Microsoft starts work on data centres in India

Microsoft has started work on its previously announced three data centres in India, with a planned outlay of Rs1,400 crores.

In September Microsoft CEO Satya Nadela made a power push in India with plans to set up a data centre that would offer commercial cloud services in India by 2015 as it gears for competition for India's estimated $2-trillion market opportunity and a share of the government's 'Digital India' initiative.

The US technology giant said it would set up three data centres in three cities in India to offer its commercial and cloud services - Azure and Office 365 - from local data centres by the end of 2015, in competition in the commercial cloud services business with rival firms such as Google and IBM (See: Microsoft eyes India's cloud computing market with plans for 3 data centres).

EconomicTimes.com reported that the software giant, in a filing with the Registrar of Companies in India, said that it would be setting up the cloud data centres in Mumbai, Pune and Chennai.

The company would reportedly add as many as 2,000 cloud customers each month in India - a huge number by any measure.

The data centre market in India was witnessing much action, especially due to the growing popularity of cloud computing solutions among enterprises and the rise of a lot of e-commerce firms and mobile start-ups.

Already, several large data centre firms had set up or scaled operations in India in anticipation of a surge in business, including Ctrl S, Tulip and Netmagic, among others.

IBM recently launched its data centre in Mumbai and announced plans set up more.

Amazon, had also indicated intentions for setting up its own data centre during the recent visit of CEO Jeff Bezos. Last year, the e-tailer's corporate tech arm, Amazon Web Services, had announced what it called two ''CloudFront edge locations in India (in Chennai and Mumbai).

Karan Bajwa, managing director of Microsoft India, told Business Standard in an interview revenues would show up over time, but more importantly it would open a very large part of the market that was not open in the past.

He said by the end of 2015 calendar cloud services could be seen to come alive. He added Microsoft was starting to see customers come on to the table for discussions both across government and non-government.

When  asked whether regulations were a major block towards the growth of cloud, Bajwa said the government, Reserve Bank, etc, would also need to go through a change in the policy environment on the public cloud, "a natural process everybody would need to go through".