According to Worldwide Future of Digital Infrastructure 2024 Predictions – India Implications report by International Data Corporation (IDC), spending on as-a-service (aaS)-consumption models will grow strongly with a large majority of information technology (IT) buyers in India prioritising it for their key workloads by 2028. Organisations in India aim to enhance business agility, reduce risk, and achieve faster time to market, thereby boosting productivity and customer satisfaction through strategic investments in digital infrastructure.

According to IDC Future of Digital Infrastructure Survey 2023, 79 per cent Indian organisations investing in digital infrastructure have experienced more than 20 per cent improvement in sustainability. 75 per cent have experienced a similar improvement in time to market.

Artificial intelligence (AI) will play a vital role in bringing considerable improvements in these areas and help organisations create superior market differentiation. In the coming years, generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) will have a significant impact on business innovation and create next-generation modern digital frameworks.

According to IDC’s AP Generative AI survey 2023, 57 per cent C-Suite executives have sought information on GenAI business benefits for improving customer experience. Apart from creating differentiated customer experience and automation, GenAI will be leveraged to improve anomaly detection capabilities, connect core, edge, and cloud environments, create innovative applications and modern data analytics capabilities.

IDC’s top predictions for India’s future of digital infrastructure:

  • Shift to aaS consumption model: Digital infrastructure consumption-as-a-service (XaaS) offerings help automate low-value tasks and reduce IT operational complexity while simultaneously allowing buyers to avoid overprovisioning and enabling them to better match resource utilisation to dynamic application requirements. End users should accelerate infrastructure modernisation and use of operations automation by partnering with XaaS solution providers to improve operational efficiency and resiliency.
  • Use of AI in security: Cyberattacks are inevitable and hence staying ahead of cybercriminals requires constant vigilance and effort. IT organisations must have data security, ransomware protection, and recovery as their highest priorities. AI built into infrastructure stack offers a layered approach to cyber preparedness that gives the organisation the best opportunity to detect, defend, and recover from cyber intrusion.
  • GenAI skills of IT teams would significantly enhance productivity: IT organisation teams struggle with increased complexities of cloud-native technologies due to multiple disparate environments and its distributed nature. With often understaffed IT operation teams, automation augmented with GenAI capabilities in the tools used by IT teams can improve efficiency and effectiveness in meeting business requirements.
  • At-ingest data classification engines will see higher adoption: According to IDC Future of Digital Infrastructure Survey 2023, 51 per cent Indian organisations cited quality/timeliness of mission critical data insights as their most important digital infrastructure key performance indicators (KPIs) for their board members. Organisations struggle to protect and govern data throughout its lifecycle and best leverage it. In the immediate term, data classification implementation will require IT organisations to evaluate, select, and implement data classification products with automation capabilities added to them in the longer term. This will help IT staff get more done in the same amount of time and deliver more value to the business.
  • Strong partner-ecosystem critical parameter for digital infrastructure procurement: Organisations are moving from a product-centric to a solution centric purchasing model driven by business outcomes. This requires an ecosystem of suppliers to build, integrate, deliver, support, and optimise the solution. Chief information officers (CIOs) would be shifting their focus from individual solutions to a strong ecosystem team that will integrate with existing technology, deliver comprehensive services accelerating higher business value.
  • Financial operations (FinOps) practices for monitoring power consumption, cooling costs: With growing adoption of hybrid cloud, managing costs and optimising resources across cloud and on-premises is becoming more difficult. Enterprises would depend on FinOps teams and their associated processes to gain deeper insights into both cloud and on-premises investments. With growing edge deployments, costs related to power consumption, cooling processes and carbon emissions monitoring are growing. As FinOps tools and processes mature, IT buyers will look to expand the scope of infrastructure costs monitored and optimised using these capabilities.

Commenting on the report, Rajiv Ranjan, associate research director, IDC India, said, “IT organisations and staff will move away from siloed tactical operational duties and shift time, talent, and attention to strategic responsibilities. Solution and service providers will absorb much responsibility for design, deployment, and operation of underpinnings of this new digital infrastructure model to deliver on the full promise of interwoven IT. This year’s predictions align with the new strategic priorities of chief experience officers (CXOs) towards creating a secure, compliant and resilient digital infrastructure spread that will leverage more GenAI capabilities in future. GenAI will be the cornerstone of achieving business objectives significantly enhancing the technology capabilities of organisation.”