A Report on Cloud Adoption in India 2020

Cloud Computing Innovation Council of India (CCICI) has conducted a survey during 4Q2020 to better understand the cloud adoption in India involving Indian industry and academia in collaboration with IIM Bangalore.  Key findings are:-

Cloud usage has increased tremendously! In the 2016-17 study, only about 75% respondents were using cloud. In 2020, it has increased to 94%. We also witness a large proportion of medium- and long-term cloud users
Compared to the 2016-17 study, hybrid cloud share has doubled. Though public cloud still holds a slender edge, we observe that private and hybrid cloud models are gaining ground
Collaboration, Corporate functions and Business critical applications emerge as popular use cases, which suggests that cloud seems to be steadily moving into the core of businesses
Users have overwhelmingly attested to diverse benefits of cloud adoption. The responses suggest that cloud adoption revolves around key financial and performance considerations

The challenges in migrating workload from on-premises to public cloud are :-

• Compliance, policy, and legal requirements and stringent service quality requirements emerge as the most prominent challenges (>80% respondents’ vote)
• Vendor lock-in and lack of interoperability and data portability standards and validation methods emerges as the third most important challenge to be addressed
• Respondents rate lack of business compulsion as the least important of the listed challenges. This indicates the growth prospects of cloud – the adoption of cloud is seen more as a need rather than a compulsion

Regarding security related threats in moving workload from on-premises to public cloud, the challenges are :-

• Unclear security roles and responsibilities emerges as the overall most prominent security related concern, however, Lack of security governance and Inadequate identity and access management garnered higher votes in ‘extremely important’ category
• Respondents rate Lack of leadership focus on cloud security management as one of the least relevant of their security concerns. This suggests that there is sufficient focus at the top level on cloud security

Regarding data privacy/protection related challenges in cloud adoption, the challenges are :-

• Standards and processes to enforce data privacy/protection are not clear emerges as the overall most prominent challenge. This, coupled with interoperability and transparency concerns voiced by many respondents, suggests the need for policies that govern clarity of privacy and protection related aspects
• Overall, respondents agree all of the listed privacy related challenges are significant concern to them

Expectations from Cloud Service Providers are :-

• Cloud users seem to be focused on credibility and serviceability
• Readiness to adhere to Privacy Data Protection bill of the nation emerges as the topmost expectation
• Credibility of the service provider and Ability to service emerge as significant concerns of cloud users in moving towards cloud adoption, which may be an indicator of why most of the cloud users are still seen to be trusting the large and established public cloud providers
• Cloud users seem to be demanding transparency, accountability, and control
• Transparency, implementation of effective audit controls emerges as the most significant concern of cloud users in moving towards cloud adoption, while Availability of configurable and consumer-controlled data encryption tool(s) comes a close second
• Though Defined responsibilities matrix was marked as the least relevant of the list, the need for clear definition of responsibilities has been voiced by several respondents in their open comments

For queries, please contact

Ignesius Thambyraj , Director General, CCICI  ( thambyraj@ccici.in)