The global cloud services market is expected to reach $1.5 trillion by 2030 according to research firm Gartner, while industry body Nasscom estimates India currently provides 45% of the world’s cloud technology workforce, making the country an indispensable part of global digital transformation efforts.
At US-based tech consulting firm AHEAD, India forms the core of its global delivery engine, with 500 professionals supporting cloud migrations to AI implementation. “India is absolutely central to our delivery model,” said Keith Odom, EVP, Consulting & Services, AHEAD, in an exclusive interview with TechObserver.in. “We have integrated Indian talent across our entire service chain—from strategic consulting to managed services.”
Edited Excerpts:
We are seeing massive cloud adoption globally, with India emerging as a strategic talent hub. How are you leveraging India’s tech ecosystem to deliver value to your clients?
India is absolutely central to our delivery model. We have fully integrated Indian talent across our entire service chain — from strategic consulting to hands-on implementation and ongoing managed services. We are getting engaged with our clients at the very beginning, helping them build the strategy around what they are going to do in the cloud, what applications they want to move, whether those need modernising.
Then the service team helps execute on getting things moved and the managed service team takes over day-to-day operations. It could be everything from just infrastructure in the cloud to managing CI/CD pipelines or quality assurance.
The way we have built India into our organisation is it is with us at all levels — consulting, professional services, managed services. This gives us the ability to mix those teams and follow the sun if needed. Getting talent is easier for us in India than in the U.S. and you are getting it at a better rate. But quality is number one – we will pay extra for quality to get the right resources because we are focused on having good client experiences. We have relationships with clients for 15 years and want them for another 15.
AI is transforming every aspect of tech. How is AHEAD helping enterprises navigate this complex landscape while ensuring real business impact?
We have a whole dedicated AI team helping clients with their strategy, governance and security around AI. It is really about — is your data ready? Can you actually run models? Most clients are not there yet, so we are spending time at the front end helping them get ready.
From a managed service perspective, we are internally focused on how to leverage AI to deliver better service. For example, we are in a POC where AI measures our call quality across all client interactions — did we talk about the right things? It is also taking the agent decisioning out – if a client’s getting upset, AI can pull in a manager automatically.
We also want to make our people smarter during client interactions. If you are talking about a Microsoft patch, AI can automatically push you summarised data about that patch. We are looking at these use cases to get better at what we do.
Cost optimisation remains critical for enterprises. How do you balance innovation with cost efficiency in today’s economic climate?
Automation is our biggest lever. We are systematically automating every repeatable process across our managed services – today about 70% of our SOC operations run autonomously. But our India presence gives us additional flexibility. Having highly skilled teams across multiple geographies lets us optimise both capability and cost without compromising quality.
Interestingly, our work often reveals that the most cost-effective solution is not always moving everything to the cloud. Some legacy systems perform better on-premises. We have built a neutral advisory approach – we will recommend hybrid models, private clouds or even colocation when it makes sense for the client’s specific workloads and business requirements.
Security concerns are escalating. How is AHEAD differentiating its security offerings in this environment?
Security is the number one decision-making factor today. In our SOC, about 70% of everything is automated, and we are continually building IP that spreads to all clients. If we build automation for one client, we apply it across others – that is part of the value we bring.
We are also building super pods with NVIDIA, Dell and Cisco for big financial clients. These are built in our factory with security best practices already applied, so when they reach the client, they can focus on the value-add like large language models rather than plumbing.
Which verticals are most strategic for AHEAD?
Healthcare and finance are our two biggest — accounting for 33% and 30% of our business, respectively. In healthcare, we are moving Epic electronic health records and its ecosystem from on-prem to cloud and managing that transition. In finance, our largest managed service clients are financial companies – mortgage and banking, among others.
Today we are about 500 people in India, growing to 900-1000 this year. Security is new for us here — we are starting hiring for SOC and consulting teams. The biggest growth will be in cloud/data — our digital solutions group with about 75 people today will likely double. Managed services will add a couple hundred people as we introduce a new mid-market focus in the U.S.
