Enhancing Performance, Efficiency & Collaboration: India's EnterpriseOps Sector Attracts Investor Attention

April 3, 2024
Enterprise Tech and Services
Blogs

The Indian EnterpriseOps space is witnessing a rapid rise in the number of companies and investors riding the wave. The industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.1% from 2024 to 2028 that far outstrips the global growth rate, forecasted to grow at a CAGR of 6.6% during the same period. Critically, what drives this growth is not just the advent of generative AI, but also an increased willingness of Indian enterprises to embrace and invest more heavily in specific areas such as CloudOps and DevSecOps.

The most evident trend is that Indian enterprises, though so far have been playing catch up, now want to be future proof. There has also been a rise of the SaaS segment in India, with AI and efficiency headlining the cloud growth themes, highlighting a sector agnostic shift towards digital transformation and automation.

What is EnterpriseOps?

EnterpriseOps is the practice of aligning and optimising all operations within an enterprise to achieve maximum efficiency and effectiveness. As IT transitions from its traditional focus on delivering specific projects and programs to actively participating in the imagination and co-creation of business products and services, the scope of Enterprise Operations has been redefined. EnterpriseOps now extends the “Continuous Delivery” paradigm of “DevOps” from software development to combining modern digital technologies with operational processes to deliver superior customer outcomes. This starts with identifying business problems and opportunities, developing software to realise those, and ensuring delivery and monitoring of the software to build customer value and relationships.

Enterprise architectures are complex and one of the biggest challenges is the rigid organisational structures which ensure that teams work in silos. This leads to time-consuming, inefficient, and ineffective processes that cause significant time lags in the ideation – execution – delivery lifecycle, which can leave them open to competition. Another challenge enterprises face is the need for these Enterprise architectures to evolve and remain agile. This means that the enterprise must be able to rapidly scale horizontally across all areas of the organisation, from development to testing to deployment and beyond.

It is thus consistent that this requires a comprehensive organisation-wide framework that improves the technology stack from end to end, instead of finding one solution to meet the ultimate goals of the enterprise.

EnterpriseOps which offer capabilities across all Ops – DevOps, DevSecOps, CloudOps, DataOps, AIOps, MLOps, ChatOps - provides that framework which is so critical for success.  The framework enables organizations to move from running uncoordinated programs to creating and implementing integrated programs spanning customer journeys and targeted outcomes. Organizations can move from a piecemeal approach to a more nuanced approach to delivering customer impact.

What constitutes the different Ops?

DevOps is the most recognized Ops in the EnterpriseOps framework. It is an amalgamation of development and operations practices and facilitates the seamless management of these environments through the utilization of automation tools and infrastructure-as-code techniques. By adopting these practices, organizations can establish consistent, reproducible, and scalable environment setups, effectively mitigating the risk of configuration errors. This ensures that every stage of the development process is carried out in a controlled and reliable manner.

DevSecOps focuses on building a secure foundation for DevOps. CloudOps which is short for Cloud Operations focuses on the specific area of managing and optimizing for Cloud. With the fast growth of data and the adoption of agile, Data Analytics and Operations were combined to create DataOps. Machine Learning models leveraged this data for MLOps and now AI is being increasingly used for IT Operations through AIOps. With the emergence of chat clients and chatbots for various processes, ChatOps is perhaps the newest part of the EnterpriseOps framework.

Investor Activity & Deal Making in the EnterpriseOps Space

The increasing relevance and adoption of the EnterpriseOps paradigm has also opened interesting new opportunities. Merisis has come across Entrepreneurs who are building companies focused on different parts of the value spectrum. There is a seasoned entrepreneur who is building his second company focused on creating “a single pane of glass” for Developers and accelerating the journey from “Code to Cloud”. Another young entrepreneur from a Tier-2 city has built tools for DevOps specifically for mobile applications. One other entrepreneur is building a company focused on DataOps specifically for consumer-facing SaaS companies where a lot of data is generated. Below is a non-exhaustive landscape of select fundraising and acquisition activity from the start of 2022, as well as a non-exhaustive landscape of firms operating in the EnterpriseOps space.

Acquisition Deals - Enterprise Ops

Datametica, an AIOps company, was acquired by Onix for 4.9 million USD. MapleLabs, specializing in ITOps, was acquired by Xoriant, with the acquisition value undisclosed. PingSafe, focusing on CloudOps, was acquired by SentinelOne for 100 million USD.

Fundraise Deals - Enterprise Ops

In terms of fundraise deals, Accuknox in CloudOps secured 6.0 million USD in a Seed round from multiple investors including MDSV Capital and Avanta Ventures. Amnic in ITOps raised 14.0 million USD in a Series B round. Atomicwork in AIOps secured 11.0 million USD in a Seed round from investors like Blume, Matrix Partners India, and Storm Ventures, among others. Several other companies, spanning various categories like CloudOps, DevOps, DevSecOps, and MLOps, also raised funds in different rounds from a range of investors.

The most active early-stage investors in these deals include Peak XV Partners, which participated in investments in Last9 (AIOps) and Prism Force (AIOps); Better Capital, which invested in Last9 (AIOps) and Protecto (DevSecOps); Blume Ventures, participating in investments in Atomicwork (AIOps) and Lucidity (CloudOps); Matrix Partners India, with investments in Atomicwork (AIOps) and Spheron (DevOps); and 3one4 Capital, participating in investments across Facets.cloud (DevOps) and Datamotive (CloudOps).

AIOps, DevOps, DevSecOps and CloudOps were the top trends within the Enterprise Ops space that garnered the highest funding.

EnterpriseOps - Delivering Performance & Increasing Efficiency for Enterprises

EnterpriseOps framework delivers value through three different lenses –

a. By providing instrumentation for Observability into a complex system; building comprehensive Insights;

b. Reducing costs and ensuring predictability of IT development and operational processes through automation.

c. The adoption of EnterpriseOps in its various forms, varies based on the maturity level of companies. More mature entities tend to have a higher level of EnterpriseOps adoption, owing to their awareness of the benefits it offers. While the North American and European markets are expected to witness greater adoption compared to the Indian market, this can be attributed to the efficiency-enhancing nature of these tools.

Growth Factors Driving Investor Interest:

Some of the potential reasons why investors are looking at the EnterpriseOps sector are:

1. Rapid Growth Potential: This significant growth potential of a 12.1% from 2024 to 2028 CAGR could be a key driver for investors looking for lucrative opportunities.

2. Global Technological Advancements: The advent of generative AI and the increased willingness of Indian enterprises to invest in specific areas such as CloudOps and DevSecOps are driving growth in the sector. Investors may see this technological advancement as a promising opportunity to capitalize on.

3. Enterprise Wide Digital Transformation and Automation: There is a sector-agnostic shift towards digital transformation and automation, with enterprises embracing technologies like AI and efficiency-centric cloud growth themes. Investors may be attracted to the potential of these technologies to drive further growth and efficiency gains within enterprises.

4. Comprehensive Framework Offered by EnterpriseOps: EnterpriseOps provides a comprehensive framework that encompasses various operational areas such as DevOps, DevSecOps, CloudOps, DataOps, AIOps, MLOps, and ChatOps. Investors may see value in this holistic approach, which enables organizations to improve their technology stack from end to end and deliver superior customer outcomes.

5. Entrepreneurial Opportunities: The EnterpriseOps sector has opened up interesting entrepreneurial opportunities, with entrepreneurs building companies focused on different aspects of the value spectrum within EnterpriseOps. Investors may see potential in supporting these startups and innovative ventures to capture market share and drive further growth in the sector.

In conclusion, EnterpriseOps is critical for any enterprise looking to improve its efficiency and effectiveness. By breaking down silos and improving collaboration and alignment across teams, enterprises can deliver their products to market faster and cheaper than ever before. With a focus on aligning everything around a core technology stack and adopting a horizontally scalable architecture, enterprises can ensure that they are agile and flexible enough to respond to the ever-changing business environment.


How Merisis can help - Contact Us

The Enterprise practice is focused on delivering high-impact solutions to drive the growth agenda of companies in the fast-changing technology sector. We leverage our extensive knowledge and relationships in this sector to provide customized capital raising and strategic M&A advice to our corporate clients. Our endeavor is to always deliver a superior customer experience based on trust and partnership. Read more

Write to us on enterprise@merisis.in

AUTHORS

Dhrupad Damani

Analyst

Paresh Shrivastava

Director

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