In 2026, cloud computing has evolved from a storage utility into the distributed nervous system of the modern enterprise. For Indian businesses, the trend is shifting toward Sovereign Multi-Cloud and Edge intelligence, moving processing power closer to the user to meet localization demands and latency requirements. As Serverless architectures become the standard for scaling AI-driven applications, the focus has moved from simple migration to optimising for technological resilience. Navigating this complex, decentralised environment is now a boardroom priority, as digital agility becomes the primary differentiator in a hyper-competitive global market.
Enterprises are increasingly prioritizing agility, scalability, cost optimization, and real-time data processing, driving the rapid adoption of serverless architectures, multi-cloud strategies, and edge computing. Together, these technologies are reshaping how organizations build, deploy, and manage digital services.
MODERN BUSINESSES FACE SEVERAL CHALLENGES:
• Agility: Quickly launch new features and respond to market changes.
• Scalability: Handle growth in users and workloads without performance issues.
• Cost optimization: Reduce infrastructure and operational expenses.
• Real-time data processing: Analyze and act on data immediately rather than waiting for batch processing.
To meet these goals, organizations are increasingly adopting serverless architectures, multi-cloud strategies, and edge computing.
HOW THESE TECHNOLOGIES WORK TOGETHER?
Imagine a food delivery app:
• Edge computing processes customer location data near the user for instant route updates.
• Serverless functions calculate delivery fees and process orders automatically.
• Multi-cloud infrastructure distributes services across different cloud providers for resilience and flexibility.
This combination delivers - Faster user experiences, Lower operating costs, Better reliability and Easier scaling during peak demand.
As a result, enterprises can innovate more quickly, support millions of users efficiently, and deliver real-time digital experiences. These
technologies are becoming foundational components of modern cloud-native architectures.
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Edge Computing, Sovereign Cloud and Serverless AI Reshaping Enterprise IT
NEELAKANTAN VENKATARAMAN
VICE PRESIDENT AND GLOBAL HEAD – CLOUD, AI AND EDGE COMPUTING BUSINESS, TATA COMMUNICATIONS
LEVERAGING EDGE COMPUTING
For Tata Communications, we see edge computing as a critical, underlying piece of infrastructure for the next phase of digital transformation as more enterprises build on AI-based technologies that require intensive amounts of data and operate in real-time.
Industries such as manufacturing, retail, healthcare, mobility, and agriculture are increasingly leveraging edge capabilities to make faster, real-time decisions. For instance, manufacturers can monitor and optimise production lines instantly, retailers can enable intelligent in-store experiences, while healthcare providers can process sensitive patient data locally for faster diagnostics and improved data privacy. Overall, this is enabling Indian enterprises to unlock new operational efficiencies, improve customer experiences, and build resilience into their digital operations, acting as key differentiators in an increasingly competitive market.
BALANCING CLOUD AGILITY WITH SOVEREIGN DATA COMPLIANCE
Tata Communications Vayu platform is sovereign by design. So, there is no customer data, metering or telemetry leaving India. Although we allow customers the benefit of a multi-cloud strategy with our IZO+ Multi Cloud Network, we strictly adhere to local law and jurisdiction. Tata Communications’ Vayu Cloud has been designed in compliance with all the regulations set forth by the relevant regulatory authorities in India. We provide a balance between supporting a (hybrid) cloud model and allowing enterprises to easily migrate their workloads from one environment to another (primarily based on the number of workloads) while also providing them with the ability to manage complex IT landscapes through a "single-pane-of-glass" orchestration layer while providing and having the confidence that they will always be operating on a safe, sovereign foundation. This becomes especially important for Indian businesses navigating evolving regulatory frameworks while scaling globally.
ACCELERATING AI ADOPTION THROUGH SERVERLESS INFRASTRUCTURE
Transitioning to an AI-as-a-Service model based on business outcomes rather than infrastructure ownership. The serverless option automatically allocates and bills for GPU use, making the user's IT costs from owning hardware into a variable expense (rather than fixed) by eliminating high costs in owning hardware. The Tata Communications AI Studio's fractional GPU allocation also helps startups and researchers pay only for the amount of compute they will use for their experiments. This is particularly impactful for Indian businesses, as it lowers the barrier to entry for advanced AI adoption while improving cost predictability.
The combination of these changes with predictable usage-based pricing has led to our customers experiencing an average 30% reduction in Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and 60% customers confirm cost-effective cloud solutions.
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IBM aligning its cloud strategy with a hybrid‑by‑design approach
RAVI JAIN
VICE PRESIDENT, SYSTEMS & CLOUD SALES, IBM INDIA & SOUTH ASIA
BUILDING A UNIFIED, COHESIVE ECOSYSTEM
“For enterprises in India, the conversation around multi-cloud has moved well beyond flexibility. It is now about designing intelligently and deliberately for control, compliance, and scale together. What we consistently see is that organizations do not need to choose between innovation and regulatory alignment. They need an architecture that enables both by default. This balance is achieved through a hybrid-by-design approach, where cloud is not an afterthought but a foundational design principle. It enables enterprises to determine workload placement based on sensitivity, compliance obligations, latency, and business criticality,
ensuring that data and systems requiring residency in India remains securely within jurisdictional boundaries, while still leveraging public cloud for innovation and scalability. It also ensures flexibility over time throughout the entire workload lifecycle, moving them around on- premises or on cloud depending on business needs.
ENABLING DIGITAL SOVEREIGNTY
IBM is enabling this at scale through our portfolio of hybrid cloud and AI solutions. Clients can build portable, containerized workloads and run them consistently across environments, avoiding lock-in while improving resilience. We recently launched IBM Sovereign Core that helps enterprises deploy and operate AI-ready sovereign environments with full control over data, operations and governance. With such solutions, digital sovereignty is not a constraint on innovation or growth, rather helps scale tech deployments responsibly and in alignment with India’s evolving regulatory landscape.”
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Helping businesses balance flexibility and data sovereignty over architecture choices
PRAVAL SINGH
VP MARKETING AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE, ZOHO
“Balancing flexibility and data sovereignty is one of the most important conversations Indian enterprises are having today. As businesses navigate sovereign multi-cloud, edge intelligence, and serverless architectures, the ability to operate across complex, decentralized environments while maintaining control over data has become a critical business priority.
At Zoho, we address this through a unified, full-stack platform spanning over 60 products, all built in-house on infrastructure we own and operate. Our customers get the breadth, scalability, and capability they need without depending on a fragmented mix of third-party vendors. Our approach covers architecture, interoperability, cost optimisation, and data security, in close collaboration with customer teams, giving enterprises the resilience to move fast without compromising on governance or control.
However, for enterprises that do need third-party services, our robust APIs and native integrations make that possible without compromising on governance or security.
Privacy is not a compliance requirement for us. It is a core belief. When customers bring Zoho into their environment, data privacy, backup, and API connectivity come built in. This means significantly less pressure on IT and security teams, and the confidence to operate without second-guessing data governance. On data residency, for customers on our India data centre, all data is hosted in India in line with data residency requirements. Zoho runs 18 data centres globally, including two in India, giving customers a clear choice of where their data resides. As localisation demands and regulatory expectations grow, that choice backed by infrastructure we fully own and operate is what makes digital agility sustainable.”
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Edge Computing for Zoho is the foundation for reliable industrial operations
JEGAN RAGHAVAN
GLOBAL PRODUCT HEAD, ZOHO IOT
“Edge Computing, for us, is the foundation for reliable industrial operations across India’s highly diverse connectivity landscape. Many of the manufacturing facilities we work with operate in remote regions where unstable internet, network congestion, or complete connectivity outages are common. A setup that is overly dependent on the cloud, risks production disruptions every time the connectivity drops, leading to operational delays and financial impact.
We developed our proprietary Edge Agent to ensure operations continue uninterrupted even when the cloud is temporarily unreachable. Shop floors usually consist of multiple machines communicating through different industrial protocols, and the Edge Agent is designed to support a wide range of these protocols, allowing it to collect data from different types of machines easily and send everything to the cloud. When connectivity is interrupted, the Edge layer locally collects, processes, and stores machine and operational data, while critical workflows such as alerts, downtime monitoring, rule execution, and device actions continue to function normally.
Once connectivity is restored, the data seamlessly syncs back to the cloud for centralized analytics, reporting, and long-term intelligence. This architecture has enabled us to achieve edge-level data acquisition at intervals as low as 150 milliseconds, helping manufacturers detect production anomalies and quality issues in near real time while maintaining operational resilience and uptime.”
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Advancing sovereign infrastructure built for AI‑native environments
PIYUSH PRAKASHCHANDRA SOMANI
PROMOTER, MANAGING DIRECTOR AND CHAIRMAN, ESDS
To keep pace with the evolving cloud tends, ESDS is focused on architectural reinvention. Our flagship platform, the world's first Autonomous Hyperscaler Cloud Platform will be launched soon. SPOCHub, our GPU subsidiary, has contracted 8,208 NVIDIA B300 GPUs for delivery by September 2026, making ESDS the first sovereign operator of Blackwell-class compute in India. Our datacentres are strategically located in six locations: Nashik, Airoli, Bengaluru, Mohali, Noida, and Kolkata.
EXPANDING CLOUD CAPABILITIES
ESDS is executing a three-pillar growth strategy anchored on GPU infrastructure, community cloud specialisation, and geographic expansion. ESDS is building the sovereign, AI-native infrastructure on which that value runs. Our Banking Community Cloud serves 450+ clients; Smart City Cloud hosts 80% of India's operational smart cities; and our DC network scales to 125 MW across 11 facilities. India's digital economy will generate USD 1 trillion by 2030.
ACCELERATING INNOVATION & DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
The India sovereign Cloud market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 27.9% and is expected to reach a value of 21.1 billion dollars by the year 2033, as per data by Grand View Research report. Looking ahead, India's DPDPA, RBI's Cloud Framework, and MeitY's policy would mandate data residency and explainable AI, which are unique advantages of sovereign-cloud native providers like ESDS.
ESDS achieves measurable AI-Cloud outcomes in diverse sectors: Banking customers experience 65% improved fraud detection and 40% reduced opex; Smart Cities deployments reduce incident response times by 55%; Manufacturing customers experience 48% reduced downtime and 70% faster ERP performance; Healthcare customers enjoy 60% faster diagnostics; and Retail customers experience 22% more revenue per visitor.
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From Edge to Orbit: Building Sovereign AI Infrastructure
VIJAYAKUMAR ARUMUGA NADAR,
CHIEF AI OFFICER, RACKBANK AND NEEVCLOUD
LEVERAGING EDGE COMPUTING
India is a continent-scale market with remarkable diversity in connectivity, geography, and user density and our edge computing strategy at RackBank and NeevCloud is purpose-built to serve that scale. We have established terrestrial AI data centres at strategic inland nodes; Indore, Raipur, ensuring compute is genuinely close to where India's enterprises and users operate every day.
We have also taken this vision further with Project Orion, our Orbital Real-Time Inferencing Network, which places high-performance AI inference nodes directly into Low Earth Orbit at altitudes between 350+ and 1,200 km. This constellation is engineered to deliver a global latency of under ~10 to 15 ms, covering ~98% of Earth's surface with multiple Edge orbital nodes. A single REST API intelligently auto-routes inferencing requests to the nearest orbital or terrestrial edge node, making the entire experience seamless for developers.
BALANCING CLOUD AGILITY WITH SOVEREIGN DATA COMPLIANCE
At NeevCloud, we have built a Sovereign Multi-Cloud architecture where data sovereignty is the foundation and multi-cloud flexibility is the natural advantage built on top of it. This approach gives Indian enterprises the best of both worlds; the freedom to choose best-in-class tools across cloud ecosystems while keeping all sensitive data firmly within Indian jurisdiction, by architecture.
ACCELERATING AI ADOPTION THROUGH SERVERLESS INFRASTRUCTURE
Serverless represents a powerful rethinking of the relationship between IT investment and business value and at NeevCloud, our infrastructure philosophy is built around exactly this principle through our pay-per-inference model with value outcome.
For Indian enterprises, where capital discipline is a core organizational strength; this approach transforms the technology investment conversation at the leadership level. It shifts the focus from infrastructure provisioning to business outcomes, empowering teams to ship faster, experiment with greater confidence, and optimize continuously with clear and immediate cost signals.
Enterprises looking for cloud environments that are sovereign, interoperable and economically sustainable at scale.
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Designing Sovereign Cloud Without Compromising Flexibility and Sustainability
JEFF LEE
PARTNER PROGRAM MANAGER, OVHCLOUD
BALANCING CLOUD AGILITY WITH SOVEREIGN DATA COMPLIANCE
Many enterprises assume they must choose between multi-cloud flexibility and data residency compliance.
In practice, the market is moving toward architectures that can deliver both.
With the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, data residency is no longer just a regulatory checkbox. Enterprises are rethinking where critical workloads sit, who controls them, and how easily infrastructure can adapt over time without creating lock-ins.
Our Mumbai data centre provides a local foundation for sensitive workloads and customer data to remain within Indian jurisdiction. At the same time, because our architecture is built on open technologies like OpenStack and Kubernetes, customers retain the ability to move workloads across private, public, and edge environments without rebuilding applications each time. Through our local presence and open technologies, we are positioning our partners at a distinct advantage – where they can deliver ready-compliance architecture for their customers to meet stringent regional requirements.
What Indian enterprises increasingly want is compliance designed into the architecture from day one, not added later as an afterthought.
They are looking for cloud environments that are sovereign, interoperable and economically sustainable at scale.
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Building Intelligent Cloud Foundations for Enterprise Scale
GURU KANDASAMY
VICE PRESIDENT OF TECHNOLOGY, ILINK DIGITAL
LEVERAGING EDGE COMPUTING
We are helping customers build distributed architectures using cloud native platforms, custom edge server deployments and intelligent automation to process workloads closer to the source. This is especially relevant across manufacturing, healthcare and retail environments where response times directly impact operations and customer experience. In several use cases, edge enabled processing has helped reduce response times from minutes to near real time decision making.
The focus today is not only on performance, but on building resilient and always available digital ecosystems that can scale efficiently across regions.
BALANCING CLOUD AGILITY WITH SOVEREIGN DATA COMPLIANCE
Indian enterprises are increasingly looking for the flexibility of multi cloud environments while maintaining strong control over governance, compliance and sensitive data. At iLink Digital, our approach focuses on building governance-led cloud ecosystems that provide visibility, policy enforcement and security consistently across platforms.
Rather than managing each cloud environment in isolation, we help organisations create a unified governance layer across multi cloud and hybrid infrastructures. This allows enterprises to maintain workload portability and operational agility while ensuring regulated data remains aligned with residency and compliance expectations.
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