Becoming a Cloud Partner: Journey of Godrej Infotech

In this very unique segment of DQ Channels, we have covered the journey of Godrej Infotech Ltd. becoming a Cloud Partner from a traditional Channel Partner. Kingshuk Chatterjee, Vice President, and Global Business Head shared his entire journey about how his organisation has moved to the cloud business, challenges, growth, and future vision. 

When and how did you move to Cloud Business?

Godrej Infotech over the past 2 decades has been in the business of providing implementation and support services on Business Applications which include Microsoft and Infor technologies to our customers across India, the Middle East, Asia Pacific, Europe, and the US besides our Parent company Godrej and Boyce. While these were On-Premise solutions, during our interaction with our global Customers we could assess the need for them to move from a Capex to an Opex model to optimize cost and bring in operational efficiency.

For us, our SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud) journey started in 2016. We engaged with our Customers for a Cloud migration enabling them to reduce their operating costs. During the last 4+ years, we have undertaken multiple Cloud migration engagements and also deployed Cloud solutions for several of our new Customers. With the perspective of driving our focus in the area of Cloud Business, we are now a Global Tier 1 Cloud Service Provider for Microsoft, covering India, Middle East, Asia Pacific, Europe, and the USA regions.

What are the different Cloud services do you offer?

Our approach is to first assess the needs and expectations of the Customer before we propose what would be the most relevant and effective solution for them. The objective is clear, that we should derive business value for our customers. One of our customers reached out to us for providing a solution to their On-Premise servers which had reached the end of shelf life and they were challenged with huge Capex cost for replacing their hardware, operating systems, and database. They were facing huge downtime due to hardware failures and a lack of high availability infrastructure capability. We proposed migration to a Cloud solution on an Opex model and I am happy to tell you that we could complete the entire migration over the weekend, without any impact on their business continuity. We bettered our record with another project of cloud migration, wherein the entire lift and shift were done with a 15-minute downtime.

Post-migration, the Customers were able to access the system from anywhere, anyplace, and any device with necessary security protocols, which turned out to be a great advantage in the current remote working situation.

Over the years in response to our Customer needs we have built our end-to-end offerings related to Azure Cloud services including implementation of the solution and thereafter activities related to Virtual network management, DR Site recovery, Backup, and VM management, Alerts, Network monitoring, Azure Domain, and AD management, user management and access control, etc. In case a customer is looking for any additional services, we are always willing to understand their requirements and address those efficiently.

What sort of changes have you done to move to the cloud within the organization in terms of Team, skill set, infrastructure, and others?

Our Digital solution team is focused on Cloud solutions across technologies and also offering services in migrating On-Premise Customers to Azure Cloud or those adopting Cloud-based solutions in the areas of ERP, Analytics, CRM, or any other digital solutions. We are also providing Managed Services on Cloud related to Application and Infrastructure, wherein the entire engagement is outsourced by the customer and we undertake end-to-end ownership to ensure system uptime and delivering outcomes based on engagement KPIs.

Previously on Cloud Journey: Ripplewave Solutions

How does Crayon Software help you to grow your business and customers?

While our association with Crayon Software may have been for around 2 years, but the learning has been multifold. Crayon Software has done a commendable job in the area of digital transformation for its customers. For their exemplary project execution and customer value creation, Crayon has been recognized as a Leader in the Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Software Asset Management Managed Services.

We have worked together in many Customer engagements, where we have deployed the solutions in a Cloud environment. One of the areas where we see great opportunity for growth for both of us is in the area of Managed Infrastructure Services. Most of our customers are looking for outsourcing their infrastructure management and they want, to not only save their time and effort of monitoring and managing their infrastructure, but also to optimize and reduce their operational cost. Another area would be compliance management where Crayon Software’s knowledge and experience would be of immense value.

How your old and new customers adopting the new technology and moving to the cloud?

Our journey started in 2016 in Cloud deployment with a new Customer, who is one of India's most well-known and trusted opticians. They wanted to deploy their back-end ERP solution on Cloud, and we recommended them, Azure, as the platform. This was a hugely successful deployment for us and gave us the experience and excitement to take the story ahead. Subsequently, we took up the project for migration from On-Premise to Azure Cloud solution for a Non-Profit organization. In the last about 4+ years, we have deployed cloud solutions to our existing and new customers across India, Middle East, APAC, Europe, and the USA. We find a very high adoption rate and we have experienced in engagements across multiple cloud solutions for our global customers.

How many customers you have, who are taking Cloud solutions, and what are their different verticals?

At this point, we have more than 50+ active Customers worldwide covering India, Middle East, APAC, Europe, and the USA, with whom we are engaged to provide our Cloud solutions and services. For these customers, we have not only migrated to or implemented Azure Cloud but also support them on the application front apart from being part of their Digital Transformation journey having enabled them to adopt multiple new technology solutions using the Cloud environment. We also engage with customers who are using other cloud solutions as well. At this point, our focus remains in the core verticals of manufacturing, retail and distribution, and projects, since we have strong domain understanding and competency in these areas.

What are the different challenges did you face in this journey?

As is the case with anything new, I would say the mindset or rather being cautious while exploring something new has been the biggest challenge that we came across. But our team is exceptionally skilled and was able to address these concerns with confidence. Another area was in terms of business data security and ensuring ROI for the customers. With close monitoring and delivering outcomes based on the engagement, KPIs enabled us to ensure the customer's confidence and that ensured even new customers moving in the direction of adopting new technology solutions.

What is your overall growth being a cloud partner?

To put it modestly, I would say that what we started in FY17-18 as a new business line for us, has almost grown 200% in the last 3-years and we see more traction, not only in the larger enterprises but also in the mid-sized companies who are keen in adopting this solution to moderate their operating costs.

What are your future goals?

We are on a very exciting journey of leveraging IT and Digital for growth and sustainability. For our customers to meet their business continuity needs seamlessly, our plans include focusing on the areas of Cloud, Mobility, Analytics, and new edge technologies like RPA, IIoT, AI/ML, etc. We find a lot of interest from our customers and prospects in adopting these solutions and leverage to operate their business more effectively and efficiently. As an organization, Godrej Infotech would like to make this our mainstream business line and expect exponential growth in the coming years.