In his maiden visit to India, after taking over as the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, on Tuesday, announced that the company would offer commercial cloud services — Azure and Office 365 — in the country from local data centres.
The company will set up three data centres in three cities that will be operational by the end of 2015.
“Last year, our cloud business in India grew over 100 per cent. Buoyed by that success we have now decided to offer cloud services from local data centres. So, this means we will have Azure, which is our cloud infrastructure service as well as our Office 365 service, which brings together all of our productivity and collaboration capability to the Indian market, operated out of Indian data centres,” he said.
Cloud computing services in India presented a $2 trillion market opportunity, he added.
“When you think about the cloud opportunity in India itself, it is going to be a $2 trillion opportunity. Just as in the case of mobile devices, India was able to leapfrog with the adoption of mobile devices. I believe that the cloud infrastructure, especially world-class cloud infrastructure, is going to help Indian companies, Indian Government and every Indian entrepreneur, to be able to really revitalise the productivity of this economy,” he added.
Asked about the investment into these centres, Mr. Nadella said, “I can’t give you a specific amount but as we get started you will see the scale. The initial footprint itself will be quite high.”
Microsoft India Chairman Bhaskar Pramanik said, “…the establishment of our services from local data centres, I think is the most logical move for us. It is a significant milestone in terms of the investment we have made in the country, for the citizens of India, for the businesses in India, for the small and medium enterprises, for the developer ecosystem.”