‘Tata Communications has Evolved from Being a Connectivity Provider to a Unified Digital Fabric Provider’: Neelakantan Venkataraman, VP & Global Head- Cloud and Edge Business, Tata Communications

As enterprises accelerate digital transformation, cloud and edge technologies are becoming central to how organisations build scalable, secure, and AI-ready infrastructure. In this exclusive interview, Neelakantan Venkataraman, Vice President & Global Head- Cloud and Edge Business at Tata Communications, discusses with Anannya Saraswat, Correspondent at APAC Media and CXO Media, the company’s cloud and edge services portfolio, including its Vayu Cloud platform, and how it is positioning itself in a competitive market. 

He also explains the challenges enterprises face in adopting cloud and edge services and how emerging technologies such as AI, IoT, and 5G are shaping the future of digital infrastructure.

What are the major cloud and edge products and services in Tata Communications’ portfolio currently? How do you differentiate in a crowded market?

Our flagship offering is Vayu Cloud, which includes a multi-tenant public cloud, a dedicated private cloud, and an edge offering called Vayu Cloud Light. 

The multi-tenant public cloud provides both IaaS and PaaS services. From an infrastructure perspective, we offer general compute as well as NVIDIA GPU-based accelerated compute, available in bare metal, virtualized, and Kubernetes environments. The security stack includes load balancers, advanced firewalls, and WAF capabilities. Our PaaS layer is comprehensive and includes structured and unstructured databases such as SQL, NoSQL, MongoDB, and Postgres, along with AI-ready vector databases like Milvus and Qdrant. 

We also provide Kafka workflow engines, CI/CD tools like Jenkins and GitHub, key management services, Keycloak, and log as a service. The dedicated private cloud is designed for customers who require fully ring-fenced environments with strict data privacy and residency requirements, hosted in our data centers. 

Vayu Cloud Light addresses low-latency use cases such as predictive maintenance and shop floor automation, supporting compact NVIDIA GPUs for inference. Across these deployments, we provide unified orchestration through a single pane of glass, integrating FinOps, AIOps, and automated workflows. 

Our differentiation lies in deep integration across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, sovereignty by design, including data and metadata sovereignty, compliance with Indian laws, strong trust anchored in the Tata brand, network ownership that ensures predictable SLAs, and a legacy-aware modernisation approach that helps enterprises transition without disruptive overhauls.

What are the key challenges that enterprises face in the adoption of cloud and edge services, and how is Tata Communications helping address them?

Enterprises today are facing multiple challenges. There is increasing regulatory pressure, especially in regulated sectors, with stronger data residency and compliance mandates. With the DPDP rules now notified, organizations must align themselves with evolving regulatory frameworks. At the same time, we are living in a period of geopolitical uncertainty, which requires Indian companies to build resilience against external disruptions and ensure uninterrupted operations while meeting customer and regulatory expectations. Alongside this, there is a technological shift driven by AI. Over the past three to four years, AI has created strong expectations at the board and CEO level to drive growth and operational efficiency. However, there is a clear gap between developing AI models and deploying them at scale. Without scale, enterprises cannot demonstrate meaningful impact. Security is another critical concern. As enterprises adopt hyper-connected ecosystems, attack surfaces expand, and AI itself can be used both to enhance operations and to create new security risks. 

To address these challenges, Tata Communications offers a full-stack cloud, AI, and edge portfolio that ensures cloud and data sovereignty. We unify infrastructure, network, and security layers and support them with managed services delivered through 24×7 global centers, including our NOC, SOC, and managed services center in Chennai. Our cloud IaaS platform is built for compliance, data residency, and regulatory requirements, especially for government and BFSI customers. We have also integrated NVIDIA-powered GPUs for scalable AI workloads and launched AI Studio, a comprehensive PaaS offering that enables enterprises to build, deploy, and manage AI use cases in days instead of months, with built-in governance, explainability, security guardrails, and serverless infrastructure options.

Which sectors currently have the strongest demand for your services?

The strongest demand comes from the BFSI and government sectors. For government customers, we provide a Government Community Cloud available in Delhi and Mumbai, certified and compliant with MeitY standards. 

For BFSI customers, we offer a Financial Services Cloud available in Mumbai, Bangalore, and Delhi, aligned with RBI, SEBI, and IRDAI guidelines and backed by ISO and PCI DSS certifications. 

Manufacturing and logistics are also significant segments, especially for edge-driven use cases like predictive maintenance and automation. Healthcare is an emerging growth area due to telehealth expansion, AI-driven diagnostics such as radiology, and strict patient data privacy requirements. Retail, aviation, transportation, media, gaming, and OTT are also growing segments, though BFSI and government remain the largest contributors.

How do the needs of Indian customers differ from those of global customers in terms of cloud and edge services?

Indian enterprises operate under increasing regulatory oversight, particularly with DPDP and sector-specific guidelines. They expect strong data residency compliance and sovereignty. At the same time, Indian customers are highly cost-conscious. They demand predictable pricing, often denominated in Indian rupees rather than US dollars, to avoid currency fluctuations. They expect global SLA standards while maintaining strict cost efficiency. This places operational pressure on service providers like us to maintain service excellence and performance while delivering cost-effective solutions.

How is Tata Communications integrating AI, IoT, and other emerging technologies to ensure scalability, connectivity, and security in its services?

Over the past five years, we have evolved from being primarily a connectivity provider to a unified digital fabric provider. We now deliver integrated cloud, edge, security, connectivity, and customer experience platforms. Through our recently launched ThreadSpan platform, we unify cloud orchestration, security elements such as SD-WAN and WAF, and network components, including switches and routers, under a single framework. This allows role-based provisioning and orchestration across environments. 

Our 5G capabilities provide deterministic connectivity and continuous telemetry, which, combined with ultra-low-latency edge computing, enable real-time automation in Industry 4.0 use cases. This integrated approach ensures that scalability, connectivity, and security are built into the architecture rather than layered on later.

What is the future of cloud and edge technologies in India?

Cloud and edge technologies will complement each other rather than compete. AI training and large-scale data processing will continue to happen in the cloud, while inference will increasingly move to the edge, especially as billions of devices act as intelligent endpoints. The future of cloud in India will move beyond lift-and-shift migration models toward outcome-driven platforms that integrate AI deeply into operations. Enterprises will demand measurable business impact rather than just cost savings. Sovereign and hyper-connected ecosystems will gain importance, and predictable pricing, trust, SLA excellence, and AI-enabled outcomes will define the next phase of cloud evolution.

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