Microsoft aims for over 40 per cent of cloud market in India next fiscal

Microsoft is aiming for a market share of over 40 per cent in the next fiscal in cloud computing services, The Economic Times reported.

The rate of adoption of Microsoft's cloud services in India has sharply increased after it set up local infrastructure. 

The growth in cloud services has been driven  by small and medium businesses (SMB) and startups, along with verticals like banking, financial services & insurance (BFSI), healthcare, e-commerce and the government sector, Bhaskar Pramanik, chairman, Microsoft India, told ET.

"Cloud adoption is helped by the market itself, which has moved more to the cloud. We feel that we opened our data centres at the right time, and they acted as catalyst and further accelerated the trend. We are also seeing a move to Microsoft Azure," Pramanik said.

Conglomerates like Reliance, Essar, L&T, Mahindra's had also migrated to Microsoft's cloud services and the governments of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh were also using the services of the company.

"A number of e-commerce companies like Snapdeal, PepperFry, besides startups, which has been another phenomenal, have actually moved to the cloud," he said.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has identified Australia as a top market for intelligent cloud computing services.  Seeing the cloud surge in the country, Microsoft sent its executive Julia White to Australia to promote its Azure cloud platform for the enterprise segment.

In the local market, Microsoft competes with Amazon and according to White, head of Microsoft's cloud platform, management, and security technologies, Australia was a unique market in terms of its strong uptake of cloud and Australian businesses had been ''very aggressive'' customers in cloud adoption.