Cloud4c Only AWS Services Partner in India | Vikas Bakshi

Vikas Bakshi, Sr VP, Cloud4c delineates the GTM approach and strategy followed in India as an APN partner.

What are the Solutions and services in the Cloud4C portfolio?

Cloud4C has been existing for almost 9 years. Our system consists of controllers. The primary focus is on data centers from a controller’s perspective. Cloud4C, as an organization, started off being a service provider to SAP. There was a lot of SAP workload on the cloud and we started successfully working on various platforms to support them and provide services to them as a bridge.

We extended our presence to 25 countries, 52 locations to support the initiatives across countries.

Last 3 years, we started focusing on a lot of public cloud workforce, where we started seeing a lot of skillsets and traction beyond SAP that we started utilizing our self. Looking at workload, which makes sense to a lot of public cloud providers, we also worked heavily on the government cloud, community cloud, and on structures that we call “bank in the box” which is cloud for the banking sector. Around 80% of the banks leverage our solutions around that.

As an organization, we are around $290 million by the end of this year. Cloud4C alone should be around gathering $130 millions of cloud services revenue which is purely focused on cloud services and what we do on the cloud.

What are the dynamics of being an APN consulting partner and how did you balance between retention of existing customers and acquisition of new customers?

­In terms of partnership we move down from a consulting partner to an advance partner and now we are on the verge of becoming a premier partner. We are the only one in India to become a services partner. In the short span of 6-7 months, there has been a strategic shift in how we want to take that journey. Coming to how that is a kind of partnership we are building what we are now engaged with AWS is to do a field-level engagement, that is going to the customers, what could be done in terms of journeys together.

Coming to the approach that we take is we have broken up, for example, India into two parts one is a farming patch and the other is a hunting patch. In the farming patch, customers are basically our existing customers and then there is the hunting patch which is basically looking at the newer customer who is looking to make the transformation journey. Now the approach that we have taken is because we understand that a lot of customers want to take that step towards cloud, and we lead the customer towards the direction they want to go. We do not want to be held back.

I might want to retain some customers but there are a lot of workloads that the customer is probably not taking with us. That is the approach that we have changed in terms of field level engagements with AWS on the ground, talking to the customers and understanding their viewpoints in terms of what their strategy is for the next 1-3 years.  We also look to understand what they want to attain from an organization perspective, and from a CIOs personal choice what he wants to attain from one of his peers. This is the shift we have taken in our approach and that is what has taken this partnership to the next level. One aspect that we are learning in the last 6 months journey is, what we need to change, how we need to change, what is required to make the change and be where the customer wants us to be.

Who are some of your marquee customers and what are some of your expansion plans?

A lot of SAP on AWS has happened with us, a lot of compute on storage on AWS has happened with us, and a couple of things with AWS IoT services has happened with us. ­We have seen the first AWS Outposts deals getting signed recently. There is an ISV we are working within Saudi Arabia and there are also a couple of ISV we are working closely with in India. We are trying to put up hybrid cloud, for example we are working with a large energy utility company who wants to have a complete app modernization with  an absolute hybrid cloud setup at their rig and look at the various workloads, customize application that is there and how we can help the organization manage it and also secure the systems. Also, customers want the skillset of how to automate the process and execution process to scale up so these are some of the workloads we are talking about.

In terms of geographic expansion, we started from India and now working in some parts of Saudi Arabia, UAE. We are expanding into almost 15 countries in  the Middle East and Africa. ­We have made a lot of investments in Indonesia, Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong and Vietnam. It gives us a lot of credibility of what we can do from a public cloud or a hybrid cloud perspective. The approach is different in markets like Canada which is one of the most mature markets. Looking at what kind of segment makes sense to go in Canada, Latin America, the Middle East, and India and looking at the local people and what workload they are really talking about and customize their effort in terms of building that partnership using that environment.

What sort of partner ecosystem does Cloud4c work with?

There is a very strong partner ecosystem. We work a lot with the GSI partners globally especially the Indian GSIs.

We work with a number of independent software builders as well. What we try to do is, we integrate what they have to offer, we combine as to what we have in the range of services. Outside of India we partner to build what we call as spots, we have data centres, labs, certified SAPs. We are also looking at how we can provide hybrid cloud and public cloud. Within India there is a lot of skillset as how we can build up together. That is how we have taken across what we want to do and how do we want to achieve scalability looking at our workload to take that journey together and see what we can do.

How does Cloud4c help your enterprise customers on the security front? 

We, as an organization, started off helping the government sector, banking sector, and SAP. We have adhered to certain compliances in every country. We have taken care of all the regulatory compliance. On top of that we have the SOC service that is very strong, and that is one of the reasons why lot of customers come to us. A lot of our security operations are moving to provide AI sectors, DevOps sectors, especially to the AI and automation that we are talking about. We have automated the whole security in different platforms of security the customer looks at.

Looking at the industry and what kind of regulatory framework that is required to deliver those things, some of our partners are coming to us because of this particular skillset because to them this is one element that takes their cost element much higher. I can tell you this that we are very agile and cost effective in deliverance of this services to our customer. When the concerns came in from the customers this isone of the things that we look forward to our customers – on our expertise and skillsets on security.

How did the changing pattern of workloads impact the existing SLAs?

We can talk about it in two ways. One is how it impacted the SLAs that were there because there were certain workloads those expanded when the SLAs were delivered. We have also seen customers who have been impacted financially to execute what they were doing in terms of running their business and here we as an organization have to make a call to support enterprises in dire situation. We even went on to give big discounts on workloads to those customers. So, we made those investments as an organization to support in the difficult situations they have been in. It is about understanding how some of the customers have been impacted and taking their hands and supporting them and help them evolve so that they can still stay in business.

What are going to be the key focus areas for Cloud4c in the next few months?

There are 4 or 5 charters that we have taken up very strongly for the next 6 months to 1 year. One thing that we are taking forward with AWS is SAP modernization on AWS. We see a massive number of customers coming in for SAP modernization on AWS, that is one strong theme we are working on. We have identified what kind of workload makes sense; what kind of customer should we go after what kind of solutions we need to integrate.

The second thing that we are looking forward to is building a lot of analytical solutions, using AWS analytics. We have lot of banking customers as well who are looking at data and data analytics solutions to be provided and we are working on a solution by which we can take our customers who are in our private cloud to deliver analytics on AWS cloud.

The third element that we are conscious about and think can be a really big update is on the AWS Outposts, whether it is the enterprise sector, banking sector, large enterprises who are very sensitive about the applications in remote location or the public sector that’s the third uptake that we see as a huge transformation whether it is VR, ISV solutions that needs to be provided very close to where the customer is.

The fourth one is a data centre exit, helping customers to do more than they are doing today in their existing environment or a private environment. What we have done is we have share it with all our sales leaders, let’s do a half-day or a full-day workshop along with AWS team members to understand the landscape what are the concerns, challenges, and how to make the transformation.

What will be your message for both customers and partners?

To our customers, both we and AWS are looking forward to supporting you on your transformation endeavors. We have the needed skillsets from a cloud perspective, the kind of workload agility, and skill AWS has shown in the last few decades across the globe and in India. We are here to support you on this endeavor together.

To our partners, there is a strategic initiative we can work together in terms of integrating solutions together in the market because that adds a lot of value not only to our partners but also what we can deliver to our end customers. The corporate banks for example are going to take a huge journey on cloudification because of the RBI guidelines that are implemented. I see a huge scope to provide an agile, cost-effective solutions to those set of customers. It is a question of how we can collaborate in those areas with our partners. We are more than happy to come and discuss and see what we can do. We are looking forward to seeing how we can create that value that can give terrific sales to our customers.