How niche Indian ISVs are helping businesses make the digital leap

Indian Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) are advancing the country’s digitalization agenda, helping more and more traditional businesses, especially non-metros, get onto the digital highway. A number of mid-size Indian ISVs are building their future on Oracle’s secure, second-generation cloud infrastructure. Running their cloud applications on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), they’re realizing high performance and superior cloud economics. Vivek Gupta, Senior Director and Country Head, Oracle IaaS and PaaS Services, Oracle India, in a discussion with CXO today shared more insights on the same.

1. How important is cloud adoption for the digital transformation journey of today’s enterprises?

Digital transformation helps an organisation not only keep up with growing customer demands, but also helps support their own growth agenda. It allows organisations to compete better in an economic environment that is constantly changing. Cloud computing is a key enabler of digital transformation and a big boost to drive innovation. It empowers organizations to leverage new and emerging technologies like big data analytics, machine learning, chatbots, internet of things (IoT), blockchain and lots more for business growth, scalability and expansion. Cloud provides agility and access to unlimited resources thus bringing down cost. This enabes enterprises to focus more on innovation, collaboration, improved security, and helps reduce operational cost.

2. Why are ISVs driven to develop SaaS solutions?

When automation was first introduced to this world, traditional software solution vendors were developing products that had generic features which were frequently delivered as on-premise licenses with high upfront costs. During those days software solutions went through heavy customisations, which varied depending on the application and process and took really long to implement.

There are many reasons for an ISV to transform their applications to SaaS applications. Some of the these include: unlocking new customer segments through lower customer acquisition cost and easier geographical expansion, or reducing the total cost of ownership through elimination of customer-specific support costs, or reducing time-to-market through leveraging built-in components available in public cloud platforms, or leveraging data and insights through a unified data platform as this allows SaaS ISV’s to focus on delivering more value for their platform. Ultimately this will allowi them for better customer retention.

Automation is another reason for ISV’s to go SaaS. Successful SaaS vendors minimise any manual steps and build end-to-end automation across development, testing, deployment and operations. Automation capabilities and DevOps tools can drastically improve delivery quality and speed-to-market.

Most organisations are looking to consume infrastructure and application as a service. Ability to offer SaaS is no longer a choice but a necessity.

Also, SaaS solutions offer organisations multiple advantages including faster deployment, competitive pricing, improved financial flexibility with different pricing options like pay-as-you-go, significant cost reduction since there is no need to procure hardware, and easier upgrades. The most significant use of SaaS is that it can be accessed from anywhere. SaaS works in the cloud, which provides services at a very fast pace. India has seen great success with the emergence of SaaS ISVs. SaaS ISVs have become an irreplaceable service for business and consumers alike.

3. How are Indian ISVs helping accelerate India’s digitalization agenda?

The Indian economy is undergoing structural changes as it transitions to a digitized economy. With the fast pace of digital transformation and growth of cloud computing, SaaS has rapidly become the software-delivery model of choice and a preferred alternative to legacy, on-premise products. This shift to subscription-based service models has opened a wealth of opportunities for new entrants and startups to make their mark in the IT sector. India seems well positioned to help lead this charge. Already, in India there are 1,000-plus SaaS startup companies, some of which have acquired unicorn status. Investment in SaaS firms continue to drive growth. Some experts believe SaaS startups in India will see 25X growth in the next nine to ten years. The Indian SaaS landscape is maturing rapidly, with more companies reaching larger scale and driving heightened investor interest.

Many SaaS startups are ISVs. According to an IDC study, 27% of Indian enterprises will adopt a public cloud strategy. Further, more than 56 percent of enterprises plan to significantly invest in cloud services in the coming years, with more than 36 percent planning to run their cloud-native applications in a public cloud environment. The cloud has, in particular, transformed the way ISVs deliver solutions to their end customers, with more transparency and predictability. Building and scaling apps on a secure cloud is becoming increasingly important so ISVs get benefits of customer retention and acquisition. ISVs have a critical role to play in accelerating the digital status for India and Indian organisations – and we are headed in the right direction now.

4. How are niche and sector-specific ISVs making an impact when it comes to helping traditional businesses embrace a digital mindset?

Businesses must deal with the new digital reality: their entire ecosystem, including customers, partners, employees, and a plethora of smart devices (things), are always connected, drastically blurring the lines between the physical and digital worlds. This is where ISVs are helping businesses make sense of this new (digital) normal. Indian ISVs, even niche ones are reshaping the global technology landscape by assisting organizations in improving agility, accelerating innovation, and increasing productivity.

Sharing some examples of ISVs who are building their future on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI):

• “IBSFINtech” is a treasury management platform and recently migrated their treasury management solution, InTReaX to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, to offer its treasury management solutions, as a cloud service to businesses globally.
• “Medexpert Software Solutions” is a health-tech ISV that offers cloud-based Hospital Management System (HMS). By using Oracle’s secure cloud infrastructure with autonomous capabilities, they have experienced advanced security and high performance, while gaining superior cloud economics. They are now able to digitize a hospital of about 150 beds in under 10 days.
• “Soham ERP” is a pharma-tech ISV whic offers its cloud-based ERP application suite to organizations in the pharma industry via OCI. The company works with 700 plus pharmaceutical companies across the country to ncrease their operational efficiencies, improve processes and lower their costs. Soham ERP is supporting companies future-proof their business in a cloud-first world.
• Cyber security leader “Tanium’ runs its global automatic cyberattack response system on OCI.
• “Thomson Reuters” was able to make its indirect tax software available to customers worldwide because of OCI

All these specialized ISVs have been able to reap benefits from Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in ways never imagined before.

5. Why does cloud economics matter for ISVs?

Cloud Economics becomes important for ISVs in a lot of ways, such as:

• Economies of scale : through cloud providers  ISVs save money because they purchase computing resources in massive quantities at lower costs. ISVs utilizing cloud computing resources can deploy applications faster and ramp up storage and computing power on demand
• Reduction in IT cost : ISVs can reduce their operating costs because the cost of system upgrades, new hardware and software is included in their contract. This could further reduce energy consumption costs.
• Opportunity cost : Cloud economics is not just about costs to the ISV in actual monetary terms, but also about the opportunity costs of the cloud and the peculiarities of managing costs in a highly dynamic environment that the ISV benefits from

As more and more ISVs look to transform into digital-first, cloud-led businesses, predictable, transparent and sustainable cloud economics will be key. A number of global and local, large and mid-size ISVs are turning to OCI for: (a) superior price-performance benefits; (b) advanced security that’s built-in and is “on” by default, at no extra charge; (c) OCI offers the most complete support for hybrid cloud strategies; (d) OCI’s autonomous services make it far easier to manage security, performance and scalability; (e) and OCI offers all the services developers need to build cloud-native applications.

Take Wipro for instance. Wipro chose OCI to power its next-generation Cargo Reservations, Operations, Accounting and Management Information System (CROAMIS) Application suite. This will allow Wipro to offer CROAMIS as part of Wipro FullStride Cloud Services, to customers worldwide, aiding faster modernization of the air cargo industry amidst growing demand for rapid cargo transportation services. Wipro decided on OCI for its superior performance, high availability, built-in security, and lower cost.

6. What is the market opportunity for Oracle Cloud in the ISV space?

Oracle has long recognized the importance of surrounding our offerings, especially infrastructure cloud solutions,  with a strong ecosystem of ISV partners. Investing in partnerships has not only enhanced the experience of our customers, but has allowed them to innovate faster.

Third-party solutions can be offered as preconfigured solutions through the Oracle Cloud Marketplace, as deployable solutions in the Oracle Architecture Center, and even in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Console as click-to-deploy listings directly into the customer’s tenancy. Oracle offers multiple go-to-market opportunities for these partners, and many are finding that their support of OCI is leading to accelerated adoption.

Our partners use OCI to build new applications, modernize existing apps for a cloud native world, and drive business transformation for OCI Customers.

We have established a dedicated ISV ecosystem team that will closely collaborate with ISVs. This team will be trusted advisors to ISVs, assisting in the expansion and growth of their businesses. We are committed to ensuring the success of our ISV partners, from technical enablement to business transformation assistance, flexible commercial models to go-to-market support.