New Delhi: Google Inc. is trying to bridge the gap with rivals Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the cloud marketplace in India by announcing that it plans to set up its first data centre in Mumbai by 2017—a strategy that will help the company cater to a larger number of Indian developers and enterprise customers.

It will help Google especially in the financial services industry since regulations in this sector do not permit data to be transmitted outside the country. The local region will help make Google Cloud Platform services even faster for Indian customers, enhancing differentiators that are already motivating companies to choose Google as their partner.

Google made the announcement about the India Cloud Region at an event in San Francisco, called Horizon. Besides Mumbai, the company announced seven new Google Cloud Regions—Singapore, Sydney, Northern Virginia, São Paulo, London, Finland and Frankfurt .

But Google is late to the cloud market in India. Microsoft has already set up data centres at three locations in India to improve performance of Azure services for customers in the country, while AWS launched their local data center in Mumbai in June this year.

“We believe this is the beginning of the Public Cloud war in India and expect it to become more intense in FY17 and FY18. We expect these announcements to add pressure on the likes of companies like Google," says Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst & CEO of Greyhound Research.

Given the investment from key vendors, chief information officers can expect a heavy sales push coming their way.

“This push will be specifically targeted towards regulated industries like the government and banking, financial services, insurance (BFSI) verticals that have traditionally steered clear of the Public Cloud," said Anshoo Nandwaani, vice president & principal analyst, Greyhound Research.

In light of this, Google’s announcement comes as no surprise. Google Cloud Platform takes the infrastructure, machine learning and networking services used to power Google services and makes them available to businesses and developers to build high performance applications and data analysis at a low cost.

As India’s startup community continues to grow, Cloud Platform provides the full stack of services to build, test and deploy their applications.

Google claims that with more than one billion end users, Google Cloud has gained significant traction in India and across the world. Globally, key customers already leveraging the benefits of Google Cloud Platform include Snap Inc (formerly SnapChat), Niantic Labs (Pokemon Go), and Evernote. In India, brands like Wipro, Ashok Leyland, and Dainik Bhaskar Group are building on Google Cloud Platform.

Speaking at the launch, Brian Stevens, Vice President, Google Cloud said: “By expanding to new regions, we deliver higher performance to customers.. We look forward to welcoming customers to our new Cloud Regions as they become publicly available throughout 2017."

Like Amazon and Microsoft that have a strong partner ecosystem, Google too is focusing to build its partner ecosystem to support customers as they move to the cloud. The company claims that it already has deep partnerships with a multitude of born-in-the-cloud partners including Searce Co-Sourcing, Cloud Cover, PowerUp Cloud and MediaAgility as well as global partners like Wipro, TCS, Tech Mahindra, PwC and Cognizant.

Recently, Google also tied up with Accenture to bring to market industry-specific solutions that will help clients use cloud, mobility, and analytics to advance their digital transformation agenda and improve business performance. Accenture will apply its broad industry expertise and capabilities to help enterprise clients improve the value of Google technologies within their organizations. The company did not reveal how much it was investing in the expansion of data centers only saying that it would continue to invest in expanding the cloud region to meet more Cloud Platform customers around the world.

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