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All tools aren't created equal, neither are those who wield them. Cloud and cloud enabled technology is reshaping the way entire industries work. From smarter applications, to stronger infrastructure, to real time customer insights, to delivering a consistent customer service experience - Cloud is everywhere, and it's powering traditional Indian companies into a confident new digital avatar.

The pandemic has acted like an accelerant for digitisation in traditional businesses (particularly those in the financial services, manufacturing and retail sectors) fueled by the need to work remotely. Companies soon found that their existing architecture just didn't work when people didn't work from a secure location using secure workstations. Their employees were spending too much time on just navigating access restrictions, and worse, using 3rd party collaboration tools that could potentially expose their sensitive data to risks.

Enter, cloud workspace solutions. A bouquet of offerings that bring together email, chat, voice, online meeting/conference solutions, data collaboration tools, shared workspaces, and all the add-ons that a business could need, wrapped up with secure access and data security protocols. These solutions existed long before the pandemic, and already have high adoption in Digital companies. For traditional companies though, they proved to be a Godsend.

For instance, NJ group, a leading firm in the Indian Financial Services sector, moved 1300 employees to Google Workspace (GWS) in the middle of the 2020 pandemic, as their existing infrastructure just didn't allow them to work efficiently remotely. Not only did GWS improve collaboration and uptime, it also increased their security score after implementation of the recommended Google security settings on email security, device and collaboration management.

The Kirloskar group, one of the earliest manufacturing companies in India, made the move during the pandemic, and found that by streamlining management operations, and reducing dependency on 3rd party messaging platforms, everyday operations became more simple and productive. The 2-step verification process added another layer of security, all while allowing access from anywhere, without the need to struggle with VPNs. Additionally, Kirloskar's data, which spanned the company's 130 year history, found a secure home in cloud storage.

Data storage and analytics is the other reason traditional companies are moving to Cloud. Most businesses have enormous amounts of data sitting idle in siloed storage, generating no business intelligence, and costing them money in data storage costs. For a number of businesses, data storage is mandated by regulatory requirements. Cloud technologies don't just offer a cost effective solution to long term data storage, but also allow businesses to pool their data from various sources into vast data lakes. This allows for AI and ML tools to deliver insights that the business wouldn't otherwise see.

For instance, Tata Steel needed a data warehouse solution to cope with the enormous data that they were generating through manufacturing machines, SCADA, ERP Systems, LMS, and smaller business units. All of this data needed to be stored for prolonged periods due for regulatory compliance. This was both expensive, and inefficient, as this data wasn't doing anyone any good.

TATA Steel selected Searce, a technology consulting firm, to build an architecture supporting near real-time pipelines from all data sources being pushed to a Data Lake, followed by the required transformations. They then used BigQuery to create a Data Warehouse and identified several areas of optimisation. Tata Steel gained production planning accuracies, were able to respond to future demand and seasonality (which the solution predicted) by regulating production capacity, and in the bargain saved 17 Million USD annually.

These benefits, as you can imagine, aren't restricted to manufacturing alone. Take The Home Depot, for instance. THD is the worlds largest home-improvement chain, growing to more than 2,200 stores and 700,000 products in four decades. Much of that success was driven through strong data analysis: developing sales forecasts, replenishing inventory through the supply chain network, and providing timely performance scorecards. But like all businesses, it was drowning in data, and because data resided in silos, wasn't getting the insights it really needed.

The Home Depot modernized its data with Google Clouds BigQuery. While THDs legacy data warehouse contained 450 terabytes of data, the BigQuery enterprise data warehouse has over 15 petabytes. That means better decision-making by utilizing new datasets like website clickstream data (what users were clicking on) and by analyzing additional years of data. These were their astonishing results:

The Home Depot was also able to elevate Omnichannel retail to Interconnected Retail through it's implementation of SAP and other key applications on Google Cloud. This allowed the customer to shop whenever, wherever and however they wanted to shop. They were, in fact, one of the first brick and mortar retailers to move their entire ecosystem onto the cloud. Retail changes very fast, and businesses need to be as agile as possible in their systems, and clued in through their data, to both anticipate and adapt to these changes.

SAP on Google Cloud is a solution that future-proofs businesses in many ways. For starters, SAP on Google Cloud works faster and smarter, compared to legacy systems. In a nutshell, businesses have less downtime, a critical factor in the remote working environment we find ourselves in today. Recent reports by Forrester and International Data Corporation also found that these companies reported 98% reduction in productivity losses and revenue losses due to unplanned downtime, and a 46% lower 3 year cost of infrastructure operations. Think about that - these businesses spent less on their IT costs while having better business continuity.

The other benefit of SAP is SAP-based analytics outcomes. International Data Corporation found that customers who are leveraging BigQuery for SAP saw a dramatic decrease in the time to drive insights and reports while also substantially reducing data warehousing costs. As much as 63% faster completion of queries, 77% faster delivery of analytics reports, while providing a 52% lower 3-year cost of operations & data warehousing

One of the biggest myths around cloud adoption is that Cloud architectures aren't as secure as on premises environments. Most cloud providers exceed business expectations on endpoint security (where your users access data from) to Data vaults (where the data is stored) to everything in between. Security centers or security command centers offer real time monitoring of threats, proactive defensive measures, data loss prevention, robust risk management strategies and contingency planning that far exceed what internal teams can provide. Especially at the same costs.

For ATB Financial it was a logical extension to migrate their SAP ERP systems to Google Cloud. This allows them to not only enable business insights from multiple data sources 117 times faster than previous approaches, but also to boost security and reliability of the data environment, improving data governance and easing regulatory adherence.

The ATB team feels well-prepared for todays security challenges. They're taking advantage of Google Cloud's advanced encryption capabilities, without hampering their visibility to key systems. Their disaster recovery and data protection postures are stronger on cloud, because of Google Cloud's redundancy and availability. They're also enjoying better SLAs than they did with their on-premises teams.

Traditional businesses are primed to digitize - the technologies they need are mature enough, the providers proven enough, and the advantages far outweigh the drawbacks. Businesses are recognising this. 1 in 2 corporations in India have a digital transformation strategy in place; many are in the process of developing and implementing digital strategies.

With the pandemic in its third year, the Govt is expected to continue its investments in critical digital infrastructure, enhance connectivity for small businesses, and further improve ease of doing business. The push for Make In India, Vocal for Local and Digital India has only gotten stronger, which means businesses need to be prepared to rapidly scale up, both digitally, and on ground.

For smart, agile businesses with sound digital strategies, the sky may be the limit, but the Cloud definitely isn't.

Presenting The Cloud Enterprise, a special series led by Searce and Google Cloud, in partnership with Moneycontrol, which brings together leading voices to deliver insights on the adoption of cloud technologies and its success.

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Leveraging Cloud Based Solutions To Propel Digitisation In Traditional Companies - Moneycontrol.com