MSMEs should design a view for data integration across products

Chetan Desai, Global COO, Bahwan CyberTek

The key trends 
Cloud has levelled the business playing field for MSMEs, helping them punch above their weight. Firms are overcoming investment barriers using pay-as-you-go and subscription models offered by solution providers, instead of spending heavily on licenses and infrastructure. This move from the traditional CapEx to a sustainable OpEx model allows them to compete effectively with larger enterprises with bigger IT budgets.
In India, I see two key trends:

First - Availability of cloud infrastructure, both private and public, is improving within India. Infrastructure providers like Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS and Google Cloud are seeing enormous growth in demand for their services and are ramping up infrastructure capacity. Domestic market size and a flourishing start-up economy has given them opportunity and the confidence of high business returns from the Indian market.

Second - We’re seeing a large proliferation of agile cloud-native SaaS products. More importantly, these products are now being tailored to suit the Indian context, which was never the case before. Today, even big players are focusing on designed-for-India products and biz apps due to growing demand. This will fundamentally change the accessibility of best-in-class solutions for MSMEs.

These trends have given enterprises the freedom to choose fit-for-business products at low initial cost and the flexibility to scale operations and investment as they grow. 

Cloud to scale the customers’ business 
Cloud enables everything from increased employee collaboration to heightened customer experience. A phased approach gives customers the advantage of continuous augmentation of services while minimizing operations impact or disturbing mission-critical applications. Basically, progress in small chunks and avoid big IT fiascos. MSMEs now have access to economically viable best-of-the-breed business apps. The businesses can phase and risk manages the change and business adoption associated with the tools, at a scale they’re comfortable with.

The latest technology adoption trends in MSMEs
Data at the core –While MSMEs adopt fit for business SaaS products, they should also consider a design view for data integration across products and across enterprise. This will eliminate the challenges associated with data siloes historically faced on-premise. They need to do this upfront because of the tremendous value it offers. Data mining with a 360-degree framework produces significant business insights. 

Zero-trust approach to security – This framework encourages the scrutiny of all users and data flow within and outside the organization. While cloud is an inherently secure and trusted environment, design, implementation, and management of the IT landscape will be critical to ensure compliance and mitigate cyber-attacks. It’s crucial to choose the right tech stack and partner for a seamless and secure transformation.

DevOps-driven mindset- Indian MSMEs and global enterprises are embracing a DevOps culture to bring development and operations together for faster innovation and shorter deployment time. The historical waterfall model of managing IT programs is now obsolete. Continuous code/capability releases create a feedback loop that increases customer adoption and reduces roadblocks to business value.