Rather than installing applications on the company’s premises, businesses are turning to providers who permit access to a host of cloud-based applications at a lower cost. The cloud helps businesses avoid costly on site deployments that may require highly trained staff along with installations on multiple servers and every end user device. For most, it is convenience and cost that is a key driver while for others it is the lack of trained manpower.
Bhaskar Bakthavatsalu, Managing Director, Check Point, India & SAARC – “The Indian market, with its large volume of SMBs is prime market for hosted services. Already at the consumer level there is widespread adoption of Storage and Email as a service but the same is not yet true for SMBs and large enterprises.”
- What is the total market size of the hosted Service Sector (including applications (software as a service), security, monitoring, storage, web development, website hosting and email) in India?
Gartner is predicting the cloud-based security services market, which includes secure email or web gateways, identity and access management (IAM), remote vulnerability assessment, security information and event management to hit $4.13 billion by 2017.
Growth is likely to come because of the adoption of these cloud-based security services by small- to-midsized business (SMB) in particular.
- Does Indian market have a clear understanding of it?
It is far easier to get people up and running on a cloud based application. With a cloud-based service, the rollout time is reduced considerably as there are minimal costly hardware deployments and no client updates. A business can utilize easy subscription billing for cloud-based applications as well. The client is charged only for the specific services they subscribe to and the number of users who actually use the cloud applications, so expenses are more predictable and can be budgeted more accurately.
- Indian Government has been steadily advocating digitization of its agencies.
How big a role will the service sector play in this initiative?
There is growing traction, acceptance and utilization of the cloud as a provider of security services. Some cloud applications are designed to provide security services on-premise and help customers manage their devices through the cloud. Other cloud applications are designed to manage the security functionality that you already have in place, offloading the monitoring and tracking of security threats to an off-site professional team that is dedicated solely to this task.
Cloud managed security services are available today through the Check Point CloudManaged Security Service. This service provides comprehensive threat protection, policy enforcement, data security, and compliance for the client’s network. The cloud is the best platform to deliver management for a comprehensive security to protect networks, remote users, mobile users, laptops, and desktops under any security threat.
- What kind of excitement do you see among your partners?
Our alliance with VMware and Microsoft has helped us adopt faster on cloud, IoT and new technologies. Joint calls and partner activities strengthen our efforts.
- What steps are you taking to position yourself in hosted services?
The Check Point Cloud-Managed Security Service delivers comprehensive web, network, and data protection. This best-in-class patented technology provides the same proven technologies protecting the Fortune 100 companies to small and medium sized businesses –at an affordable price. Businesses can effectively transfer management of their security to a team of Check Point security experts who monitors and support all security activities within the company with a 24/7 coverage.
The primary benefits for adopting the Check Point Cloud-Managed Security Service are its fast and easy deployment, expert management and reduced cost of ownership. Now is the time for the small and medium sized companies to offload the management of their security infrastructure to the cloud.
- What are the initial challenges do you see with adoption of hosted services?
Customer side education is the key challenge. In addition concerns related to long term vendor lock in and their ability to manage multi-tenancy environments are some other reasons why this market is not growing faster.
