Digital technologies are impacting industries and businesses alike. Social, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC), along with agile, continuous integration and development practices like DevOps and Internet of things (IOT), are having an unforeseen impact as enablers of business.
Cloud computing in particular promises significant transformational benefits across industries. It provides robust, secure, elastic and scalable infrastructure which is accessible from anywhere and with any device.
Though enterprises have been adopting cloud at a rapid pace, concerns like data security and privacy continue to hinder the migration of the core business-critical workloads to cloud. Two industries in particular—healthcare and financial services—where security is a key concern due to the sensitive nature of data that is transacted and which have traditionally been subjected to stringent regulations and compliances, however, are experiencing a rise in the adoption of cloud services, according to the CII-PwC joint Report on Boosting Market Dynamics with Digital Technologies – The Cloud in healthcare and financial services.
“Through this report, we have endeavoured to understand and explore new business models around the Cloud that can increase productivity, create operational efficiencies and fuel more disruptive innovations. We have moved beyond the inflection point in terms of Cloud adoption and acceptance. Cloud computing is increasingly being perceived as the platform for digital transformation across industries and it is heartening to note that industries in India have made significant contribution as enthusiastic adopters of Cloud platforms. A significant part of Cloud adoption will happen in the BFSI and Healthcare industries,” says Mr S Premkumar, Chairman, CII National Sub Committee on Cloud Computing and Executive Vice Chairman & MD, HCL Infosystems Ltd.
According to Mr Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, CII, “Digital technology has become the foundation of this transformation. It holds the key - right from strategy formulation to execution. Companies will need to adapt quickly to these changes to achieve growth, meet disparate consumer needs, reach out to markets, compete and succeed.”
In order to understand the state of cloud adoption in the financial services and healthcare industry, a survey was conducted with the stakeholders in the two sector. The fact that the cloud is increasingly being recognised as the platform of the future is clear, as almost a quarter of the organisations surveyed suggested that more than 15% of their IT budget—21% for financial services and 23% for healthcare—was devoted towards cloud computing.
However, despite the positive outlook, concerns remain. Data security and trust, followed by legal and regulatory compliances, are the key issues. In addition, 50% and 36% of respondents from the financial services and healthcare industry respectively stated that lack of knowledge is one of their barriers to cloud adoption. Thus, there is further scope for this technology if the knowledge gaps are addressed suitably.