Microsoft to offer commercial cloud services through data centres in India

Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO was in Delhi today to announce that Microsoft will offer commercial cloud services Azure and Office 365 (cloud computing platforms) through data centres in India by the end of 2015.

This is Nadella’s first visit to India after taking over as CEO on February 4, 2014. In a very brief interaction with journalists, he said offering commercial cloud services will help its partners such as HCL Infosystems, TCS, and Wipro, who have built cloud offerings with Microsoft Azure and Office 365. Cloud computing lets users store and manage files and applications over the internet. “We have 10,000 partners in India consisting of hosters, independent software vendors, system integrators. By doing this we have opened up a huge opportunity for these 10,000 partners to take world-class services and make them available in India,” Nadella said.

He added that there is huge demand for Microsoft’s cloud services in India considering there are over 900 million users of cellphones and 250 million users of smartphones in the country. “The one thing you can be sure of is that every connected smart phone needs hosting of data. What we have done today is we have said we want to be a leader in providing cloud for every Indian and every application device,” he said.

Nadella didn’t give a figure on the investment Microsoft will make in offering cloud computing through data centres in India. “We don’t have a specific amount we have thought of. As we get started you will be able to see the scale of the data centre.”

When asked about mobility of Windows phone platform, Nadella said he would rather not define Microsoft’s success in terms of mobility. “Today’s announcement is that we have back-end for all applications. We have enterprise management capabilities,” he said.