Q1. Could you start by giving us a brief overview of your professional background, particularly focusing on your expertise in the industry?

I am an independent advisor with 35+ years of leadership experience, including serving as a global growth leader at Tata Consultancy Services. I have leadership expertise in global strategy, CxO advisory, digital transformation, market landscape analysis, and AI / ML-driven automation, with specialization in IT Infrastructure Services. 
My vision is to empower enterprises to accelerate digital transformation by aligning business strategy, IT leadership, and digital innovation with future-ready operations—leveraging expertise in IT consulting, infrastructure services, automation, and process optimization. 
I specialize in advising on future-ready enterprise design, aligning business and technology through automation, process optimization, and modern digital operating models.  
I have engaged with over 500+ customers leading IT services, IT consulting, and IT strategy across North America, Latin America, Europe, Japan, MEA, APAC, and Australia, covering 12+ industries.  
I remain passionate about guiding organizations in achieving sustainable growth by leveraging IT strategy, digital modernization, and automation to build resilient, scalable, and innovative enterprises.

Q2. How do you see advanced analytics, AI/ML, or even predictive insights reshaping marketing campaigns for IT infrastructure services?

There is a significant surge in the adoption of advanced analytics, AI, machine learning (ML), and predictive insights in the sales and marketing strategies by leading IT service providers for IT infrastructure services. This has resulted in significant benefits like improved revenue growth, ROI improvement, and accelerated sales cycles. 
The focus is on building a 360⁰ customer view, gaining in-depth competition insights, and aligning to evolving market trends. 
The top aspects are:
1.    Hyper-personalization: Service providers leverage AI-driven analytics to build hyper-personalized customer and organization profiles, especially of decision makers, covering their current and previous roles, and their historical decision criteria. This, along with market intelligence, when linked with the health of their current IT and Cloud Infrastructure environment, allows sales teams to focus on specific areas that would enable faster conversion. E.g., a customer who has successfully led Application modernization in his past organization and is keen on doing so in the current organization would be a good prospect for Cloud migration.  
2.    Predictive analytics: This gains significance especially with existing customers, wherein data-driven predictive analysis is used to forecast possible infrastructure bottlenecks like availability and performance issues, along with other infrastructure usage analytics, to upsell services. E.g., storage capacity issues can potentially lead to a storage upgrade engagement. Some service providers deploy machine learning models to analyze aspects like service consumption patterns, ticket logs, contract expiry dates, and competitive landscape, which enables customer retention and upsell/cross-sell. 
3.    Customer and industry segmentation: AI / ML-driven customer and industry segmentation enables service providers to focus on prospective customers using a combination of parameters like maturity quotient, regional nuances, competition strength, and industry compliance requirements. This eliminates the one-size-fits-all approach and helps sales and marketing teams develop customized, industry and geographical-specific business solutions with clear differentiators. E.g., Data residency regulations for banking necessitate different IT Infrastructure needs in North America versus Europe. Top IT service providers have innovation hubs in key regions that allow customers to conduct proof-of-concepts.  
4.    Sales Processes automation: Most of the top IT service providers are embedding AI into their sales process to enable faster data-driven decision making and freeing up the sales team from mundane tasks. Some examples are using AI-based deal qualification, automated content creation, automated note-taking, and integration with CRM systems for real-time insights and recommendations, thus enhancing the efficiency and decision-making of the sales teams.

Q3. How are enterprises in different regions (say Europe vs. North America vs. APAC) shaping their IT infrastructure strategies around carbon reduction mandates, and where do you see the most aggressive adoption?

Enterprises are restructuring IT infrastructure strategies to align with carbon footprint reduction mandates. With data centers consuming significant energy through servers, storage, networking, and cooling, reducing IT-related emissions is a priority. There is also an increased awareness amongst employees on contributing to carbon reduction through simple tasks like optimizing battery charge time for laptops. 
From a regional perspective, Europe leads globally with high mandate adoption and substantial sustainability investments, while North America and APAC are accelerating their efforts.
Key initiatives include:
• Optimizing data center efficiency with renewable energy
• Cloud migration
• Circular economy practices
• Cultural awareness and training
Europe’s strong regulatory framework emphasizes compliance and recycling, with its Circular Economy Plan having a current 55% recycling value for electronic & electrical equipment. The Nordics prioritize 100% renewable-powered data centers, while hyperscalers operate European facilities at or near 100% on renewables. Edge computing is strategically deployed near renewable sources, such as wind and solar farms.
In North America, organizations are increasingly adopting renewable energy, leveraging AI, ML, and automation to optimize IT energy use. Cloud migration plays a central role, supported by hyperscalers’ renewable commitments. Enterprises with on-premise needs; modernize their data centers using server/storage virtualization and consolidation to lower energy consumption.
APAC initiatives include advanced cooling systems, underground tunnels, and seawater cooling to boost sustainability. Singapore has a green data center roadmap, while Taiwan promotes equipment-as-a-service models. Edge computing is expanding in manufacturing and distributed industries, with smart city initiatives driving sustainable 5G, IoT gateways, and micro data centers.
Across regions, enterprises are aligning infrastructure investments, regulatory compliance, and innovation to meet ambitious carbon reduction goals, with a future focus on AI-driven predictive energy management, edge computing with renewable energy integration, and quantum computing integration. 

Q4. Over the last decade, how has the global IT infrastructure services market evolved in size, and which segments are driving most of that growth today?

Over the past decade, the global IT infrastructure services market has reinvented itself multifold, with IT infrastructure & cloud services, edge computing, cybersecurity, digital transformation, and cognitive automation being the game changers. The IT infrastructure & cloud services, cybersecurity, and edge computing services have been the high-growth drivers, clocking growth between 12% to 24% CAGR based on public estimates. The traditional services, like the Data Center and the network, delivered modest growth.
This growth can be attributed to multiple factors, with technology evolution and customer expectations being the major ones. Mature customers began leveraging technologies like cloud, edge, and automation, not just to run their business, but to change their business and differentiate their business from the competition. Cloud adoption made them agile; edge helped them align to their corporate ESG goals, and automation accelerated their product launches. 
Gazing forward, Edge, along with IoT infrastructure integration and automation, is expected to grow at a high CAGR. Cloud services are expected to have a relatively lower CAGR, but will be the largest absolute growth opportunity. The traditional segments like Data Center and network are expected to have low growth. The market will be more value-driven with newer operating models, technology convergence (e.g., IoT infrastructure integration), and ESG mandates gaining focus.

Q5. In your opinion, which industries are set to drive the next wave of infrastructure demand, and how significant could that demand be relative to current core verticals?

Healthcare, Technology Services, Life Sciences, Retail, Manufacturing, and BFSI are expected to drive IT infrastructure services growth over the next five years. Of these, Healthcare, Technology Services, and Life Sciences are projected to grow at a healthy CAGR compared to others.
As we look deeper, Healthcare and Life Sciences will focus on regulated cloud adoption, telehealth, and telemedicine, requiring high-performance computing environments. Technology Services growth will be fueled by edge computing, AI/ML, cloud, and emerging quantum computing solutions. Retail will prioritize omnichannel experiences, personalization, elastic cloud infrastructure, and sentiment analytics. Manufacturing will adopt edge computing, IoT/OT convergence, and digital twins to enhance efficiency. BFSI will emphasize hybrid cloud, advanced cybersecurity, and AI/ML-driven analytics for compliance and fraud mitigation.
Overall, core IT infrastructure services are expected to grow moderately, with cloud services achieving a higher CAGR. By public estimates, this indicates a market expansion of 40–50% over the next five years compared to current levels. 
The shift reflects increasing digital transformation, regulatory demands, and the integration of AI, edge, and cloud technologies across all major industries, driving innovation and operational resilience.

Q6. Which players do you see capturing mindshare most effectively in emerging areas like cloud-native, AI-driven automation, or sustainability-focused infrastructure?

The leading IT infrastructure services players of the future will definitely need to have deep expertise in cloud, AI / ML-driven automation, sustainability, and cybersecurity. In addition, they will need to have an innovation culture, industry vertical platforms, rigor in delivery, and talent availability. So rather than focusing on specific emerging areas, it is important to look at this holistically and understand who would be the leader in the IT infrastructure services space in the coming years.
The hyperscalers will continue to dominate the cloud, green computing, and regional compliance space. 
The IT infrastructure services space will be led by those who have adopted factory models for cloud migration, provide compliance-proof industry cloud solutions, and are able to effectively orchestrate hybrid cloud environments, driven by automation-led modernization and digital transformation. Those providing consulting-led services, having innovation hubs, and strategic alliances will stand out. 
Service providers with automation products would benefit from embedding them into industry-specific platforms to drive outcome-based operations defined by business rules.
In summary, the future leading IT infrastructure service providers would be those having invested in innovation, having effective alliances with hyperscalers and other vendors, having deep industry contextualization, global delivery expertise, and a strong sustainability DNA.

Q7. If you were an investor looking at companies within the space, what critical question would you pose to their senior management? 

An investor conducting due diligence on an IT infrastructure services organization should focus on the following aspects.
Growth and revenue
What is the revenue contribution of next-gen offerings such as cloud, AI/ML, and digital transformation compared to traditional offerings, and how do they help you differentiate from competitors?  
Innovation
How does leadership’s vision translate into your innovation roadmap and investment priorities across technology, operations, and commercials?
Partnerships 
How do you view vendor partnerships and alliances, and what are the go-to-market strategies you have with the key ones, including hyperscalers and other vendors
Talent 
Explain your talent acquisition, retention, and development framework 
Risk mitigation 
How effective is your risk-mitigation framework across all parameters like contracts, operations, and ESG 
While these dimensions are critical, investors should adopt a comprehensive due diligence approach using a weighted scorecard. It is also recommended to adopt a data-driven assessment approach that enables measurement of success against defined criteria, helping benchmark the organization’s long-term resilience, adaptability, and competitive positioning.