CloudThat nurtures a strong cloud-skill enabled ecosystem in India

CloudThat has interesting initiatives tailored to nurture a strong cloud-skill enabled ecosystem in India with Cloud & Big Data. India is in the new age of technology and development. Bhavesh Goswami, CEO & Founder, CloudThat, has shared his magnifying view on the cloud computing industry with CIOL. Let's hear from the spokesperson about the Indian IT scenario. 

Please give an introduction on your company

I did my Master’s in Computer Science from the University of South Florida, a beautiful university with a golf course and a river park within the campus. I began my career in the cloud very early, as I was recruited for the initial development team of Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) at Amazon AWS in Seattle. AWS was just in the process of changing the IT world by introducing cloud services, and I was lucky to be part of that amazing transformation.

Later I moved to Microsoft to take up the challenge to help manage Cosmos, Cloud storage, and Big Data computational engine that powers all of Microsoft’s Online Services, including Bing. In 2011, I came to India in pursuit of newer challenges. I quickly realized that the rapidly changing technology landscape and the busy schedule of IT professionals were not conducive to acquiring new skills. Thus, I started CloudThat - a company focused on quickly empowering professionals & corporates on Cloud & Big Data through training & consulting services.

How has Covid-19 accelerated the transition to the cloud computing industry? What will be the new normal in the industry?

According to the McKinsey Global Survey of executives, their companies have accelerated the digitization of their customer and supply-chain interactions and their internal operations by three to four years. This is because while a typical digital transformation project with cloud takes years of approval and planning, covid shut down the offices and forced that transformation to take place overnight. Companies had to adapt, and they did not have those months and years of planning and approvals to hide behind.

As a result, a recent Gartner report finds out, Global cloud revenue shot up to a total of $474 Billion in 2022, up from $408 Billion in 2021. These statistics and factors clearly indicate that the pandemic has created a bigger opportunity for the cloud market, as rapid cloud adoption across diverse industries is witnessed.

According to me, the new normal that this industry is going to witness will have the following traits:

• Remote work is now the norm rather than an exception. This creates a lot of opportunities for companies working in Remote Desktop, Data Privacy, security, compliance, etc.
• Most startups are now cloud-first corporations. While larger companies might still have an on-premises set-up, startups will surely only be in the cloud. As these companies mature and need more services, their reliance and adoption of the cloud are going to witness a surge.
• Most people entering the job market in IT or looking for a career changeover will need cloud expertise. Thus, skilling the large IT talent pool has sprung up a plethora of new ed-tech companies. But for everyone, cloud skills will be mandatory.

What, as per you, are the five important things that CloudThat should be looking at today?

Continuous learning, skilling, and reskilling drive the modern workplace. As per the Statista research report of 2021, the employability among the Indian engineering graduates was 47%, a decrease from 49% in 2020. These statistics clearly emphasize the fact that more than 50% of Engineering graduates in India are unemployed.

CloudThat has interesting initiatives lined up to nurture a strong cloud-skilled enabled ecosystem in India. Here are the salient ones:

1. A majority of the unemployment issues in India can be solved with skilling. Also, I would like to stress the fact CloudThat’s primary focus is on job-related skilling.
2. We are soon launching a job guarantee program in the cloud, which assures a job in the cloud sphere or a complete refund of fees.
3. Our mission is to enable professionals to be project-ready with 60 days of rigorous training in niche technologies like cloud, AI/ML, DevOps, Data Modernization, etc.
4. With our consulting service, we are on a mission to enable organizations of all shapes and sizes to be cloud-ready and optimize their cloud investments.
5. We relentlessly work to deliver our social responsibility objectives by ensuring the underprivileged strata of society are empowered with world-class training to upskill and nurture them to contribute to the development of our nation.

 How can small IT companies overcome the challenges faced while adopting this service in their business?

The important challenges small IT companies face while embracing cloud technologies are:

• Lack of talent to manage cloud services
• Perceived lack of security
• Fear of not understanding new costing models

These challenges can be effectively addressed by taking up the following measures:

• Upskilling your existing team. Or use a company like CloudThat to manage your cloud, so you can completely focus on your core business.
• Understand Cloud security well, and have professional's setup your cloud security
• Develop a Cloud Center of Excellence within your organization

What changes is CloudThat bringing to the industry?

CloudThat’s mission has always been to empower both budding and experienced professionals with the necessary skills in cloud computing space and build a stronger cloud ecosystem that can take up global challenges. We are also focused on fostering small and medium-sized organizations to quickly migrate to the cloud environment and reap its benefits. Our other focus area is to create a conducive environment for Cloud adoption in the SAARC region where technology penetration is still in its nascent stage.

How will work-from-home lead to a significant change in both the IT industry and the cloud computing industry?

The crisis the entire globe went through has undisputedly made cloud technology the pioneer of all technologies. As working from home depends on cloud computing (CC) applications, the cloud computing environment (CCE) has become the unsung hero during the pandemic crisis. Shift over to remote working has resulted in rapid strides taken on the cloud computing research & innovation activities. Innovations in data management, guaranteeing security, and ensuring the availability of cloud computing applications have gathered momentum in the current scenario.