Microsoft has brought its cloud-based Azure services to India with the launch of three new local data centers in the country. The tech giant further announced it will roll out Office 365 by October 2015, and plans to follow that up with the availability of Dynamics CRM Online by the first half of 2016.
The data centers locations cover three different regions, South India (Chennai), Central India (Pune) and West India (Mumbai). Microsoft started providing cloud services to over 125 businesses earlier in the year as a special preview program. The brand claims its business in the sector has grown by more than 100% year-on-year over the past two years.
Microsoft thinks its offerings are ideal for governments and businesses which already have a dedicated IT infrastructure. The company envisions a hybrid cloud structure, where the private system merges with the brand’s public cloud to reduce the cost of operations. It believes this could benefit people by accelerating the roll out of e-governance initiatives like Digital India and Smart Cities.
Small businesses and startups could stand to gain from using Microsoft’s cloud as well, as they can take advantage of the enterprise-grade technology provided to grow their brands on a larger scale. Industries dealing with large amounts of data, like media companies, would be able to backup and distribute data in multiple places across India.
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Microsoft expects its Edu-Cloud offering to benefit nearly 10 lakh teachers and 60 lakh students. It will be available at roughly 1500 institutes over the next 18 months. The brand has already made a mark in the education sector in Andhra Pradesh, where the government has adopted its predictive analytics technology to spot likely drop-outs in schools.