DIGITAL ENTERPRISE | TALKING POINT Shrikanth G [email protected]

—Subram Natarajan CTO, IBM , South Asia

42 | November, 2018 www.dqindia.com A CyberMedia Publication | DIGITAL ENTERPRISE | TALKING POINT

Subram Natarajan, CTO, IBM India/South Asia in an interview to Dataquest talks about the cloud adoption dynamics and IBM’s play. Excerpts

CLOUD IS NO LONGER A TREND, IT’S A REALITY

n the Cloud evolution that helps clients undertake the cloud journey while Today, Cloud is not looked at as only an IaaS unlocking the 80% of data that’s not publicly available, solution but as a platform for innovation that giving clients secure and scalable ways to move forward Ocan provide differentiated value to multiple in emerging technologies with a trusted partner. enterprises across sectors. This evolution of the cloud platform is courtesy the emerging technologies that Per se IBM, what is your cloud play in India and your are heavily leveraging on the cloud such as AI, ML, IoT, core USPs and offerings and market traction? blockchain etc. IBM Cloud enables smarter business – it is a platform Enterprises are looking for a cloud partner who can that customers can quickly realize value of cloud native incorporate these innovative technologies: such partner environments, it is AI ready, secure to the core and built should have deep business workflow expertise and for all enterprise applications. IBM’s strategy is to become commitment to the secure and responsible management the undisputed leader in enterprise cloud. of enterprise data. While the public and private cloud have We have just announced the acquisition of – already gained great traction in the industry and we see one of the most significant announcements of 2018 – to hybrid cloud as a game changer, as it blends elements of help enterprises accelerate towards unlocking the true the private and public cloud and traditional IT platforms value of cloud business. This acquisition brings together with seamless and effortless orchestration between all of the best-in-class hybrid cloud providers and will enable them. The widespread open source adoption is helping companies to securely move all business applications to ramp up hybrid cloud adoption, specifically because of the cloud while realizing tangible business benefits along the agility and speed that it brings to the enterprises. the way. The reality today is that companies are already Hybrid cloud is improving operations through more using multiple clouds. However, research shows that 80 effective reallocation of internal resources and better percent of business workloads have yet to move to the linkage between IT and the business. Gartner predicts cloud, held back by the proprietary nature of today’s cloud that by 2020, 90% of companies will adopt hybrid market. Specifically, the issues surrounding portability infrastructure management, indicative of the massive shift of data and applications across multiple clouds, data that is underway towards hybrid cloud adoption. security in a multi-cloud environment and consistent cloud management pose significant challenges. What according to you are the key cloud inflection IBM and Red Hat will be strongly positioned to address points? this issue and accelerate hybrid multi-cloud adoption. In my opinion, one of the inflection points is in the area Together, we will help clients create cloud-native business of cloud management, particularly in an enterprise world applications faster, drive greater portability and security where multiple cloud environment is a reality. of data and applications across multiple public and IBM had anticipated this and re-architected our cloud private clouds, all with consistent cloud management. In to take advantage of these trends. We created a platform doing so, we will draw on our shared leadership in key

| A CyberMedia Publication www.dqindia.com November, 2018 | 43 DIGITAL ENTERPRISE | TALKING POINT

TODAY, CLOUD IS NOT LOOKED AT AS ONLY AN IAAS SOLUTION BUT AS A PLATFORM FOR INNOVATION THAT CAN PROVIDE DIFFERENTIATED VALUE TO MULTIPLE ENTERPRISES ACROSS SECTORS

technologies, such as Linux, containers, Kubernetes, IBM Security Connect is the first security cloud platform multi-cloud management, and cloud management and built on open federated technologies, with AI at its core, to automation. analyze security data across previously unconnected tools IBM’s Multi-cloud Manager is a new open technology and environments. By integrating security data from IBM designed to make it easier to manage, move and integrate Security products with an ecosystem of security vendors, apps across different cloud computing infrastructures. clients, and business partners, IBM Security Connect is It provides an operations console for companies as designed to help improve efficiency and collaboration they increasingly incorporate public and private cloud as teams defend against cybercrime. It will enable users capabilities with existing on-premises business systems. to apply machine learning and AI, including for The Multi-cloud manager runs on IBM Cloud Private Cyber Security, for analysis to help them identify threats platform which is based on Kubernetes container or risks and improve the efficacy and efficiency of threat orchestration technology – an open-source approach detection and response. Users can design and deploy for ‘wrapping’ apps in containers thereby making them new customized and comprehensive solutions to address easier and cheaper to manage across different cloud security outcomes, such as SOC Operations workflows environments. This extends the businesses’ ability to or Digital Trust. manage and integrate workloads on clouds from different IBM Cloud Private (ICP) provides a secure, enterprise- providers such as Amazon and Microsoft. grade, compliance-ready and open platform with PaaS and developer services behind their firewall. Mangalore University, one of India’s top public education institutions, is leveraging the power of IBM Cloud Private to provide new-age courses on a common platform that can be accessed remotely by any student. IBM Cloud Private will run on the university’s IBM Power servers as part of a comprehensive solution which also includes QRadar, MaaS360 and Cognos software. We have also launched IBM Cloud Private with Data which is designed to help companies uncover previously unobtainable insights from their data, enable users to build and exploit event-driven applications capable of analyzing the torrents of data from things like IoT sensors, online commerce, mobile devices, and more.

44 | November, 2018 www.dqindia.com A CyberMedia Publication |