I recently read a report in WEF where, in a Gujarat chemical plant, 120 IoT sensors and AI-driven analytics quietly work through the night. They predict maintenance needs and optimise processes, boosting yields and cutting energy use by 20%. Scenes like this are becoming common. India’s IT operations (ITOps) are evolving from behind-the-scenes support into a strategic innovation engine for enterprises. In India, the impact of AI is profound. Despite global turbulence, the country has “emerged as a beacon of resilience”, leveraging its IT service hubs and thriving tech startups to drive an AI revolution.
Organizations are reinventing how they run technology across IT service providers, manufacturing conglomerates, and even public-sector digital platforms. The goal is to manage unprecedented scale and complexity while accelerating innovation. Industry analysts observe that Indian companies have doubled down on digital transformation, cloud migration, artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, even amid cost pressures, to drive better business outcomes and stay competitive. In practice, this means embracing emerging paradigms like AIOps and CloudOps, investing in cybersecurity resilience, and infusing automation into core operations.
How AI-driven ITOps offer proactiveness
For years, ITOps meant reacting to outages and alerts. Now it is about preventing them. AI is at the heart of this shift. AI helps users sift through floods of log data to spot anomalies and resolve issues autonomously. The result is faster incident resolution and predictive maintenance – fixing problems before users notice. Several businesses I have talked to have begun integrating AI into their processes, making AIOps integral to digital transformation in the future.
AI for IT operations (AIOps) has moved from buzzword to a strategic necessity for large enterprises. AIOps platforms apply machine learning to vast IT datasets – logs, metrics, alerts – to detect anomalies and automate real-time responses. This proactive approach helps IT teams prevent outages and resolve incidents faster by cutting through noisy alerts. It’s no surprise that analysts predict a surge in AIOps adoption. Forrester, for instance, expects that in 2025 tech leaders will “triple the adoption of AI for IT operations (AIOps) platforms” to cope with rising IT complexity and technical debt. These AI-driven tools provide context-aware data, automatically remediate incidents, and enhance human judgment, improving both uptime and service quality.
CloudOps for managing scale and complexity
Cloud has become the default platform for digital transformation. The Indian public cloud services market is projected to reach $25.5 billion by 2028, growing at 24% CAGR. Enterprises are shifting critical workloads into hybrid and multi-cloud environments, and cloud operations have emerged to keep these sprawling systems efficient and secure.
Automation is central. AI tools optimise resource allocation, detect anomalies, and even auto-scale applications during demand surges. E-commerce firms in India, for example, rely on automated cloud scaling to manage festive shopping peaks seamlessly. Edge computing adds a further layer: oil companies and utilities run analytics on remote rigs and plants, extending the operational perimeter. CloudOps teams now manage these edges like mini-clouds, using unified dashboards and observability tools to track real-time performance and costs.
The result is agility. When enterprises can deploy new applications globally within hours, operations stop being a bottleneck and become an enabler of business innovation.
Cybersecurity offers resilience by design
With digitisation comes risk. The cost of a data breach in India reached record highs in 2024. Gartner’s forecast of double-digit growth in security spend reflects how seriously Indian enterprises are treating the issue. Beyond firewalls, resilience has become the mantra. Leaders are adopting zero-trust architectures, embedding security into development pipelines, and running 24/7 security operations centres.
AI is amplifying defence. IBM data shows Indian firms using AI-driven security tools cut breach containment times by months and saved more than ₹130 million compared to those without. Banks, for instance, use AI to flag abnormal transaction patterns in seconds. Government agencies are integrating continuous monitoring and encryption as they implement India’s new Digital Personal Data Protection Act. Security is no longer an adjunct to ITOps but its foundation. Without it, the promise of digital operations collapses.
Industry 4.0 in Action
The most striking transformation is happening on the factory floor. India’s manufacturing giants are adopting Industry 4.0 technologies, sensors, robotics, analytics, to modernise production. Yet adoption has lagged globally, with only 30% of manufacturers scaling digital initiatives across plants. Indian firms are beginning to break through.
A case in point is Jubilant Ingrevia in Gujarat. In 2024, its chemicals plant joined the World Economic Forum’s Global Lighthouse Network, recognised for pioneering digital operations. The site deployed over 30 use cases, including IoT-based digital twins and AI-driven predictive maintenance. The payoff: a 60% cut in process variability and nearly double production volume. Importantly, over 2,000 employees were reskilled to work with digital systems, proving automation can augment rather than replace workers. The company is now targeting 20% emissions reduction through further digitalisation.
Other Indian lighthouses include Tata Steel and Cipla, which have achieved productivity gains of 50% through similar adoption. For conglomerates, the message is clear: ITOps is no longer confined to IT teams; it runs through the heart of manufacturing, making Indian industry globally competitive.
UPI as an Operations Blueprint
Nowhere is India’s operations capability more visible than in the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). Launched in 2016, UPI has become the world’s largest real-time payments system. In August 2025 alone, it processed over 20 billion transactions worth nearly ₹25 trillion. UPI now accounts for around 85% of India’s digital payment transactions and half the global volume.
Such scale is only possible through cutting-edge operations: millisecond-level switching, seamless bank integration, continuous monitoring, and robust fraud detection. NPCI, the system’s operator, built UPI cloud-native and API-driven, ensuring interoperability for private apps. Engineers continually upgrade it to handle surging loads, including offline modes for rural inclusion. The system has become not only a domestic success but an export model, adopted or studied in several countries.
For Indian policymakers, UPI shows that population-scale digital platforms can be reliable and innovative if operations are robust. It sets a standard for future public infrastructure in healthcare, transport, and governance.
Strategic Outlook for Leaders
What should Indian enterprise leaders expect? Several themes stand out:
- Automation everywhere. From cloud scaling to incident response, routine tasks will be automated, freeing humans for innovation. Gartner expects product teams to use AIOps to analyse changes before release, cutting downtime by 20%.
- Hybrid human–AI teams. Engineers will increasingly collaborate with AI bots handling routine triage and remediation. NASSCOM highlights “hybrid teams” as the future of service delivery.
- Outcome-based models. IT services will shift to guaranteeing uptime or efficiency, with AI platforms enabling outcome-oriented contracts. Forrester projects leading providers moving 30% of delivery to such AI-driven models.
- Resilient factories and infrastructure. Digital twins, predictive analytics, and smart controls will proliferate in plants, utilities, and city infrastructure, improving productivity and sustainability.
- Security non-negotiable. Firms that embed cybersecurity into ITOps will protect trust and brand while others face escalating risks.
The future of ITOps in India is written in control rooms, factory floors, and digital public platforms. Whether an AI engine resolves a server glitch before dawn, a smart factory doubles output, or UPI seamlessly serves hundreds of millions, the pattern is unmistakable. Operations have moved from background maintenance to frontline strategy.
For CIOs, CTOs, and policymakers, the challenge is scaling these successes across sectors. Embracing AI, cloud, automation, and cybersecurity and investing in people and process change will define who builds the enterprises of the future. India has the talent and ambition. The world is watching its next move.
Perspective by
Yogesh Mone
Co-founder
Exelith Technologies