Business executives in India are increasingly planning to invest in hybrid multi-cloud platform strategies and capabilities to drive business innovation and to unlock value, reveals an IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) survey.

The IBV surveyed Indian and global executives across industries to gain an in-depth understanding of their organizations’ current use of hybrid cloud, multi-cloud and their approach to multi-cloud management for the report titled, ‘The hybrid cloud platform advantage: A guiding star to enterprise transformation in India.’

According to the survey respondents, 17 percent of their IT spend is allocated to cloud at present and they plan to increase the share of spend on hybrid from 42 percent to 49 percent by 2023. The majority of their cloud budgets are being allocated to hybrid cloud platforms even as their public cloud spend is set to reduce from 50 percent share today to 43 percent by 2023. Most industries will exhibit growth in the number of clouds they will deploy, which can go up to 10 clouds particularly in insurance, telecommunications and retail as these industries will continue to expand multiple cloud deployments in the next three years.

Further, the study confirmed the return on investment (ROI) of a platform approach as respondents said that the value derived from a full hybrid, multi-cloud platform technology and operating model at scale is 2.5 times the value derived from a single platform, single cloud vendor approach. In fact, the platform approach is cited as accelerating value with scale.

Commenting on the survey insights, Viswanath Ramaswamy, Vice President, IBM Cloud and Cognitive Software and Services, IBM India/South Asia said, “The adoption of cloud has been a central feature in developing new, digitally-driven business models. Interestingly, the findings show that hybrid multi-cloud is the fundamental enabler of an organization’s operating model, helping them to embark on a journey to become a Cognitive Enterprise of the future. Further, Hybrid Cloud enables improved business performance and greater ROI. This is proven in the instance of leading businesses that have successfully achieved demonstrable competitive advantage through robust hybrid cloud management and governance platform.

In India, leading businesses such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea are achieving business transformation by leveraging hybrid multi-cloud platform technology and embedding AI. We are betting big on Hybrid Cloud which is secure, interoperable, open and free from vendor lock-in.”

The survey was conducted from February to April 2020 by the IBM Institute for Business Value in collaboration with Oxford Economics and covered 6,000 executives globally including 412 executives from India, across industries, job titles and geographies.

According to the survey respondents, 17 percent of their IT spend is allocated to cloud at present and they plan to increase the share of spend on hybrid from 42 percent to 49 percent by 2023. The majority of their cloud budgets are being allocated to hybrid cloud platforms even as their public cloud spend is set to reduce from 50 percent share today to 43 percent by 2023. Most industries will exhibit growth in the number of clouds they will deploy, which can go up to 10 clouds particularly in insurance, telecommunications and retail as these industries will continue to expand multiple cloud deployments in the next three years.

Further, the study confirmed the return on investment (ROI) of a platform approach as respondents said that the value derived from a full hybrid, multi-cloud platform technology and operating model at scale is 2.5 times the value derived from a single platform, single cloud vendor approach. In fact, the platform approach is cited as accelerating value with scale.

Commenting on the survey insights, Viswanath Ramaswamy, Vice President, IBM Cloud and Cognitive Software and Services, IBM India/South Asia said, “The adoption of cloud has been a central feature in developing new, digitally-driven business models. Interestingly, the findings show that hybrid multi-cloud is the fundamental enabler of an organization’s operating model, helping them to embark on a journey to become a Cognitive Enterprise of the future. Further, Hybrid Cloud enables improved business performance and greater ROI. This is proven in the instance of leading businesses that have successfully achieved demonstrable competitive advantage through robust hybrid cloud management and governance platform.

In India, leading businesses such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea are achieving business transformation by leveraging hybrid multi-cloud platform technology and embedding AI. We are betting big on Hybrid Cloud which is secure, interoperable, open and free from vendor lock-in.”

The survey was conducted from February to April 2020 by the IBM Institute for Business Value in collaboration with Oxford Economics and covered 6,000 executives globally including 412 executives from India, across industries, job titles and geographies.