Spotlight on Digital Services | ChannelDrive.in
Keeping its focus towards delivering global digital services Coforge is a unique solutions provider having deep domain expertise and specialization in select industry verticals. The company is offering comprehensive capabilities in product engineering services, data services, cloud and infrastructure management services, digital process automation services, and digital integration services.
Sanjeev Prasad, Executive Vice President, APAC and Global Business Head Cloud, Coforge speaks with Zia Askari from ChannelDrive.in about the company’s current focus and its future plans.
What are the key priorities for Coforge today?
Coforge is a global digital services and solutions provider with deep domain expertise and specialization in select industry verticals. The company leverages its global footprint and network of highly talented technology professionals to offer comprehensive capabilities in product engineering services, data services, cloud and infrastructure management services, digital process automation services, and digital integration services.
The company’s vision is to “Engage with the Emerging”. It underlines the company’s commitment in delivering transformative change and impact through the application of relevant, emerging technologies.
Coforge has a strong presence in select industry verticals and their sub-segments mainly Banking & Financial Services (Wealth / Asset Management, Risk / Compliances), Insurance (Life, Non-Life, Commercial/Specialty), Travel and Hospitality (Airlines, Travel Tech, Airports, Surface Transport, Hospitality / Hotels / Logistics). In addition to these, Coforge has a growing presence in Retail, Healthcare and Hi-tech, Manufacturing, and Public Sector/Government (outside India).
Coforge’s differentiated value proposition is led by robust and growing capabilities in Product Engineering, Digital Solutions, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning (AI/ML), Customer Experience, Cloud, Business Process Solutions, and Digital Process Automation. All of these are achieved across verticals through a strong partnership network with the world’s leading service & software providers, that includes Microsoft, AWS, Google, Pegasystems, ServiceNow, and Duck Creek. Another priority is to grow these partnerships and engage with new and technologically disrupting companies in domains of Web3, Metaverse, AI, Quantum Computing, and cybersecurity.
The company has a presence in 21 countries with 25 delivery centers spread across nine countries, and 22,500 technology and process experts who engineer, design, consult, operate, and modernize client systems across the world. Coforge was recognized as a “Great Place to Work” in 2021. Coforge continues to enjoy robust employee engagement and has one of the lowest attrition rates in the industry. Therefore one of our most important priority is ‘People’. Coforge is People. We are on the lookout for senior and disruptive leaders from the technology industry who understands the values of the segment, who are agile and have a strong execution and delivery attitude.
What are the benefits of multi/hybrid cloud environment today?
Most businesses undergoing digital transformation usually start with a hybrid cloud environment as the beginning and gradually shift to full-scale cloud deployments.
Hybrid cloud solution allows workloads, application orchestration, and data portability across private cloud/on-premises data centers and public cloud. This allows organizations to coordinate workloads between connected computing environments, coordinate processes across multiple applications, and exercise greater control and governance over resources working in proximity or across the globe. Hybrid Cloud offers solutions to organizations to keep their core, business-critical and sensitive data on their private on-premise data center while hosting less sensitive data and applications in the public cloud. Many organizations use a Hybrid Cloud strategy to have an effective disaster recovery with minimal investment for the said infrastructure.
Helios AIOPS is our proprietary AI Led multi-cloud management platform that combines automation, programmable infrastructure, blueprint deployments, and cloud operations capabilities. Coupled with our proprietary engineering convergent strategy framework, it empowers clients to reimagine how they buy, consume and innovate in today’s hybrid and multi-cloud world, while ensuring the availability, security, and reliability of their technology platforms.
Cloud migrations and cloud-natives are among the top priorities for any organization given the need for digitalization however it comes with complexities. Every organization is at a different phase in its infrastructure & hybrid cloud journey. Therefore, it is necessary for enterprises to engage with the right partners and have a comprehensive cloud strategy.
We at Coforge with our partner ecosystem and vast experience of successfully managing 150+ clients are helping enterprises to traverse this complex cloud journey. Coforge cloud services are aimed at providing an integrated, application, Data &Analytics and infrastructure-enabled set of services, which help our customers in accelerating time to market and unlock business revenue.
How would 5G impact the cloud market in India?
With 5G rolling out, technology leaders are asserting cloud-native innovation as an essential tech for the competitive edge. The nature of the 5G network is dynamic, configurable, and agile. It would require cloud natives to unlock the full potential of 5G. The traditional approach, with monolithic virtualized network functions, would take years to deploy or upgrade and will not be able to keep up with the pace of the new 5G landscape. Whereas the cloud-native approach uses web-scale, containerized network functions that are resilient, decomposed into microservices, and, as much as possible open source and offer high efficiency & flexibility.
What is the role of the cloud in the metaverse?
Cloud technology evolution has played a significant role in the creation of metaverse. It is a converging point where multiple immersive technologies like augmented reality, IoT, 5G, spatial technology and AI, combine to deliver the ultimate user experience. This allows users to connect with other digital entities in a virtual environment. Also, considering the amount of storage, scalability, and processing required to support a metaverse, it is expected that the cloud will be the most cost-effective way to cater to these needs.
What should CIO/CISO focus on to create a secure and future-proof cloud environment?
Digital transformation is shifting from Cloud-first to Cloud-everywhere and is a race where no enterprise wants to be left behind. Cloud has become the de-facto environment for modern applications propelling the emergence of cloud-native technologies. This is an evolution to fully exploit the benefits of the Cloud by reducing cost, boosting productivity, improving operational efficiency, and delivering engaging end-user services.
- Design cloud strategies to align with your business goals: Cloud services play a key role in making businesses more agile allowing them to operate freely. The first step to designing a perfect cloud strategy would be to clearly chalk out the goals that the business aims to achieve and the problems that the cloud will help solve. This approach will help in creating an adaptable governance framework with the flexibility to handle different implementation demands and risk profiles.
- Multi-cloud architectures: At first, most businesses began with public or private cloud models, but now with the growing online data, businesses are opting for a mix of public, private, and hybrid cloud models as it has more benefits. A multi-cloud architecture provides the flexibility needed for rapid innovation and lets organizations take advantage of the best-in-class cloud service that each cloud provider offers and at the best price without having to compromise due to provider limitations.
- Cloud security: With rapid migration to digital technologies for organizations across sectors, cyber security breaches have also increased simultaneously. Malware threats have increased by 358% in 2021, while ransomware attacks have risen by 435% across sectors. Cyber security has now become one of the biggest concerns for every organization. The cloud architecture needs to be built in a manner that is resilient, tolerable, and recoverable for the business to stay ahead of the curb. While building a cloud strategy, focusing on cloud security is a priority. This consists of a few policies, controls, procedures, and technologies that are put together to protect cloud-based systems, data, and infrastructure.
- Upskilling the talent: Cloud computing has been around for a while now, but the technical professionals are still in the process of acquiring the required skill sets to manage the ever-evolving cloud-agnostic environment. A lack of skills can result in delay or restrain a cloud project, inhibiting innovation. Many businesses have built or are considering building talent enablement programs to skill and reskill the talent to cultivate the necessary roles within the organization. To address new requirements, employers are focusing on training their existing employees who are interested in acquiring new cloud-related roles.
What are the skill sets required for the current cloud-agnostic domain?
It is evident that the pandemic outbreak has accelerated the digital transformations across the sectors. This has led to the growth and demand for professionals with relevant skill sets required for the latest technologies that are bringing paradigm shifts. These professionals must constantly keep skilling and reskilling themselves to keep up with the latest technological trends to stay relevant. With the evolution in technology and cloud, many organizations want to ensure that they are not locked in with one cloud platform and they adopt cloud-agnostic strategies to meet this objective. Below mentioned are some of the key skill sets required by cloud professionals to support the cloud-agnostic strategy of organizations:
- Containers & Kubernetes
- Use of open standards
- Opensource databases
- 3rd party tools for monitoring, backups, and security
How can blockchain disrupt the cloud computing market?
Hyperscalers have transformed the way businesses use storage and computing. However, with all the business information going digital, cyber security has become a major concern. This is where blockchain technology has proved to be a blessing in disguise for the cloud industry.
Blockchain technology offers a more secure and cheaper way to store data in the cloud because by using blockchain several companies can collaborate to share the storage and computing power of the cloud. Blockchain technology incorporated with the cloud is a superior alternative that is incredibly immutable and holds immense potential to provide a cheap, scalable, and more secure system. It adds an additional layer of security and distributes data within the network using blockchain features like hashing, key encryptions, and transaction ledgers. As each section is stored in a decentralized location, hackers will never be able to access a whole file.
How is Coforge disrupting the cloud computing space – what kind of innovation can we expect from Coforge in the coming months?
Coforge helps organizations build future-ready infrastructure with a unique philosophy of solving the new-age business challenges – Engineering Convergence.
We combine domain and technology with engineering practices to help companies understand, measure, rethink, redefine, evolve, and future-proof their multi-cloud environment. Coforge leverages its in-house accelerators, analytics, automation, hybrid cloud, and AIOps services to realize current trends, optimize, transform avenues while improving performance, availability, and resilience. Leveraging our AIOps platform, we empower the ‘anywhere enterprise’ of the future with:
- Service catalog-led policy-based provisioning
- Multi-speed operating model
- Cloud innovation and migration factory
- Organization upskills and engineering culture transformation