Microsoft has launched its local datacentres in India, which will offer its Azure cloud services. Office 365 services will be available from October 2015. Dynamics CRM Online services will follow suite early next year. The company has opened three data centres in Pune, Chennai and Mumbai. The company said millions of users already use Microsoft cloud services but with the availability of local cloud services, regulated industries such as banking and financial institutions, government departments and state owned enterprises will now be able to take advantage of the public cloud services.
Microsoft also expects an impact on Indian citizens as this move holds potential to accelerate e-governance and roll-out of citizen services by governments, thereby pushing the Digital India and Smart Cities programme. With the local data centres, Microsoft should be able to offer a locally hosted model where the data would reside in the country, which will address the data privacy for compliant and regulated industries such as BFSI and the government.
Competition in the Indian cloud market is increasing with players such as IBM and Amazon Web Services announcing their plans to set up data centres in the country.
