With a surge in the adoption of Cloud-based services in India, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is one area that is growing faster that ever before. According to a top Oracle India executive, this is because businesses -- from large to small -- have realised that SaaS solutions are scalable, agile and secure.
SaaS will be the biggest Cloud market and will double to $75 billion by 2020 globally, says Gartner. In India, the SaaS business grew at the rate of 33 per cent (year-on-year) in 2017.
"We believe that SaaS will actually meet burgeoning customer expectations in India as well as globally. We have witnessed the shift in customer mindset, primarily because of the benefits that some of the early starters have managed to achieve by implementing and rolling out SaaS-based applications," Prasad Rai, Vice President - Applications at Oracle, told IANS.
"Initially, customers used to have apprehensions about SaaS solutions, but today organisations across sectors are open to considering business applications to meet their expectations," Rai added.
According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), the SaaS segment holds nearly 69 per cent of overall Public Cloud market share globally.
From the largest firms to start-ups, everyone is looking at Cloud or at least at the Cloud-first approach.
"There are two reasons for that. One is that organisations can get their applications up and running much faster than in the past; and second is that businesses have realised that SaaS solutions are scalable, agile, extremely secure and are available all the time," Rai noted.
SaaS is perhaps a decade-old market in India and initially catered to overseas clients before Indian enterprises realised the need to adopt Cloud-based services.
"We had Cloud-based solutions about 10 years ago. Over these years, SaaS solutions have matured and early adopters have started witnessing the benefits. This has resulted in more and more companies across the spectrum joining the journey towards the Cloud," Rai emphasised.
"If you look at the R&D spend of several major software original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in the world, you will see that a majority of their R&D spend now is focused on the Cloud," he added.
Oracle registered six per cent revenue growth ($9.6 billion) for the second quarter of fiscal 2017-2018 and Cloud SaaS revenues were up 55 per cent to $1.1 billion.
In comparison, Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) plus Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) revenues were up 21 per cent to $396 million. Total Cloud revenues were up 44 per cent to $1.5 billion.
"At Oracle, we firmly believe that SaaS applications deliver the best value to our customers. Our experts spend time with the customers to take them through various levels of security that we build into the SaaS solutions at our data centres so that the customer's data is secure and is accessible or visible to the customer only," Rai explained.
Not even the people working at Oracle data centres have access to the customer's data, he added.
Oracle has the entire suite of SaaS solutions, starting from traditional ERP to Fusion ERP till HCM and CRM applications.
"We have moved to an almost completely Cloud-based approach in delivering the applications. We have thousands of SaaS customers in India and more and more customers are looking at adopting these solutions," Rai said.
Start-ups are Cloud-native organisations and do not have any preference for on-premise solutions.
"For example, fashion e-commerce marketplace Myntra has deployed our service Cloud and enterprise performance management applications," Rai told IANS.
IT company Genpact has deployed Oracle's human capital management and enterprise management solutions. In the start-up space, OYO Rooms has rolled out Oracle Fusion HCM to manage their entire human capital.
"Similarly, ASK Group and Airtel have deployed our SaaS-based applications," Rai said.
In the enterprise space in India, Oracle has witnessed a rapid uptake in ITeS, hospitality, health care or any of IT services-based industries.
"Now we are seeing upswing in manufacturing organisations as they need to be able to take business decisions in lesser time and to have an agile IT infrastructure," the Oracle executive noted.
Oracle is also embedding Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in its applications.
"SaaS solutions have democratised the market, where organisations of every size can avail the best in world Cloud applications," Rai said.
Elon Musk confirms not coming to India amid crucial Tesla quarter results
Elon Musk, on Saturday, confirmed that he will not visit India this month amid crucial Tesla quarterly results and will possibly visit the country later this year to announce his investment plans.
Congress, INDIA bloc against development & farmers: PM Modi says in Maharashtra
Criticising the Congress and the INDIA bloc, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said that the unwavering faith of the people in 'Modi's Guarantee' is giving sleepless nights to the Opposition alliance leaders.
How Adani Ports unlocked growth potential of India's seaports after acquisitions
India's largest private port operator, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd (APSEZ), announced earlier this month that it handled a record 420 MMT (million metric tonne) cargo in FY24 (including international ports), setting a new milestone in its journey.
Sensex, Nifty witness worst week since March 15 amid Iran-Israel conflict
Intraday, the benchmarks declined nearly 1 per cent amid investor concerns that the West Asia turmoil might escalate to a war. During the day, the Nifty slipped as much as 0.99 per cent to 21,777.65, while the Sensex fell 0.93 per cent to 71,816.46 before bouncing back.
5-month-old grandson of Infosys' Narayana Murthy gets richer by Rs 4.2 crore
Ekagrah Rohan Murty, the five-month-old grandson of Infosys founder N. R. Narayana Murthy, is set to get richer by at least Rs 4.2 crore as the IT bellwether announced final and special dividends.
Bitcoin scam case: ED attaches assets worth over Rs 97 cr of Raj Kundra, Shilpa Shetty
The attached properties include a residential flat in Juhu, which is in the name of Shilpa Shetty, another residential bungalow in Pune and equity shares in Raj Kundra's name.
Sensex gains 42 points, but analysts predict market uncertainty ahead over tension in Middle East
The BSE Sensex is up 42 points and trading at 72,986 points on Thursday. However, tensions in the Middle East and a hawkish stance by the US Fed are likely to weigh on the stock markets, say analysts.
DMs, SPs of violence-hit MP districts transferred
The farmers agitation entered its eighth day on Thursday. The peasants have been on strike since June 1, demanding loan waiver and fair price for their produce.