By Mohan Subrahmanya, Country Leader & Executive Director – India, Insight Enterprises
India’s enterprise technology sector is at a pivotal point where Cloud computing, Data management, and Artificial intelligence are central to every business strategy. Over the coming months, we believe three key priorities – smart, secure, and scalable enterprise will define how businesses unlock and capitalise on this opportunity.
This evolution sets the stage for a new kind of enterprise architecture — one where intelligence and cloud capabilities work hand in hand to unlock speed, efficiency, and reach.
Smart: Building an AI-Ready Enterprise
Today’s enterprises are integrating AI across products and processes, with cloud becoming the default IT backbone. This shift calls for a “cloud-smart, AI-ready” infrastructure strategy — one that not only powers intelligent business models but also optimises infrastructure performance. This evolving approach in India’s digital ecosystem is helping companies leapfrog into the future and transforming how data centres operate.
AI is now central to business operations, driving real-time data insights, enabling predictive insights, and streamlining decisions to boost efficiency.
The focus of ‘Smart’ is not just deploying an AI algorithm into the process, but rather on building cloud analytic systems that lay out the embedding of intelligence across infrastructure, workflows, and customer experience. The point of ‘Smart’ is the shift from isolated digital tools to cloud-enabled, AI-driven architectures that deliver speed, flexibility, and a competitive edge across the enterprise.
Secure: Safeguarding Data in an AI-Driven World
A secure infrastructure is non-negotiable in today’s digital landscape. As threats grow in scale and complexity, a strong cybersecurity posture must be integrated into each level of the enterprise.
One of the major foundational stones of this strategy is Zero Trust Architecture. It insists on constant authentication of users and endpoints, no matter where they are, greatly minimising the likelihood of unauthorised access and lateral movement in the event of a breach. As threat actors take advantage of advances in automation and generative AI to develop swifter and more complex attacks, security can no longer be treated as an add-on; it must be considered an intrinsic part of infrastructure and application design.
Modern security architecture demands identity-centric access control, event-driven monitoring frameworks, and zero Trust as its foundational principle.
Scalable: Future-Ready Enterprise Expansion
GCCs are emerging as strategic hubs that shape global enterprise strategy, leadership, and learning while evolving into AI-driven centers of innovation. What began as back-end delivery hubs has now evolved into a robust ecosystem of innovation, engineering, and transformation.
India is currently home to over 1,700 GCCs employing close to 2 million professionals. These centres now lead global mandates in AI, cybersecurity, R&D, product design, and even sustainability. According to NASSCOM-Zinnov, India’s GCC market is projected to grow from $64.6 billion in FY24 to over $100 billion by FY30. This remarkable trajectory is fueled by both reinvention and scale supported by increased investments in advanced tech, global mandates, and leadership capabilities.
An important dimension of this growth is the expansion into Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, which not only unlocks access to diverse talent pools but also promotes more inclusive and distributed innovation across the country.
Convergence: Where Smart, Secure and Scalable Meet
Intelligence without embedded security puts data at unacceptable risk. Data-driven operations yield insights that improve threat detection. An architecture designed with security front and center allows innovation at pace without exposing assets that are critical assets. A scalable infrastructure that is governed based on financial and operational controls allows AI/analytical initiatives to progress from pilot to production without interruption.
This interrelationship now means that the corporate IT stack is becoming a unified strategic asset that is continuously learning, self-protecting, and adapting to changing market requirements.
Conclusion
India’s great engineering talent, rapid digitisation, and expanding Global Capability Centres network are driving the development of sophisticated cloud and AI technologies to meet changing regulatory and security objectives.
In the coming years, enterprises built on smart, secure, and scalable digital foundations will lead the curve. This is no longer a strategy; it’s the standard for future-ready leadership.