Microsoft Launches Three Cloud Data Centers in India

Microsoft has brought online three cloud data centers in India to improve performance of Azure services for customers in the country.

The Redmond, Washington, company becomes first of the top US public cloud providers to offer services in India from local data centers. Amazon Web Services does not have an availability zone in India – although it is currently building a cloud data center there, which it plans to bring online next year – and neither does Google Cloud Platform. IBM SoftLayer also has an India cloud data center in the works.

Global reach is one of the attributes that make a public cloud provider better or worse than competitors. India is one of the fastest growing markets for cloud services, and having local infrastructure to serve local customers can be a major advantage in taking advantage of its growth.

Gartner expects India’s public cloud services market to reach $838 million by the end of this year – up nearly 33 percent from 2014. The figure includes revenue from Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Business Process-as-a-Service, and Software-as-a-Service.

Microsoft first announced plans to establish cloud data centers in India about one year ago. The three new sites are in Pune, Chennai, and Mumbai, serving Central India, South India, and West India Azure cloud regions respectively, Jason Zander, corporate VP for Microsoft Azure, wrote in a blog post.

Azure services are now available out of those regions, but Microsoft expects to add support for Office 365 out of the new data centers in October and for Dynamics CRM in the first half of 2016.

Microsoft launched a cloud data center in Australia last year.