Businesses in India are planning major investments in digital technologies to support ambitious expansion plans after lessons learnt from the pandemic. New findings from an annual survey of technology decision-makers, by Equinix, Inc., suggest that 96% of IT leaders in India indicated their organization is planning to expand into new markets in the next 12 months. A majority (67%) of those planning an expansion said they are most likely to support it by deploying virtually in the short-term and then building permanent physical infrastructure when needed.
The pandemic also continues to have a significant impact on Indian businesses’ digital strategies with 63% of respondents said citing that their IT strategy has become more aggressive and ambitious because of the pandemic. Indeed, 65% confirm their IT budgets have increased as a direct outcome of its legacy – an insight into the now broadly acknowledged necessity for robust digital infrastructure to pivot to evolving business needs in an instant. Furthermore, a majority of respondents (63%) believed the technology changes and investments implemented during the pandemic are here to stay.
More than half of Indian businesses (57%) surveyed for the Equinix 2022 Global Tech Trends Survey are observing a significant positive business impact from having a strong 5G network to take advantage of new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and internet of things (IoT). At the same time, nearly half of them (43%) realized the need to rearchitect their IT infrastructure to ensure it supports 5G capabilities. With respect to Indian organizations’ three-year technology strategy, 5G network infrastructure is perceived as the most important (44%), followed by IoT applications (34%) and edge computing (32%).
Meanwhile, 65% of respondents in India said they expect increased spending on carrier-neutral colocation solutions, while 71% said they intend to increase investment in interconnection services to increase speed of connectivity and reduce latency (53%), increase flexibility of connectivity (51%) and improve network optimization (50%).
On the other hand, a number of potentially limiting factors were also identified by Indian IT decision makers when it came to business success, with cyber attacks highlighted as a particular area of concern (78%). In addition, 76% faced challenges in working with more complex digital supply chains and 76% specified the global supply chain issues and shortages as key threats to their business. These continued supply chain issues appear to be driving a need for more virtualization, with growth aspirations underpinned by significant planned investment in digital infrastructure.
In addition, the survey revealed that in India:
- Evolution of Web 3: A majority of Indian IT leaders (52%) expect Web 3 to replace Web 2 within the next 1-5 years. 79% of respondents indicate that their business has a Web 3 strategy in place already.
- Cloud migration continues: 40% of IT leaders in India deploy public cloud, while 93% of them reported working with two or more cloud providers. 86% of Indian IT leaders said they plan to move more business functions to the cloud. Of those respondents, 79% of them plan to move their security functions to the cloud, and 60% intend to move databases to the cloud.
- Focusing on hiring talent from small towns: The technology landscape in India is experiencing a war for talent. 95% of Indian IT leaders said there are opportunities to hire from smaller towns in India to tap into fresh talent pools.
- Focusing on sustainability: While innovating, digital leaders are keeping a close eye on the sustainability of their IT infrastructure. In India, 85% said they have commitments made to science-based targets, while 84% indicated that their customers want to know they are taking steps to reduce carbon footprint of their IT infrastructure.
