Exclusive Interaction - Puneet Bajaj, Partner, IFI Techsolutions

Lockdown has created a situation which  has  made it essential for many enterprises to move to cloud interaction and data management  has become very critical at this point. CSPs need training  to be able to manage this situation. Puneet Bajaj, Partner, IFI Techsolutions talks about the issues related to these  to us.

How can cloud solutions help in the post-lockdown re-growth of IT sector?

I see customers across industries are understanding the importance of cloud interaction. Nobody, had thought that they would land up in such a situation where they would be forced to abandon physical infrastructure and embrace virtual and digital infrastructure. So, this has opened up a lot of interaction opportunities where customers and industries are looking at adopting cloud for their short term as well as long-term needs. The organisations that had already started investing in cloud solutions have reaped the benefits at this time, keeping their people productive and protected. We feel post lockdown, as the economy revives, while the companies go back to their usual way of business interaction, they will look at cloud solutions as the primary way of doing business. This transition will be ‘the new normal’ and eventually be beneficial for the overall re-growth of IT industry.

But yes, this would also require a lot of unlearning and new learning for non-cloud solution providers, probably adapt and adopt cloud interaction in a much more aggressive way to stay relevant in post lockdown scenario. While a lot of clients right now are experimenting with cloud as the only option to survive and be in business but I feel this will also give an opportunity for them to really experience the benefits of cloud, meaning a lot more business interaction for cloud solutions provider. Post lockdown is when the real ‘digital transformation’ will actually start.

How are the cloud solutions providers finding the online mode in regard to the expansion of business and finding more clients?

The current situation has given us an opportunity to take a step back, rethink how we have done business interaction so far and what we did right or wrong as we grew. We are now spending a lot of our time and effort to strengthen what was right and fix what wasn’t. We feel this is the right time for us to expand business interaction, showcase our key projects that we have delivered over the past few years. We started with the overall revamping of our website and now investing our energies in publishing case studies, make solution offerings delivered to our customers across the globe in different sectors like, IT/ITES, Manufacturing, Healthcare and BFSI. Since there is no offline sales happening right now, we are strengthening and leveraging the overall online model of sales interaction which include social media, email marketing etc. We are also able to leverage joint Go-to-Market opportunities that Microsoft offers in a much effective way.

Clients from which sectors are most interested in adopting cloud solutions for their businesses in lockdown situation?

We would divide the clients in two broad categories. There are clients who are very relevant right now and actively using this as an opportunity to scale-up, grow and acquire new customers through interaction, primarily Information Technology and Healthcare companies. They are investing heavily in cloud solutions to expand at this point of time. Then, there are others who are just managing to survive and trying and run business as usual. They might or might not be growing but they are still trying to make the work happen and for them cloud adoption is all about maintaining the business interaction, surviving and to see how they can manage to enable their employees through cloud solutions.

How is the training scenario for the CSPs in the current situation?

Currently and for the foreseeable future, all classroom trainings have been moved to online trainings and thus all online trainings are seeing an increase in demand both from organisations and individuals. Organisational interest is to re-train and upskill their existing employees since they have time available. Individuals are looking at utilising this time to upskill and be better prepared for the increasing uncertainty in the job market. Cloud is probably the most sought-after skill along with Data Analytics and Security. While there is plethora of on-demand content online both free and paid, instructor-led virtual trainings are still very much in demand and smaller CSPs with right skill sets and marketing will be able to not just survive but actually thrive for the next few months.