Cloud not for all workloads: Ensono MD Raj Bagga

The government recently imposed restrictions on import of micro computers, large or mainframe computers, and certain data processing machines.

Mainframe computers, informally called mainframe, are used by large organizations for bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and large-scale transaction processing – especially by large companies having sensitive information.

“Earlier, companies used to see the cloud only approach, moving 100 per cent to cloud, but that thinking is changing drastically. People are realizing that cloud is not for all the workloads and suitable for that,” Bagga said.

On mainframe technology applications, Bagga said, “Chandrayaan-3’s head mentioned that one of the platforms they used which was making this successful was the mainframe technology. Mainframe is the one wherein we support the large insurance providers, banking, retailers, healthcare, a lot of government sector which run this platform now.”

Ensono merged with Wipro-hosted data center business, and Bagga, a Wipro veteran with 26 years of experience, took helm of the company after the acquisition in 2018.

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“When Wipro or most Indian IT service providers look at data centre business, they are more into asset light business and they don’t want to carry assets of larger extent because data center and private cloud or mainframe business required a lot of capital investment and these companies are more interested in an asset light kind of model,” Bagga said. Ensono has grown its revenue by 50 per cent over the last 5 years and increased its India employee base by 26 per cent over the same period, he said.

Headcount of the company has grown from 450 employees in 2018 to over 1,500 in present date, he added.

Ensono’s revenue last year touched USD 775 million and is expected to reach USD 900 million this year. Bagga said the company invests about 3 to 5 per cent of revenue in innovation.

Speaking on companies preferring to stick to mainframe technologies amid concerns of enterprise cloud data used for training Generative AI, Bagga said, “Considering we are a data center provider, so we follow all the security requirement for SCCM to PCI and all the ISO 27,000. All those things we have certified to ensure that our data, data privacy and data risk is mitigated.”

Bagga also shed light on Ensono’s steering committee for Gen AI headed by their CTO, comprising leaders from all functions, including HR, finance and legal.

The company along with Microsoft Azure is also working on an undisclosed solution for hybrid cloud by which the mainframe kind of services would be sitting in data centers by which one further minimizes the data travelling between the public and private cloud.