Rohit Sachdeva, Vice President of Account Management and Client Unit Leader at Kyndryl India, provides a comprehensive understanding of how organizations can effectively reduce their Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) while advancing their technological capabilities.
In an era where digital transformation is paramount, organizations face the dual challenge of advancing their technological frontiers while managing their IT infrastructure’s Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). This Q&A session between Nisha Sharma, Principal Correspondent, CIO&Leader, and Rohit Sachdeva, VP-Account Management and Client Unit Leader at Kyndryl India, offers a deep dive into this critical business dynamic.
The discussion is set to revolve around the strategies and solutions Kyndryl employs to assist Chief Information Officers (CIOs) in optimizing their digital infrastructure. It will explore how organizations can leverage cloud technologies, modernize legacy systems, and integrate innovative solutions like AI and Machine Learning to enhance efficiency and reduce costs. Rohit Sachdeva’s insights will provide a window into the complexities of balancing cost-effective IT operations with the need for digital agility and competitiveness.
VP-Account Management & Client Unit Leader
Kyndryl India
This Q&A is poised to offer valuable perspectives for businesses looking to navigate the rapidly evolving digital landscape, highlighting the importance of strategic investment and efficient resource management in achieving long-term success in the digital age.
CIO&Leader: What are the key trends shaping the enterprise IT landscape 2024? How are your solutions positioned to address these trends?
Rohit Sachdeva: In the current business environment, resilience is crucial due to its complexity and challenges. Kyndryl aids enterprises by offering comprehensive solutions in AI integration, cloud optimization, network modernization, and data and app modernization. Investing in strong data governance is essential as companies embrace innovations like Gen AI. This involves fostering a data-centric culture, developing roadmaps, and establishing data management processes.
Enterprises in financial services face cybersecurity threats, regulatory compliance requirements, and the need to adopt new technologies due to their extensive IT infrastructure and growing digital user base. Market leaders aim to differentiate their products and seek partners to enhance efficiency, quality, and speed in IT operations.
With the increasing adoption of cloud technology, enterprises focus on cost management using FinOps and AIOps to optimize cloud investments. Modernizing network infrastructure is vital for utilizing technologies like embedded security solutions and AI analytics.
Kyndryl offers capabilities through its Consult and Kyndryl Bridge Platforms, providing advice, integration, monitoring, and operations management in more intelligent and cost-effective ways.
CIO&Leader: What are your top priorities for 2024?
Rohit Sachdeva: In 2024, Kyndryl focused on delivering innovative solutions in critical areas, with Kyndryl Consult providing expertise for technology integration. Partnerships with hyper scalers like Google, Microsoft, and AWS enhance our cloud infrastructure and security capabilities. Kyndryl has 37000 hyperscaler-certified professionals globally.
We emphasize AI integration, tailoring solutions to customer needs and evolving security challenges. Our approach to cloud adoption includes strategic guidance for cost-effective operations, especially in hybrid cloud models.
Our security solutions target vulnerabilities in legacy systems, improving security and efficiency. Data integrity and governance are priorities, acknowledging their role in security.
The Kyndryl Bridge platform offers AI-enabled insights and automation, enhancing system availability and operational efficiency.
We’re expanding partnerships in the Global Capability Centers segment, focusing on deep tech skills and innovation.
Kyndryl Collaborative Centers manage systems for global customers, with significant talent in India contributing to advanced delivery and customized solutions.
CIO&Leader: With the growing importance of digital transformation, what strategic initiatives and product offerings can your company provide to help organizations stay competitive in 2024 and beyond?
Rohit Sachdeva: Kyndryl Consult, our technology consulting division, provides advisory, implementation, and integration services to accelerate digital business outcomes. It supports businesses at any stage of digital transformation and fosters co-innovation.
Our expertise helps organizations explore new business models and investments. For example, Kyndryl’s financial services solutions for Google Cloud are customized for the financial industry, ensuring compliance and digital modernization. Through our partnership with Microsoft in the Joint Innovation Center, we’re expanding our patent portfolio in data and AI. Access to Microsoft 365 Copilot, Azure OpenAI Service, and Microsoft Fabric enables us to develop generative AI innovations and solutions.
The Kyndryl Bridge platform utilizes AI and Machine Learning for automation, problem prediction, and performance optimization, reducing annual operational costs for early adopters.
We prioritize cybersecurity, offering a full range of services to protect data and applications from cyberattacks.
Kyndryl Experience Management as a Service delivers end-to-end digital workplace solutions, enhancing employee and customer experiences and driving business value.
Alongside these initiatives, we’re partnering with significant cloud hyperscalers (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud) and continuously innovating to develop new products and services. Our efforts also contribute to India’s goal of becoming a $5 trillion economy by 2025.
CIO&Leader: How are your solutions adapting to support automation and AI? What innovations can we expect in this space in 2024?
Rohit Sachdeva: At Kyndryl, we integrate AI and automation seamlessly into our solutions. We prioritize intelligence, speed, and precision by integrating state-of-the-art technology into our services, driving innovation, and continuously refining them with each new project to amplify their value for clients. Through Kyndryl’s AI-readiness program, we offer comprehensive services for clients to explore and embrace cutting-edge AI solutions. We leverage AI to expedite categorization while balancing automation and manual tasks for customer service interactions such as ticket resolution.
Kyndryl Bridge, our open integration services platform, harnesses AI to expedite automation, improve efficiencies, and bolster security and resilience.
In 2024, the industry will focus on cost-efficient integration, recognizing well-organized data’s pivotal role in effectively enabling AI tools. Cautious discussions among leaders center around privacy, IP protection, data leaks, and cost management guiding a collective commitment to responsible AI adoption in the evolving digital landscape.
CIO&Leader: As organizations value their intelligence, what enhancements can we anticipate in your solutions?
Rohit Sachdeva: Our solutions are being enhanced by integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities to provide deeper insights from data. This will involve developing AI-powered tools for data discovery, anomaly detection, and predictive analytics. In addition, we are bringing intelligence to the network’s edge, closer to where data is generated, to enable real-time decision-making. This will involve developing edge-based AI and ML solutions that can operate autonomously and with minimal latency. We also enable organizations to manage and operate their data and applications across hybrid and multi-cloud environments by developing cloud-native solutions that seamlessly integrate with on-premises infrastructure. Finally, we are committed to providing secure solutions and protecting sensitive data by developing advanced security and privacy technologies, such as data encryption, access controls, and SOC capabilities.
CIO&Leader: The talent gap in IT remains a concern. How are you supporting CIOs/enterprises in addressing the skills shortage, and what initiatives are in place to foster education and training for IT professionals in the coming year?
Rohit Sachdeva: At Kyndryl, we are committed to upskilling our employees. A key aspect of our cloud hyper scaler partnerships is a commitment to helping them acquire valuable cloud expertise and certifications. Kyndryls earned more than 37,000 cloud hyper scaler certifications in 2023. All employees have a Career Profile that outlines their skills and expertise, and for those working customer accounts, these skills are matched with the customer project needs to get the right match. Our personalized and intelligent learning programs connect with the Career Profile and suggest recommendations basis the listed skills, enabling the employee to reskill themselves for career growth.
CIO&Leader: Can you provide examples of successful customer use cases from the past year demonstrating the value of your products and solutions, and how do these success stories inform your 2024 strategy?
Rohit Sachdeva: We are working with customers across multiple sectors, at varied stages of their digital adoption and with different requirements, to deliver some of the most unique and first-of-its-kind business solutions. For example, in the education sector, we have developed a state-of-the-art university management platform for USDC that provides personalized learner experiences, streamlines and optimizes learner onboarding, and enhances the administration processes of universities for greater operational efficiency and regulatory governance. The unique, cloud-based University-in-a-Box solution streamlines third-party integrations, regulatory compliance, accreditation, audit support, and scalability to higher education institutions.
In the telecom sector, we are working with a major telecom company to create a near-edge network across India for deploying applications that need real-time data processing. We are developing hyper scaler-native software for a gaming sector customer and are exploring Gen AI models for robotic service delivery and solving business problems for multiple customers. We are driving IT modernization with Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India (HMSI) by managing infrastructure services, increasing uptime with automation, and enhancing resiliency. Dr. Lal Path Labs chose us to implement a cloud-based IT infrastructure to improve their agility, scalability, and security, enabling expansion into new markets. Our strategy continues to focus on delivering innovative solutions that integrate AI, IoT, cloud, and other cutting-edge technologies to help customers improve efficiency, enhance their end-customer experience, and reduce costs.
CIO&Leader: CIOs are always concerned about the total cost of ownership. How are you optimizing cost and providing value for your customers in 2024?
Rohit Sachdeva: Kyndryl offers solutions to reduce CIOs’ Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), including cloud optimization for workload right-sizing and better pricing negotiations. Infrastructure management services also help save on energy, maintenance, and support costs.
Kyndryl Bridge reduces cost by minimizing the need for on-premises hardware and offering scalable cloud-based services, thus reducing manual tasks and improving system availability.
Our Digital Workplace Services enhance employee and customer experiences, focusing on productivity and satisfaction through Experience Level Agreements (XLAs).
As a leading mainframe service provider, Kyndryl supports modernization efforts, integrating these with cloud strategies to optimize customer investments in IT infrastructure.