'Lockdowns-induced isolation has increased demand for IT'
The 'new normal' has had an impact on how software developers think about innovation, said Rajat Pandit, Head of Customer Engineering (South), Google Cloud, on Day 2 of TechSparks 2021.
“Lockdowns-induced isolation has changed how people live, work and think — and increased the demand for information technology,” said Rajat Pandit, Head of Customer Engineering (South), Google Cloud, on Day 2 of TechSparks 2021, Asia's largest and most influential startup-tech conference hosted by YourStory.
With the theme 'What's Next: Rethinking the future', TechSparks 2021 is providing a platform for the most defining conversations on how disruptive technology innovations can shape our lives post-pandemic.
"All over the world, we are seeing incredible changes due to COVID-19," Pandit noted, in his keynote on Tuesday. "With all these changes, one thing is clear: the new normal looks very different. And, it has had an impact on how our software developers and IT practitioners also think about innovation.”
Pandit delved on the new hybrid workspace, which has created the need for secure, reliable and fast remote access to business applications. This is a huge opportunity for hyperscalers like Google Cloud.
“We are seeing incredible demand from our customers," Pandit said. "The demands are to partner and support them to ensure that they continue to provide services 24/7 and for 365 days to their customers.”
"This has also increased the demand for a high degree of availability of services from us,” he said, adding that it has increased the number of data-centre regions in India.
Google Cloud opened its second data-centre region for India in Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR) in July, making it the only hyperscaler in India with two regions.
“While the NCR region is critical as a location in being close to the customers, its seismic distinction made it a natural choice for Google to set up a second region here,” Pandit said. In 2017, Google had opened its first data-centre region for India in Mumbai.
Both regions have three availability zones each, which protect customers from service disruptions. Google Cloud also offers a portfolio of key products, including Compute Engine, App Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Bigtable.
Delhi-NCR is also home to more than 30 Indian unicorns, Pandit noted, adding that the region also has substantial internet traffic from private and public enterprises, government, and startups.
The latest data-centre region takes Google Cloud's global total of cloud regions to 27, apart from 82 zones and 146 edge points presence. It will help customers meet their disaster recovery and business continuity goals, Pandit said.
"The Delhi-NCR cloud region is also equipped to help the financial sector and other regulated sectors in meeting their data security and sovereignty requirements, identity and access control, and regulatory and compliance obligations," he asserted.
Companies in India's financial services sector have to comply with the Reserve Bank of India regulations around data residency, identity, access control, and risk management.
For a line-up of all the action-packed sessions at YourStory's flagship startup-tech conference, check out TechSparks 2021 website. To log in to our virtual events platform and experience TechSparks 2021 with thousands of other startup-tech enthusiasts from around the world, join here.
Edited by Kunal Talgeri