Till a couple of years back, IT Infra was majorly on-premises. Cloud adoption was low, and adoption was not happening at the expected rate as people were sceptical about the advantages of being on a cloud. Organizations belonging to BFSI, the public sector, and governments stayed away from the cloud to a large extent with concerns around data security or regulatory requirements.
With the advent of the cloud and many cloud providers addressing all the security and regulatory concerns, industries started moving towards cloud or hybrid cloud. Also, due to pandemic-induced urgencies, most of the companies belonging to the said industries moved to full or hybrid cloud. The shift that has happened is nothing less than phenomenal. And one company that stands firm in this phenomenal industry is Ahana.
Ahana expects the industry to grow at a scorching pace in the coming years. For all the infra managed service providers, this will bring abundant opportunities as long as they are ready to adopt these areas.
While looking for The Most Reliable Infrastructure Management Service Providers, we learnt about Ahana. Ahana is a fast-growing, 13 plus-year-old information technology firm based in Bengaluru.
Please describe Ahana System in detail.
The company started as an SME-oriented company providing IT services to SMEs. It then transformed itself into an end-to-end infrastructure managed services and digital transformation services company that provide the latest in Cloud, RPA, DB & EDW, BI & Analytics, and Application Development.
Our 100-plus client rosters now comprise several large enterprise companies with specific focus and expertise across industry sectors such as Logistics, BFSI, IoT/Telematics, and Manufacturing.
Its deep domain expertise, skilled resource base, and proven partnership with the industry’s best technology providers such as Microsoft, AWS, Digital Ocean, NetMagic, SAP, UiPath, Checkpoint, FortiGate, etc. have ensured that we are now considered as one of the preferred IT service providers for its clients.
What inspired you to enter the infrastructure management service providers’ industry?Â
Our founders come with a background of expertise in IMS and Database Services with some of the largest companies in the world. While doing their corporate stints, the founders realized the struggle most clients/organizations faced while managing their complex IT infra needs.
Outsourcing to large enterprise IT Services companies was not an ideal option for most, and this is where our founders decided to pitch in and fill the gap. We wanted to offer cost-effective, innovative IT solutions to take care of IT Infra requirements so that these clients can focus on their core business.
What kind of services do you provide to your clients?
We provide end-to-end Infrastructure Managed Services, Database Services, and Digital Transformation Services focusing on IMS, Cloud, RPA, DB & EDW, BI & Analytics, and Application Development.
We are known for our consulting capabilities in IMS and Database Services as well as for our value-added services offered to our clients such as POC’s, Cost Optimisation lookouts, Awareness Sessions, etc.
What challenges have you faced while establishing the company, and how did you transform those challenges into opportunities?
Establishing a company is always a challenging exercise and comes with its unique challenges that can be categorised as personal, organizational, and related to the macro-economic environment. In our case, the personal challenges were largely limited to getting out of one’s comfort zone that comes from having worked for years in large, process-driven organizations.
The larger challenges mainly were related to starting the business and getting the first clients who would trust us to manage their IT Infra without any disruption. It was difficult keeping in mind our non-existent record in handling such projects and the lack of an established brand name. These challenges were extremely crucial to address as IMS is not a niche area, and even in 2008, there were established brand names providing IMS services.
Getting the first customer was the most difficult challenge faced by our organization as there were too many players and associated risks. However, the network and connections established by the founders led to the first enterprise customer, which was a well-known name at that time. By doing a phenomenal job there, was what led to the next set of customers for us. There was no looking back after that.
How was your company affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and what measures did you take to minimize the damages while helping your clients and maintaining the safety of your employees?
While the pandemic did throw some unique challenges, our focus and previous experience as a solid remote infrastructure management organization have really worked in our favour. As far as the growth of our organization is concerned, we in fact, turned the pandemic into a golden opportunity for growth.
For many of our clients, we had to step up our remote workplace solutions services work and logistics arrangements multi-fold to ensure that most of our client’s workforce could move to remote workplace mode seamlessly.
Challenges in the form of knowledge transfer transition in the case of IT vendors and customer interactions did come up, which we needed to handle remotely. Onboarding of resources, OJB training, and upskilling were all done remotely for our resources, which also had our challenges. However, the safety of our employees or the client’s employees was never compromised at any point in time. In the case of clients, we did make additional efforts to educate and train our traditional clients on remote workplace solutions and handhold them through the entire process.
What would you like to advice the young generation of entrepreneurs and enthusiasts who want to make a mark in the infrastructure management service providers’ industry?
Pandemic has fast-forwarded the adoption for cloud and remote infra set-up, and the adoption cycle has reduced from the previously predicted 3-5 years to one year. This has opened immense opportunities in the Cloud, Security, and Dev Ops space as a move to cloud and VDS is no longer an option but has become a mandatory requirement to survive.
A young generation of entrepreneurs and enthusiasts looking into IMS space should go cloud-native and focus on Cloud, Security, and Dev Ops Services that are high in demand and will continue to be in demand for the next decade or so.
Having said that, technology in the IMS space is fast evolving, and it would be a good idea for young entrepreneurs to be always on the lookout and educate themselves about the latest technologies and associate/collaborate with the right technology partners.
Where do you see your company in the future? Kindly tell us about your strategies for scaling your company.Â
While IMS has been one of the strongest offerings, we started cloud offerings in 2018-2019. As called out earlier, in the future, more and more companies will look to have their IT landscape more agile, easily scalable, secure, and completely digital, and infra space will be no different. We are partnered with global public providers like AWS, Azure, Digital Ocean, etc. We are fortunate to be the Gold Partner for Microsoft and a Select Partner of Azure. We will continue to make our efforts towards being a preferred partner for other IMS technology providers. We also believe that it is important for our entire IMS team to be cloud-ready and certified, and we are making investments in this regard.
Dynamic Duo
Mr. Umashankar Malligere
With over 25 years of experience in IT, Umashankar has previously worked in various industry verticals like Telecom, Retail, Healthcare, and BFSI across several geographies and comes with a strong background in Database/EDW Technologies. Some of the companies he has previously worked with include L&T, Wipro, and JPMC. He has been responsible for managing large engagements, including outsourcing projects, setting and managing offshore centres, etc. Since the inception of Ahana in 2008, Umashankar has been instrumental in driving Ahana’s growth and leading critical assignments for Ahana’s clients.
Vivek Hegde
Over 25 years of experience in IT Infrastructure Management, predominantly in the areas of Systems and Data Centre Management, TCO/CAPEX, and OPEX Management, Vivek has previously served in organizations such as Wipro, JPMC, Citi, Bank of America ML. He has been responsible for delivering many turnkey projects in the areas of BCP/Disaster Recovery and DC Optimization. With Vivek’s experience in IMS, Ahana has been able to deliver quality infra services with a focus on cost optimization for its clients.
