With AsiaTech x Singapore coming to a close, The Fast Mode's Executive Editor, Tara Neal spoke to Arun Kumar, Regional Sales Director, Asia Pacific at ManageEngine, a leading vendor of enterprise IT management, in a brief interview on the vendor's plans and showcases at the event. Arun discusses the suite of products that ManageEngine will be exhibiting, as well as the impact of the pandemic on enterprise Cloud adoption and the security implications for enterprises moving to Cloud and SaaS applications.
Tara: How does it feel to be part of Asia Tech x Singapore? What are some of your showcase themes?
Arun Kumar, Regional Sales Director, Asia Pacific, ManageEngineArun: It's great to be a part of Asia Tech x Singapore as it's one of the flagship technology events in Singapore and connects us with a larger audience from the industry across southeast Asia.
ManageEngine offers a broad suite of products for IT infrastructure management, covering IT service management, IT operations management, IT security, endpoint management, and IT analytics, all of which will be showcased at the event. However, considering that organisations are keen to implement a hybrid work model going forward, there will be an emphasis on our cloud offerings that facilitate remote work management and ensure IT security.
Tara: How has the landscape for Cloud offerings changed in the last one and a half years? How has the pandemic influenced the demand for enterprise Cloud applications?
Arun: While the buzz surrounding the cloud has existed for more than a decade, the last 18 months has seen both mid-sized businesses and large enterprises move their operations to the cloud at an accelerated rate.
COVID-19 has hurled unprecedented challenges at organisations that need to ensure business continuity while guaranteeing their employees in remote work situations have access to critical data from different locations. By adopting cloud technology, organisations have solved this challenge by ensuring data is accessed securely over the internet, whereas various collaboration tools ensure employees stayed connected, can take care of their customers, and extend business continuity.
With uncertainty prevailing because of the pandemic and business models changing to adapt to the new normal, more and more organisations are embarking on a cloud journey and digital transformation.
Tara: Will the sudden surge in the use of Cloud and SaaS applications outlast the pandemic? If yes, what can enterprises do today to build the capacity needed to manage, monitor and secure their applications to support the long term adoption of remote working?
Arun: While cloud adoption was always available to enterprises before the pandemic, organisations tried to keep their business-critical applications within their premises for various reasons, like security or data privacy. With the pandemic changing the way businesses are run, organisations are adopting the cloud to ensure business continuity. This trend will continue even after the pandemic because cloud offerings deliver more flexibility, security, cost savings, disaster recovery, etc.
In light of cloud technology becoming more mature and the several compliance and data privacy laws brought by regulators, organisations have to focus on getting their employees trained and their skills improved to keep up with new technology trends. At the same time, businesses need to invest in various IT infrastructure management tools for monitoring their network and devices to secure data proactively and mitigate any internal or external threats.
