The negative impact of Covid-19 is changing the cloud landscape, an aspect of which is the pricing structure, in helping to keep services affordable. The other is how cloud is being used to keep businesses going and enabling millions of people to work remotely.

Cloud continues to transform connectivity between people and businesses worldwide and organisations have recognised the immense value it provides, including the flexibility to rapidly test and implement solutions. According to Seelan Thathiah, BCX’s Managing Executive for Infrastructure and Cloud Services, the use of cloud since the start of the lockdown has taken a positive turn, with BCX tailoring its offerings to meet client demand. He says that it is no longer about the server, but about the platform and in enabling its clients to sustain and grow their businesses.

“A game changer in terms of cloud is consolidation – putting cloud into a single platform and ensuring its accessibility and ease of use to clients. This is a journey that BCX has already embarked on and has defined a single cloud offering. Scale and ease of deployment are paramount during these trying times, and the ability to rapidly deploy and scale up or down allows businesses the agility required to meet new demands during this period. The trend of hyper-scalable cloud, which allows for growth and freedom of choice is also very much on the increase.”

“We are seeing networks expanding and a mixture of requirements has also become evident. Some organisations want to explore more into new technology and applications; telemedicine is one such example. However, the most important underlying aspects that remain common throughout our client base are data management and security services, with disaster recovery services featuring prominently. “

Thathiah says that many, if not all BCX clients are already on the digital transformation journey, and see cloud as an enabler to their businesses, and in being pivotal to their digital transformation success.

“It is vital that we work with our clients to overcome the challenge of constraint at this time, thus our role is to take a holistic approach to their requirements and either advise them on their strategy or if they have already defined what they want, work with them to achieve their objectives.”

According to Thathiah, based on what BCX is seeing, the areas that have experienced most changes in response to COVID-19 have been workload management and purchasing patterns, with online platforms the new norm. Online ordering has grown exponentially and for those companies that were geared for it, this may be their saving grace, especially for those not part of essential services.

“We now have, at our fingertips, in the cloud, the power of IoT, machine learning and artificial intelligence. If these are constructively applied by organisations, a whole new world opens up in CRM, business intelligence and supply chain management. Those organisations that use technology constructively and intelligently right now stand a much better chance of surviving in these very challenging times, and the onus is upon us to empower our clients through affordability and diversity of our service offerings.

“We have made it possible for companies to choose their level of usage against available budget and determine the preferable billing options. Billing varies vastly by vertical markets, which is why flexibility is important. It is equally important to offer a consumption-based payment option so clients are paying for use and not for infrastructure. This allows client to easily upscale or downscale based on business usage patterns. This should hold true whether the customer is an SME or a large scale client,” concludes Thathiah.

Editorial Credit : ITWeb