Category Archives: India

Asia Pacific, AWS, data centre, Datacentre, India, News & Analysis

AWS expands footprint in India with new data centre

Location India. Red pin on the map.AWS has expanded its reach in the Asia Pacific region, opening two new Availability Zones in Mumbai, taking the total globally to 35.

The company already has 75,000 customers in the country, which is one of the fastest growing economies worldwide. According to the CIA World Factbook, India is listed as the 12th fastest growing nation with a 7.3% real GDP growth rate, as well as a population growth rate of 1.22% per annum. The new region will support numerous services including Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), as well Elastic Block Store (EBS), Virtual Private Cloud, Auto Scaling, and Elastic Load Balancing.

“Indian start-ups and enterprises have been using AWS for many years – with most Indian technology start-ups building their entire businesses on AWS, and numerous enterprises running mission-critical, core applications on AWS,” said Andy Jassy, CEO of AWS. “These same 75,000 Indian customers, along with others anxious to start using AWS, have asked for an AWS India Region so they can move their applications that require low latency and data sovereignty.

“We’re excited to make this available today, with the same pay-as-you-go pricing, ability to get started immediately without having to negotiate enterprise agreements or wait days for access, and unmatched functionality that customers enjoy in AWS Regions worldwide – all of which allows customers to go from idea to launch faster than ever before was possible.”

Although India is one of the company’s fastest growing markets worldwide, AWS have been slower to market than its competitors. Last year, Microsoft has brought online three cloud data centres in India for its Azure offering, and IBM opened its first data centre in Chennai for Softlayer. Google is yet to gain traction in the market.

Making the announcement through the official blog, the team also announced numerous local partners ranging from Managed Service Providers such as Spruha Technologies and Consulting Partners including HCL, Tata Consulting Services, and Wipro.

India, News & Analysis, Policy and Regulation, regulation

India to answer unanswered cloud questions

Location India. Red pin on the map.The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has launched a consultation project to identify the challenges of governing a digital economy driven by cloud computing, reports Telecoms.com.

TRAI launched a consultation paper last week which outlined questions which still remain over the adoption and management of cloud computing. Before an adequate regulatory framework can be built, the team have highlighted a complete understanding of cloud as a technology and its business implications are required. TRAI has seemingly unearthed a number of unknowns which have been swept aside during the speedy adoption of cloud computing.

The consultation process itself will focus on several areas affecting the adoption of cloud computing in India including future trends, security, interoperability, quality of service, a legal & regulatory framework and the overall implementation of cloud services. The objective of the consultation process is to create a framework which encourages growth and adoption of the technology, while also protecting the interests of the customer.

“With a view to bring out all relevant aspects of the issues and to provide a suitable platform for discussions, TRAI has initiated this consultation paper to engage the industry and all the stakeholders on the key issues referred by Department of Telecom,” the team outlined in the consultation paper.

India is generally recognised as one of the more lucrative markets for the cloud computing industry, owing to a large population and a healthily growing economy. The report states the public cloud service market in India is expected to grow from $ 838 million in 2015 to $ 1.9 billion by 2018, while social, mobility, analytics and cloud technologies collectively could account for $1 trillion in 2016 alone.

The basis of the consultation paper would seem to be based on not only a lack of information available, but also a lack of constancy and clarity of the benefits, cost and ongoing management of the technology itself. Two areas which were given particular attention in the paper was that of lawful interception and interoperability.

According to TRAI there is currently a lack of clarity on how lawful interception will be justified and managed in a cloud-orientated, but also how data will be managed in the international community.

“One of the top security concerns of enterprises is the physical location of the data especially if they are located in another country because the laws of the host country apply to the machine and data residing on it,” the report highlighted. “That becomes an issue if the host country does not have adequate laws to protect sensitive data or if the host nation becomes hostile and depends largely on the government concerned. The primary location of the data and any backup locations must be known to ensure these laws and regulations are followed.”

From an interoperability perspective, there could be a need to formalize the means in which a customer moves from one cloud provider to another to ensure a fair proposition for the customer. Here the consultation process will focus on identifying how vendors can standardize processes and aspects of the technology to ensure interoperability, as well as what regulations need to be put forward so the customer is able to have control over his data while moving it in and out of the cloud.

Those who wish to put forward their opinions have until 22nd July to make their comments known to the organization.

app, app annie, App Stores, Brazil, emerging markets, India, News & Analysis

India and Brazil biggest countries for app growth

Research from App Annie highlighted emerging markets are set to account for 45% of global app revenue by 2020, with revenue growth expected to double figures in western economies.

Revenues are estimated to reach $102.5 billion and global mobile app store downloads will reach approximately 288 billion in 2020, as US, the Japan and Western European nations would expect growth to be around 12% CAGR, though this percentage grows to 29% when looking at the developing nations.

As of 2015, the APAC market accounted for approximately 52% of global downloads, and 55% of revenues, though these numbers are increased to 57% and 58% respectively by 2020. It would appear the majority of this growth has been driven by the emerging markets as between 2015 and 2020, the contribution to global downloads will increase from 66% to 75% and for revenues the increase with be from 30% to 49%.

India and Brazil are two countries listed were growth will be particularly strong, mainly due to a large population, strong performing economies and strong smartphone uptake. Estimates highlight there are approximately 200 million smartphone users in India currently, though this number is expected to increase to 317 million by 2019. Over the same period GDP in India was at around $2.09 trillion, and is estimated to rise to $3.1 trillion in 2020. Mexico, Indonesia and China also showed good potential.

First and foremost, games will drive the expansion in the emerging markets, though the more mature regions are beginning to witness more of a subscription based model. Whether this is to be the same long-term in the emerging markets is yet to be seen, as there is little data to suggest similar patterns. India for example would still be considered in the hyper growth stages of development, offering lucrative opportunities for developers who gain traction in the early days.

The report does shed light on some interesting statistics and could offer encouragement to app developers who have traditionally found monetization a difficult task, but it comes as no surprise to hear the report states there is likely to be more growth in emerging markets than mature ones.

data centre, Datacentre, Expansion, India, News & Analysis, ST Telemedia, STT, Tata communications

ST Telemedia continues expansion in data centre market

Location India. Red pin on the map.ST Telemedia Global Data Centres has expanded its data centre footprint through a joint venture with Tata Communications, where it will now take a 74% majority stake in Tata’s data centre business in India and Singapore.

The new deal expands ST Telemedia’s already healthy presence throughout the world as it adds 14 data centres in various cities across India, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Pune, and its three Singapore facilities. The company now has a presence in four major regions, including a strong footprint in two of Asia’s fastest growing economies, India and China.

Tata will retain a 26% share of the joint venture, but will focus on advanced services within the data centre that enable digital transformation. Tata highlighted the new partnership will enable the business to refocus investments on area such as cloud enablement and unified communications.

“This partnership marks another key milestone in STT GDC’s growth,” saod Sio Tat Hiang, Executive Director at ST Telemedia. “Since ST Telemedia’s initial investment in the data centre business in mid-2014, we have made remarkable progress in building a formidable data centre footprint internationally with strategic presence in key economic hubs to capture industry demand.

“The latest addition of India to the STT GDC network will be a major impetus to advance the company’s ambition to be a significant global data centre service provider. We are pleased to partner with an established company like Tata Communications, to pursue opportunities in the growing data centre market.”

ST Telemedia’s data centre market portfolio currently contains a number of organizations including GDS Services, MediaHub, Level 3 Communications and Virtus Data Centres, the latter of which has doubled in size for two consecutive years, making it one of the largest data centre providers in the London area. The company ambitions are to develop the largest global platform of advanced, integrated and carrier-neutral data centres in every major economic centre.

While ST Telemedia has seemingly prioritized the data centre market, the team have made a number of investments additional growth areas including IoT, with an investment in software and managed services company Greenwave, and also big data following its investment in Datameer, an analytics and visualisation company earlier this year.

China Telecoms, India, News & Analysis, Telco Cloud

China Telecom launches cloud service to Indian market

business cloud network worldThe Indian subsidiary of China Telecom (China Telecom India) has launched a business cloud service to Chinese businesses operating on the India market. The service, it says, will straddle the public private computing divide and cater to demand for hybrid cloud systems.

The new hybrid cloud service offers professional system management, security and disaster recovery, along with 24-hour, 7 days a week customer service in Chinese.

The launch ceremony took place at the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in New Delhi, India. With over 100 Chinese enterprises among the audience, the launch of the service was overseen by Cheng Guangzhong, Minister Counsellor of the Chinese government.

“We proudly launch this cloud service in India to provide safe, convenient and quality cloud computing services, helping Chinese enterprises to tackle IT deployment problems in the new era. With this cloud service, we can provide new development impetus and create new opportunities for Chinese enterprises in international expansion,” said Alen Wang, Managing Director of China Telecom India.

This service is part of a China Telecom strategy, The Belt and Road Initiative, to invest in cloud-based resources in the core regions and key countries in Asia Pacific, Europe and America, said Wang. “We are committed to building an ecosystem that fosters win-win cooperation and open collaboration, and we partner with world class players in offering cloud computing products and services to the Chinese enterprises expanding overseas,” said Wang.

Hong Kong based China Telecom now has branches in 26 countries across Asia, the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It is now launching its FD LTE and TD LTE 4G mobile networks across China.

Andy Jassy, Asia Pacific, AWS, Datacentre, Gartner, India, Infrastructure as a Service, News & Analysis

AWS to expand to India in 2016

AWS said India is the next big market for public cloud expansion

AWS said India is the next big market for public cloud expansion

Amazon unveiled plans this week to bring its Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure to India by 2016 in a bid to expand into the quickly growing public cloud services market there.

AWS is already available in India and the company claims to have over 10,000 local customers using the platform, but the recently announced move would see the company set up its own infrastructure in-country rather than relying on delivering the services from nearby availability zones like Singapore.

The company says the move will likely improve the performance of the cloud services on offer to local organisations.

“Tens of thousands of customers in India are using AWS from one of AWS’s eleven global infrastructure regions outside of India. Several of these customers, along with many prospective new customers, have asked us to locate infrastructure in India so they can enjoy even lower latency to their end users in India and satisfy any data sovereignty requirements they may have,”said Andy Jassy, senior vice president, AWS.

“We’re excited to share that Indian customers will be able to use the world’s leading cloud computing platform in India in 2016 – and we believe India will be one of AWS’s largest regions over the long term.”

The India expansion comes at a time when the local market is maturing rapidly.

According to analyst and consulting house Gartner public cloud services revenue in India will reach $838m by the end of 2015, an increase of almost 33 per cent – making it one of the fastest growing markets for public cloud services in the world (global average growth rates sit in the mid-twenties range, depending on the analyst house). The firm believe many local organisations in India are shifting away from more traditional IT outsourcing and using public cloud services instead.

Cloud Services, India, Industry & Market Insights, SMB Cloud Insights

Cloud-making SMBs in India – a force to reckon with

by John Zanni, Vice President of Service Provider Marketing and Alliances, Parallels

 

I have been visiting India for more than 10 years and I have seen an amazing transformation in the last years. Today, there are 36 million micro, small and medium enterprises in India. Many face seeming insurmountable challenges of sub-optimal scale of operation, technological obsolescence, supply chain inefficiencies, increasing domestic and global competition, fund shortages, and turbulent and uncertain market scenario.

 

That’s the bad news. The good news is that today’s new generation of entrepreneurs in India is young, bold and willing to try new ideas. They see an opportunity and take the plunge. They know that as small businesses they have the benefit of being agile and nimble against much larger organizations. They are therefore able to capitalize more quickly on emerging opportunities. They are also more willing to take a few hits at the beginning of the business to win big later.

 

They understand that being small means they don’t have the luxury of large financial backing to support the various activities of the business. This means they need to be smarter at deciding how best to compete and grow.

 

One smart proven approach is the use of web presence to create brand awareness and generate business opportunities. They are turning to the cloud to reach out to potential customers locally, nationally and internationally. Creativity and technology are making it possible for these small upstarts to compete against much larger businesses.

 

The result is phenomenal growth in adoption of ICT particularly those delivered via cloud computing. In the past, the biggest barrier to adoption to cloud services in India was bandwidth but that’s changing very rapidly. Bandwidth is significantly better now, and reliability issues are slowly going away. Cloud adoption will explode and we see the opportunity for cloud services accelerating.

 

The latest Parallels SMB Cloud Insights™ for India estimates that the Indian SMB cloud services opportunity in 2013 is worth ₹16.9 billion (US$339 million), and expects it to grow 35 percent year-over-year for the next three years, reaching ₹42 billion (US$839 million) by the beginning of 2016.  This growth will be driven by new adopters of cloud services and current users adding more applications and functionality to their existing cloud services. They are eager to get online and consume services that will help them reach their customer base, increase their productivity, and improve their IT capabilities and they are willing to PAY for it. 

 

The opportunity is huge.  We are seeing it in our business at Parallels.

 

Service providers who are able to stay on top of this growing demand by SMBs and engage them with the right mix of services and applications will grow and profit in the years to come.