced the term 'cloud broker' to describe an organization that manages the complexity of using multiple cloud providers, has highlighted that working with cloud services requires fundamentally different technical skills compared to conventional systems integration. He also notes that system integrators like Infosys face skills, technology, and business model challenges in the cloud era.
To address these challenges, Infosys has launched its "Cloud Ecosystem Hub" to help customers manage and govern a hybrid cloud environment. The Cloud Ecosystem Hub is a framework that includes tools and techniques for rapid adoption and management of a hybrid cloud environment. The cloud management infrastructure, designed to help customers govern, manage, meter, bill, and ensure accountability of spend and customer structures in a hybrid IT ecosystem, is based on commercial components like Dell's Boomi cloud integration platform and Microsoft's System Centre management suite.
Infosys' Cloud Ecosystem Hub is currently in proof-of-concept deployments with a few unnamed customers. The IT department, responsible for ensuring the company is not locked into a particular cloud service, whether data is secure, and if regulatory requirements are being met, stands to benefit greatly from such a service.
The other driver for cloud brokerage is the need to ensure that cloud computing delivers long-term cost benefits for the organization. According to Plummer, 89% of companies have business units that are buying SaaS without informing the IT department. This lack of coordination can lead to unnecessary expenditure and potential security risks.
The global IT outsourcing market is expected to grow by 2% to over $250 billion this year, with roughly half of this growth coming from increased cloud spending. Besides Infosys, companies like Cloudflare are developing or offering cloud-related enterprise solutions that may include cloud brokerage functionalities, focusing on security, connectivity, Zero Trust, and cloud-native networking services.
However, Plummer questions whether cloud will generate the margins and large contracts that a big integrator like Infosys is used to, potentially making it less lucrative for large integrators. As the cloud computing market, the fastest growing segment within the global IT outsourcing market, continues to expand, it will be interesting to see how companies like Infosys adapt and evolve to meet the demands of this dynamic environment.
