Cloud computing is becoming a sig­nificant area for investment in India, opening new windows of opportunities for industries in terms of business growth and efficiency. Verticals such as retail, railways, manufacturing, banking, education and health care have started switching their on-premises applications to the cloud for optimised reach and perform­ance as well as elasticity and scalability. As of end-2015, the cloud computing market in India stood at $1.08 billion. The IT/ITeS, telecom, banking, financial services, insurance, manufacturing and government sectors contributed the most to the cloud market in the country, accounting for nearly 78 per cent of the total market.

Increased government expenditure on the BharatNet project and various e-governance portals, coupled with new government initiatives like Digital India, is expected to drive the market for cloud computing. The government has recognised the importance of cloud-based service delivery platforms for establishing the foundation of Digital India, as it integrates smart devices and infrastructure, and processes the large amount of data from scattered sources in real time. In October 2015, Microsoft announced the launch of three data centres in India, which would primarily drive the adoption of public cloud services by government departments, state-owned agencies, banks and financial institutions.

As the industry advances towards cloud computing, it becomes imperative to make service delivery more structured, and ensure quality of service (QoS) and protection against security and interoperabil­ity issues. Another key consideration is whether there is a need to bring these services under a regulatory framework or not. To this end, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released a consultation paper on cloud computing, which throws open several topics for discussion amongst industry stakeholders.

Cost benefit

In any business entity, the benefits of cloud services are considered from a financial and an operational perspective in order to evaluate the savings and efficiency for the enterprise. From a financial perspective, capex and IT cost optimisation are the perceived advantages. Removal of entry barriers, business continuity, mobile workforce, IT agility and quick returns on investments are possible advantages on the operational front.

Interoperability in cloud services

The ability to have multiple machines sharing resources on a single physical ser­ver and the ability to treat a machine as a file opens up new possibilities. Virtual­i­sation is the first step towards moving applications to the cloud. While the lack of standards is not stopping customers from moving to the cloud, it is likely to slow them down. Interoperability and standardisation issues are key concerns impeding faster adoption of the cloud.

A number of issues need to be dealt with before moving an application from one cloud to another. It is essential that the virtualisation technology is the same for both vendors, as the format of the virtual machine would otherwise have to be converted. In such a case, the application’s performance level and interoperability with the management, network and storage components needs to be addressed. The target cloud also needs to support the source cloud platform. On similar lines, due to a lack of established standards within the cloud computing industry, public clouds are proprietary to some extent.

Quality of cloud services

Everything in cloud computing is delivered as a service, so it is essential to ensure quality of cloud service for customer satisfaction. Particularly, in an effort to deliver guaranteed services in a cloud computing environment, the relationship among the maximum number of customers, the min­imum service resources and the optimised level of services needs to be explored. In cloud computing solutions, it is possible to specify the compute, network and storage requirements to be shared by tenants using the same infrastructure. But due to the dynamic nature of the virtualisation environment and the workloads (virtual machine and software stack), performance becomes unpredictable, affecting the QoS available to the end-customer.

Security over the cloud

Migrating an on-premises application to the cloud may present the enterprise with a number of security risks and threats like the protection of intellectual property, trade secrets and personally identifiable information, which could fall into the wrong hands. Making sensitive information available on the internet requires considerable investment in security controls and monitoring of access to content. In a cloud environment, the enterprise may have little or no ability to store or back up processes and, as data from multiple customers may be stored in a single reposit­ory, forensic inspection of the storage media and a proper understanding of file access and deletion become major challenges. Organised criminals and hackers see this as a new avenue to steal private information from, and disrupt services and cause harm to the enterprise’s cloud computing network.

TRAI’s consultation paper seeks stakeholder views and inputs on the following:

  • Paradigms of cost-benefit analysis, especially in terms of accelerating the design and roll-out of services, promotion of social networking, participative governance and e-commerce, expansion of new services, any other items or technologies.
  • How economies of scale in the cloud can enable cost reduction in an organisation’s IT budget.
  • Parameters that the business enterprises should focus on while selecting the type of cloud service deployment model.
  • A secure migration path so that migration and deployment from one cloud to another are facilitated without any glitches.
  • Regulatory provisions so that customers are able to have control over their data while moving it in and out of the cloud.
  • A regulatory framework and standards for ensuring interoperability of cloud services at various levels of implementation, namely, abstraction, programming and orchestration layer.
  • QoS parameters based on which the performance of different cloud service providers can be measured for different service models.
  • Provisions for facilitating billing and metering reverification by the client of cloud services.
  • Mechanism for handling customer complaints and grievances.
  • Provisions to ensure security while offering cloud services.
  • Termination or exit provisions for ensuring security of data or information over the cloud.
  • Security provisions for live migration to the cloud and for migration from one cloud service provider to another.
  • Roles and responsibilities in terms of security of cloud service providers (CSPs) and end-users.
  • Policies, systems and processes for an information governance framework for the cloud, from a lawful interception point of view, particularly if it is hosted in a different country.
  • Protocol for CSPs to submit to the ­territorial jurisdiction of India for the purpose of lawful access of information – effective guidelines for and actions against those CSPs that are identified to be in possession of information related to the commission of a breach of national security.
  • Steps taken by the government for promoting cloud computing in e-governance projects, promoting the establishment of data centres, encouraging business and private organisations to utilise cloud services to boost the Digital India and Smart Cities Mission initiatives using the cloud.
  • Case for a dedicated cloud for government applications.
  • Infrastructure challenges faced in the development and deployment of state data centres.
  • Tax subsidies for incentivising cloud services.

Cloud is one of the fastest growing trends in the country. Smart homes will account for 21 per cent of the total demand for IoT devices in 2016 and will record rapid growth in the next five years.

Going forward

Cloud is one of the fastest growing trends in the country. According to research and advisory firm Gartner, the accelerated penetration of smart technologies in India will drive demand for internet-of-things (IoT) devices to 1.6 billion units in 2016, an increase of 39 per cent over 2015. Smart homes will account for 21 per cent of the total demand for IoT devices in 2016 and will record rapid growth in the next five years. These projections indicate a proportional boost in the uptake of cloud services. The public cloud service market in India will grow from $838 million in 2015 to $1.9 billion by 2018. Market research company Forrester expects the software-as-a-service market in particular to nearly double in value between 2014 and 2020, when it will be worth $1.2 billion.

India is well positioned to establish a dominant position in the global cloud computing market. However, an appropriate and structured framework needs to be put in place for promoting and supporting cloud computing deployment. The aim of the TRAI’s consultation paper is to develop a sound and robust ecosystem for these services to flourish, and bring in benefits for Indian organisations and the country as a whole.