Lessons from the cloud build-out

This research report from Motilal Oswal which compares the current AI headwinds for the Indian IT industry, with the cloud build-out period of 2016-18:

Lessons from the cloud build-out: Headwind, then a huge tailwind:

• The present AI investment cycle closely resembles the early cloud build-out period (2016-18), where cloud initially acted as a headwind for Indian IT services. During those years, cloud migration and platform consolidation eliminated several traditional service lines (infrastructure management, legacy hosting, on-prem ops) and triggered pricing pressure in adjacent portfolios.
• However, once the cloud infra build-out stabilized, the next phase created an entirely new set of revenue pools: application modernization, cloud-native development, re-architecture of legacy estates, data engineering, DevOps, managed services, and security.
• These work streams ultimately more than offset the services that cloud displaced, leading to a multi-year technology services upcycle.

This gives me hope.