E-commerce firm Amazon is evaluating setting up a data center in India to enhance its presence in the Indian cloud market.
Amazon, which offers cloud services under Amazon Web Services (AWS), is looking to expand its foothold in the Indian market, which has players like Google and IBM also offering similar services, PTI reported.
Amazon founder and chief Jeff Bezos said the AWS business has grown incredibly fast. AWS does not share India specific revenue details.
“We are always evaluating new locations. We have AWS. We started it long time ago and it has grown into a very large business, separate from our consumer business. We are building new data centers and are looking where we should put them and evaluating these in India as well,” Bezos said speaking at a Ficci event in Delhi, India.
Bezos said the pace at which internet penetration is increasing in India is stunning and that is one of the tailwinds for the growth of e-commerce. Amazon, which launched its marketplace in India last year, is considering India as one of its fastest growing markets and is on track to touch $1 billion in gross sales.
Bezos said Amazon is working with the Indian SMB players, promoting several indigenous e-tailing initiatives. He added an outreach program is currently being run in India to train SMEs on how to use tools, techniques and processes that are available through internet for promoting and expanding their businesses.
He added that the company will upgrade logistics services and develop mobile platform and new tools and techniques to help small and medium businesses grow further.
In July this year, Amazon announced an additional investment of $2 billion into its Indian operations to beef up its operations.
Microsoft data centers
Microsoft in its website said data centers provide the core infrastructure for its 200-plus online services, including Bing, MSN, Office 365, Xbox Live, Skype, OneDrive and Microsoft Azure. The infrastructure is comprised of a large portfolio of more than 100 data centers, 1 million servers, content distribution networks, edge computing nodes, and fiber optic networks.
On 30 September, Microsoft said it will build three data centers in India to tap demand for cloud-based computing as it plans to offer its Azure and Office 365 services.
Azure will be available from local data centers by the end of 2015, said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently in New Delhi. Office 365, a cloud-based subscription version of Microsoft’s productivity programs, will be available at the same time.
The world’s biggest software maker competes against rivals including Amazon.com and Google for clients in India, a market expected to reach $1.7 billion by 2018 according to Gartner, said a report in Bloomberg.
Microsoft said its cloud services in India have grown over 100 percent in revenue in the past year. Microsoft’s locally available cloud services will open opportunities for banking, financial services, and insurance companies, state-owned enterprises and government departments.
Baburajan K
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