Varoon Rajani (Blazeclan Technologies)
Blazeclan Technologies is enhancing capabilities to manage a minimum of 20 per cent of cloud infrastructure worldwide, forming the centrepiece of aggressive enterprise ambitions in 2020.
The specialist provider aims to become the go-to partner for the cloud and digital services at a global-level, through building out expertise on the cloud platforms of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
Central to this will be the creation of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) practices to cut customer costs of data storage and processing.
“It is increasingly affordable and technically viable to run machine learning algorithms on huge data sets within the enterprise,” outlined Varoon Rajani, CEO of Blazeclan Technologies. “At present, most customers are pursuing to run machine learning algorithms with the aim to make estimations on their churn, up-sell and cross-sell products, and improve machinery maintenance. This opportunity will further lead us to greater revenues and higher profit margins.”
The razor sharp priorities - unveiled during a wide-ranging interview with Channel Asia - follow a strong 12 months of up-skilling for the AWS Premier Partner in the key markets of ASEAN, India and Australia.
Alongside gaining AWS Partner Network (APN) Certification Distinction - in acknowledgement of 200 certifications on the technology giant’s platform - the born-in-the-cloud specialist also achieved end-user computing (EUC) competency status in addition to becoming a launch partner for AWS Outposts.
Aside from AWS enhancements, groundwork was also laid through the launching of Microsoft Azure offerings in two more geographies, leading to recognition as a finalist in the inaugural Channel Asia Innovation Awards in 2019.
“On the customer front, we are increasingly focused on banks and telcos, on-boarding four telco customers and two banking customers,” added Rajani, who also referenced the provider’s honouring as AWS Partner of the Year in Singapore. “We serve a total of 12 small and large insurance companies across different geographies. These large enterprise customers will drive a lot of growth for us in the foreseeable future.”
Founded in 2010, Blazeclan specialises in the delivery of advisory and managed services, backed up by expertise in cloud migration and deployment, data analytics, DevOps and digital transformation.
Leveraging a decade of cloud experience, the business operates in the key markets of Singapore, Malaysia, France, Belgium, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
“We at Blazeclan believe that it is vital to be agile and focus on delivering value-added services and innovation to our customers,” Rajani said. “We focus highly on unique value propositions that will add to our competitive edge in the marketplace and these are agility, customer experience, technology investment and innovation.”
According to Rajani, such bold claims can be endorsed by a conveyor-belt of custom success stories through cloud.
“In Singapore, we helped Mediacorp to automate their application deployment timeframe from three days to two hours,” Rajani explained. “This helped their engineers to focus more on innovation as we enabled them to bring in the automation expertise to expedite time to market for their new feature launches.”
Meanwhile in Malaysia, the business worked with Yoodo, a subsidiary of Celcom Axiata Berhad to enhance user activations for mobile services.
“We helped them build a data platform that enabled the decision-makers to get a holistic view of the customers, which led to improved end-user experience and higher retention,” Rajani added. “For one of our large financial services customers, we helped them to launch a completely new digital business in four months flat.
"This was possible using cloud technology, where the applications required to launch this online business were built, set-up, tested and launched in a short timeframe. The day we went live, they disbursed their first loan online within the first few hours.
“Our aim is to help our customers to win in the digital era by enabling their business with cloud and digital technologies in an agile manner.”
Cloud metrics
For Rajani, the growing installations of data centres, increased customer attachment to digital transformation and the enhancing of enterprise growth agility are combining to fuel the rise of cloud computing.
“As the cloud becomes the new standard, the opportunity in the market is on an upward spiral,” he added. “This includes helping customers embrace cloud transformation as well as modernise their infrastructure layer to build modern and scalable applications for transforming digitally. We believe that the greater opportunity lies in the leverage of data collected over the years and needs to be put to good use.”
With the growth of the cloud and advancement in machine learning and AI algorithms, Rajani said data sets that currently operates in silos could be put on a single platform.
“The data can then be analysed for patterns for helping the customers in improving efficiencies, experience, preventive maintenance and safety in work environments,” he advised.
On the flip side however, Rajani acknowledged that crucial challenges exist as enterprise customers embrace cloud transformation, irrespective of market or geography.
“Seamless and cautious moves to the cloud while handling security and governance-related concerns are among the major concerns,” he acknowledged. “Developing priority skill sets on the cloud is difficult and addressing changes brought by cloud in people and processes is also challenging.”
Delving deeper, Rajani also cited cost savings as a key roadblock, approached through data centre shutdowns by calculating the total cost of ownership and return on investment associated with cloud migration.
“A time-based mass migration plan is needed for the move from on-premises to cloud computing, which entails difficulties related to governance and technical challenges of migration,” he said. “Once the customers are migrated to cloud, the cost management on usage is a key concern for large enterprises.”
Specific to automation and innovation-driven patterns, Rajani said enterprises which focus on enhancing the pace of innovation and responsiveness to user requirements continue to face such a challenge.
“This further tugs the concerns linked with application refactoring and modernisation, which is a longer approach,” he outlined. "Also, the advantages of the cost related to this approach are delayed significantly.
“Traditional business are sensing changes brought by digital transformation and the biggest concern for them is revamping their long-standing processes. These businesses are also focusing on cutting down the bureaucracy and fast responding to customer demands. However, if they are not agile then they are going to lose their edge.”
Market dynamics
In 2020, Rajani identified five “modest technologies” capable of capturing the imagination of enterprise customers, spanning AI, hybrid cloud and multi-cloud; automation; blockchain and containers.
“AI is going to help enterprises increasingly in automating tasks like scheduling,” he said. “The near-future will see AI making inroads into all kinds of workplaces. AI is the new tech and is unique from other technologies that have preceded it.
“This is because of its ability to drive affordable computing power, draw on a vast pool of unstructured data and address non-linear optimisation challenges.”
Meanwhile, the hybrid and multi-cloud approach is becoming a feasible path for enterprises to pursue, according to Rajani, especially as public clouds demonstrate an ability to support compliance, data protection and security requirements within hybrid environments.
“This approach is touted to gain widespread acceptance among enterprises globally and 2020 will see a growing focus on its execution,” he added. “And as the demand for automation continues to grow in economic and technical workloads, enterprises will become more comfortable moving to complete or semi-autonomous modes.”
Specific to blockchain, Rajani said the solution is expected to become a "business basic" as the digital ledger technology continues to mature.
“A growing number of retailers and food suppliers are already leveraging the technology for fast and precise tracking down of their products,” he said. “As blockchain networks mature, new possibilities for AI and machine learning capabilities have come to the fore. Enterprise blockchain platforms have already begun solving the impossible.
“Also, containers will become the mainstream in the cloud computing landscape, changing the way of resource deployment in the cloud. An increasing number of enterprises are utilising containers and we believe that nearly one-third of workloads on hybrid cloud is expected to use containers in 2020.”
During the next 12 months, Rajani believes that all major public cloud players will see significant growth in Asia Pacific, with the enterprise adoption of public cloud platforms “just starting” across the region.
“VMware is another vendor that will see a strong year,” he added. “They have created an ecosystem of offerings that align well with customers looking to go digital. Their hybrid cloud partnerships with all major cloud players, as well as their software and Kubernetes-focused offerings like Tanzu and Pivotal will ensure they will see significant adoption in large enterprises.”
