Public Cloud Services Revenue in India to Grow 24% in 2019: Gartner

Public cloud services revenue in India is projected to total $2.4 billion in 2019, an increase of 24.3% from 2018, according to Gartner, Inc.

Although India revenue will only represent 1.2% of the global public cloud services total in 2019, India ranks among the nine countries whose growth rate will be higher than the global average growth rate (16%). India is also on pace to record the third-highest growth rate in 2019 after China (33%) and Indonesia (29%), taking into consideration that their revenue base is much smaller than those of mature markets.

“The shift from ‘cloud first’ to a ‘cloud only’ model is pushing organizations in India to increase their spending on public cloud services to advance their digital business initiatives,” said Sid Nag, research vice president at Gartner. “Disinvestments in new data centers are also one of the early signs of this move.”

The Gartner CIO Agenda survey* validates the rising move to cloud among organizations in India. The survey found that 34% of CIOs in India are expected to increase their spending on cloud services in 2019. “Organizations want to reduce capital expenditure spend by consolidating existing data centers and halting the buildout of new ones,” said Mr. Nag.

Cloud Application Services to Represent Nearly Half of Total Public Cloud Services Revenue

Cloud application services (SaaS) is on pace to be the fastest-growing market segment in India in 2019, accounting for nearly half of total public cloud services revenue year over year (see Table 1). SaaS revenue is estimated to grow 23% in 2019 to reach $1.15 billion. It is followed by cloud system infrastructure services (IaaS) spending, which is estimated to grow 22% in 2019.

The growth of SaaS spending is fueled by increased end-user spending on customer relationship management (CRM), as organizations in India move away from commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) and license-based on-premises software to a subscription-based SaaS model to gain agility, innovation and cost efficiency.

Table 1. India Public Cloud Services Revenue Forecast, 2018-2020 (Millions of U.S. Dollars)

Note: Totals may not add up due to rounding.

Source: Gartner (June 2019)

Security and Analytics to Drive Public Cloud Services Revenue Growth

The move to digital is forcing Indian organizations to increase their spending on security, as digitalizing platforms and networks brings with it heightened exposure to threats and risks. “We’ve witnessed an increase in the number of targeted attacks on Indian organizations compared to a few years ago,” said Rajpreet Kaur, principal research analyst at Gartner. “They will continue to rise if local CIOs or CISOs don’t develop a cybersecurity roadmap.”

As part of creating a robust cybersecurity roadmap, Indian organizations need to use a mix of native and third-party controls. Furthermore, they should use technologies such as web application firewalls (WAFs), cloud access security brokers (CASBs), cloud workload protection platforms (CWPPs) and microsegmentation platforms as go-to options to secure cloud in their organizations.

“Moving to the cloud is one thing, but CIOs need to ensure operational control of the virtual organization,” said Ms. Kaur. “It isn’t about whether the cloud is secure; it’s about how securely the enterprise is using it.”