What if your morning coffee order through an app glitches due to the inability of backed systems handling the rush; or a scene where factories halt production because of a cloud outage halfway across the world? By the end of 2025, the world cloud computing market is expected to reach $980 billion, as per Statista reports, assisting everything from e-commerce platforms to connected gadgets in homes and businesses.
Yet this rapid growth strains resources with data centres already consuming about 1% of the earth’s electricity, according to the International Energy Agency. Moreover, the projections estimated the demand to double by 2030. According to industry analyses from Zenduty, in the retail sector alone, system downtime can result in about $4.5 million per hour losses during peak seasons. These factors highlight the urgency for robust infrastructure that keeps commerce flowing without harming the bank or the environment; further drawing attention to efforts that address these issues on a global scale.
In the thick of these challenges stands IT infrastructure specialists like Ajay Prasad, whose initiatives in overseeing massive infrastructure operations have impacted far beyond any single organization. With over two decades in IT, Prasad stepped into a role in 2021 managing global setups that support consumer devices and advertising systems. His responsibilities involve directing teams to handle more than 110,000 database compute instances and over 600 petabytes of storage. Consider it as coordinating a digital warehouse the size of countless libraries, all while confirming everything runs with near-perfect uptime of 99.98%. This is not just about keeping lights on; but about confronting the industry’s core obstacles, like the talent shortages and inadequate setups that KPMG notes plague retail tech, where data fragmentation slows down decision-making and scaling.
One major hurdle in consumer electronics and retail is the sheer volume of data exploding from smart devices and online transactions. As McKinsey points out in their 2025 tech trends outlook, surging demand for compute-heavy tasks, from AI recommendations in shopping apps to real-time inventory tracking, give rise to bottlenecks in infrastructure. Ajay’s approach involves expanding teams from 15 to 21 members, blending full-time engineers with vendors, and focusing on hiring skilled people from diverse backgrounds.
This team-building directly solves the talent scarcity issue, where, as per KPMG, retailers struggle to find experts who can bridge operations and innovation. By assessing performance and aligning on budgets, his methods provide efficient resource allocation, reducing wasteful spending that could otherwise inflate costs in an industry already squeezed by climate-related expenses, which Deloitte reports affect 81% of retail leaders.
Take the retail sector’s push for seamless omnichannel experiences, where customers expect to browse on a phone, pick up in-store, and get personalized ads without a hassle. But scaling infrastructure to support this globally implies dealing with ultra-low latency demands; even a split-second delay can drive shoppers away, contributing to the $287 million average annual downtime costs for top global retailers, as highlighted by Queue-it. Ajay’s work in defining processes for compute, storage, and disaster recovery helps mitigate these risks. For instance, his leadership in global lifecycle management, planning how hardware and software evolve over time, has led to a 20% betterment in system capacity. This is advantageous on a commercial level, providing smoother product launches and ad deliveries, allowing retailers to handle spikes in traffic during events like holiday sales, where every second of availability means preserved revenue streams.
On a global level, these efforts influence how consumer electronics reach markets in developing regions. With supply chain disruptions noted as a top 2025 challenge by Mastering SAP, reliable infrastructure ensures that devices like smartphones and laptops get produced and distributed without interruptions. Ajay’s cross-functional collaborations, involving weekly meetings with development, reliability, and hardware groups across geographies like the US, UK, Australia, India, and China, support a networked approach. “The real challenge is syncing efforts across borders to build systems that don’t falter under pressure; it’s about creating a backbone that supports everyday commerce worldwide,” Ajay Prasad explains when discussing project scopes. This coordination has commercial payoffs, such as cutting operational overheads that free up billions in the broader economy for innovation rather than fixes.
Furthermore, the environmental toll of data centers spans large, with the IEA warning of escalating energy demands that could strain grids and hike emissions. In retail and electronics, where manufacturing and logistics depend on cloud services, inefficient infrastructure exacerbates this; for instance, the carbon footprint from powering servers that run non-stop for global inventory systems. His decisions, like prioritizing energy-efficient storage arrays during upgrades, have resulted in a 10% drop in power usage while expanding capacity. This not only lowers costs, saving millions that can be redirected to R&D, but also contributes to societal goals like sustainability. In a world where climate change drives up business expenses for 81% of retailers per Deloitte, such measures help curb the sector’s environmental influence, promoting greener practices that benefit communities by reducing reliance on fossil fuels and lowering overall pollution.
Additionally, in emerging markets, where consumer electronics drive economic growth, stable systems mean better education tools via apps and improved healthcare through connected devices. Ajay’s prior stints, such as architecting data centers for semiconductor firms and managing low-latency environments in e-commerce, informed his current strategies. At one point, handling 70 petabytes of storage in setups that prevented $4,000-per-second losses honed his focus on uptime, which now supports ad platforms critical for small businesses advertising on the world stage. This creates a trickle-down effect, where reliable tech helps retailers in remote areas to compete, providing a boost to local economies and job creation.
Shifting to the retail industry’s price wars and theft issues, as flagged by Deloitte with 80% and 76% of leaders concerned respectively, robust infrastructure plays a defensive role. By integrating security best practices, ascertaining databases comply with stringent standards, Ajay’s oversight minimizes vulnerabilities that could lead to breaches, which often cascade into downtime. Commercially, this safeguards revenue; globally, it protects consumer data in an era where trust is fragile, with 24% of shoppers abandoning brands after one bad experience, according to a 2025 survey cited by Contentful. His influence on policy and guidelines, drawn from experiences providing roadmaps to executives, extends these protections industry-wide, promoting a more secure digital marketplace.
Looking at the bigger picture, the work ties into national priorities around advanced computing, where resilient infrastructure underpins everything from cybersecurity to cloud services. By maintaining high availability across continents, it supports the flow of goods in retail chains that span the globe, reducing disruptions that could spike prices for everyday items. This stability aids in mending digital divides, making tech accessible and affordable, which in turn spurs innovation in fields like education and healthcare.
The projects spearheaded under this leadership are laying groundwork for tomorrow’s demands. As cloud markets swell and AI intensifies compute needs, these scalable systems promise to handle growth without proportional energy spikes, potentially halving the environmental burden on future data centers. They’ll help retailers to steer through economic uncertainties with agility, preserving jobs and stabilizing prices. Globally, the impact could redefine how consumer electronics integrate into daily life, making societies more connected and capable. With challenges like grid expansions on the horizon as noted by Forbes Tech Council, such new-age infrastructure will be key for building sustainable progress, making sure that the digital economy benefits everyone without costing the earth.