TELCOS & THE CLOUD - A BARBENHEIMER SHOWDOWN

Telcos are exploring the opportunity to offer Cloud services - a sneak peek at whether they can make it to the front row of providing enterprise services in India

- PRATIMA HARIGUNANI

Who could have thought that a movie about Barbie would be about the existential crisis? Who could have thought that the maker of the atomic weapon would be painted with Nolan's lens? Who would have thought these completely different characters face similar questions of conflicts and grand follies? And, of course, who could have thought that people would queue up for these seemingly poles-apart movies on the same weekend?

The cloud landscape in India can surprise us in a similar way. The playfield of the hyperscalers can turn into the battlefield of telcos. It can be a world full of pink atomic dust. Where both protagonists face similar dilemmas and plot twists. It can be an unusual time for them to not necessarily cross swords but use this chance to reach out to a bigger crowd. And solve bigger questions.

Is that going to be easy? Nah. Is that going to be worth a shot? Oh sure!

After all, we are talking about a billion-dollar market here. The India Public Cloud Services (PCS) market, including Infrastructure-as-a-Service (laaS), Platformas-a-Service (PaaS) solutions, and Software-as-aService (SaaS)) revenue totalled USD 6.2 billion for 2022, as assessed by IDC's Worldwide Semi-annual Public Cloud Services Tracker 2022 for July-December. Besides, the overall public cloud services market is expected to touch USD 17.8 billion by 2027.

All this while telcos, which provide the vital infrastructure and connectivity, have been struggling with wafer-thin ARPUS during the past few years with offerings that are losing their relevance in the new digital age. It makes sense for them to do this big pivot and jump straight into the pit of the Cloud market. Let's find out how simple this ride to the Barbieland can be.

CLOUD MARKET: FROM FISSION TO FUSION