Nov 13 2014 : The Economic Times (Delhi)
Microsoft to Invest Rs 1,400 cr in India Cloud Data Centres
Varun Aggarwal
|
Bengaluru:
|
Seeing a $2 trillion promise in India’s cloud market, Microsoft has decided to spend .`1,400 crore on setting up three data centres in the country. In a filing with the Registrar of Companies, the US software giant said it has started work on setting up the cloud data centres in Mumbai, Pune and Chennai. The company is setting up local centres in a bid to capture the India market, especially customers in the banking and telecom industries, which have had data sovereignty concerns.
For Microsoft, which earned .
`2,261 crore from India in 2013-14, the country is among the fastestgrowing cloud markets globally, with 2,000 customer additions each month. The company hopes to scale up its cloud offerings by setting up more global data centres.
“The biggest cloud data centres we have globally are capable of handling 600,000 servers in just one region. That’s a massive amount of compute. Increasing this scale helps us in being more competitive,” Corporate Vice President for Microsoft Azure Jason Zanders told ET.
Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said during his visit to the country in September that he sees the India cloud computing market as a $2 trillion market opportunity.
Top cloud players have shown keen interest in setting up data centres in India in the past few months. IBM launched a centre in Mumbai this month and plans to add another one soon. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had indicated in September that the company could set up its centres in India.
The situation was quite the opposite about a year ago when all major companies shied away from India, citing infrastructural issues such as unpredictable power supply, patchy Internet connectivity, limited bandwidth and unreliable optical fibre connectivity.
“There is a huge demand for cloud services in India, especially among the SMBs (small and medium sized businesses) because of which companies like Microsoft are willing to spend so much on setting up data centres in India,” said Sanchit Gogia, chief analyst at Greyhound Research.
However, seeing high growth in cloud adoption in India, companies are working out ways to overcome such issues. IBM has set up multiple sets of power equipment and signed up multiple bandwidth providers to increase reliability for its Mumbai data centre.
Microsoft is in talks with telecom companies to connect large enterprises directly to their data centres, which will ensure faster and more reliable bandwidth. According to Gartner, the public cloud services market in India is expected to grow from $423 million .
`2,550 crore) in 2013 to $1.3 billion in 2017. Gartner expects India to be the fastestgrowing market for cloud adoption globally.
For Microsoft, which earned .
`2,261 crore from India in 2013-14, the country is among the fastestgrowing cloud markets globally, with 2,000 customer additions each month. The company hopes to scale up its cloud offerings by setting up more global data centres.
“The biggest cloud data centres we have globally are capable of handling 600,000 servers in just one region. That’s a massive amount of compute. Increasing this scale helps us in being more competitive,” Corporate Vice President for Microsoft Azure Jason Zanders told ET.
Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said during his visit to the country in September that he sees the India cloud computing market as a $2 trillion market opportunity.
Top cloud players have shown keen interest in setting up data centres in India in the past few months. IBM launched a centre in Mumbai this month and plans to add another one soon. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had indicated in September that the company could set up its centres in India.
The situation was quite the opposite about a year ago when all major companies shied away from India, citing infrastructural issues such as unpredictable power supply, patchy Internet connectivity, limited bandwidth and unreliable optical fibre connectivity.
“There is a huge demand for cloud services in India, especially among the SMBs (small and medium sized businesses) because of which companies like Microsoft are willing to spend so much on setting up data centres in India,” said Sanchit Gogia, chief analyst at Greyhound Research.
However, seeing high growth in cloud adoption in India, companies are working out ways to overcome such issues. IBM has set up multiple sets of power equipment and signed up multiple bandwidth providers to increase reliability for its Mumbai data centre.
Microsoft is in talks with telecom companies to connect large enterprises directly to their data centres, which will ensure faster and more reliable bandwidth. According to Gartner, the public cloud services market in India is expected to grow from $423 million .
`2,550 crore) in 2013 to $1.3 billion in 2017. Gartner expects India to be the fastestgrowing market for cloud adoption globally.
