By Matthew Oostveen
The cloud has evolved into a catalyst for innovation and agility for modern enterprises. It’s no longer just about migration, but about operating efficiently, flexibly, and intelligently across different clouds. What sets businesses apart today is their ability to rapidly innovate and deliver new services to customers across clouds, on-prem, or at the edge – without being constrained by rigid, one-size-fits-all systems. With workloads spanning on-prem, public, and hybrid environments, businesses are moving beyond rigid cloud-first models towards strategies centered around adaptability, scalability, and choice.
As India’s digital economy accelerates, infrastructure choice across edge, cloud, or core is becoming a critical strategic priority. Enterprises are actively seeking modular, interoperable platforms that let them scale workloads independently, embrace virtualisation technologies aligned with long-term goals, and integrate emerging technologies without overhauling existing systems.
Amid consolidation in the virtualisation market, shifting vendor strategies are prompting IT leaders to reassess long-standing infrastructure. In India, many enterprises are responding swiftly, accelerating workload migrations as the implications take shape.
While reevaluating legacy systems is a logical response to market shifts, large-scale migrations remain complex – often involving new licensing agreements, hardware investments, retraining and service continuity. Concerns around vendor lock-in are rising as reliance on single providers limits flexibility, and leaves organisations exposed to pricing volatility and support uncertainty.
In this environment, platforms that prioritise choice and interoperability are crucial. Enterprises seek the freedom to modernise on their own terms – integrating new technologies without overhauling entire systems.
Indian IT leaders are leading this shift by embracing modular infrastructure strategies, where compute, storage, and networking are decoupled yet integrated. This approach enables greater agility, fosters innovation, and avoids the constraints of traditional architectures.
IDC projects that 65% of Indian IT buyers are expected to adopt as-a-service consumption models for key workloads by 2028 – underscoring the rising demand for flexible, scalable, and business-aligned infrastructure. The rapid rise of AI and GenAI is driving Indian enterprises to rethink infrastructure that demand scalable, flexible, and responsive architectures beyond the limits of traditional, monolithic systems. IDC forecasts AI and GenAI spending in India will reach $6 billion by 2027, growing at 33.7% CAGR – reflecting the urgency with which businesses are embedding intelligence across finance, manufacturing, and services sectors.
Simultaneously, India’s cloud landscape is evolving. With 88% of cloud buyers deploying hybrid cloud, and 79% leveraging multiple providers, organisations are optimising for performance, cost, and vendor diversity. In this new reality, infrastructure must be cloud-native and interoperable — enabling workloads to run seamlessly across environments without compromising on performance, security, or flexibility.
In India’s fast-moving tech landscape, infrastructure is not a cost centre – it’s a strategic enabler. Scalable, resilient, and flexible foundations are essential for delivering reliable IT services, embracing new technologies, and driving sustainable growth. The future belongs to those who treat infrastructure as a driver – not an afterthought.
The writer is CTO – Asia Pacific & Japan, Pure Storage