As many as 70 out of 100 BSE-listed companies using MS Cloud, says Maheswari

In the battle to dominate cloud computing, Microsoft is taking on rivals Amazon and Google in India. The world’s largest software maker is eyeing digital transformation opportunity worth $100 billion in the country.

Anant Maheshwari, president, Microsoft India, said the narrative for digital transformation in India had changed from being just mobile and cloud first to ‘intelligent edge’ and ‘intelligent cloud’. “We hear about artificial intelligence and all the cognitive capabilities inside the cloud..... You put all of that together and it starts becoming more than $100 billion dollar opportunity for all of us,” said Mr. Maheshwari, in his keynote address at an event conducted by the company on its Hyderabad campus. Microsoft said on Thursday that 70 of the top 100 BSE-listed companies were now using Microsoft cloud to drive their digital transformation. The Redmond, Washington-based firm said that it was working with more than 2,00,000 large, medium and small enterprises, 29 State Governments and more than 5,000 start-ups in the country. In the last 18 months, the firm had seen many of these customers start their digital transformation using the hybrid cloud. “Microsoft is leading digital transformation momentum in India,” said Mr. Maheshwari.

Azure India Stack

Microsoft, which provides all three clouds — private, public and hybrid — also unveiled Azure Stack for India, which is an extension of its cloud computing platform Azure. The software giant aims to bring the agility and fast-paced innovation of cloud computing to on-premises environments and enable entirely new hybrid cloud scenarios.

Microsoft, which has three of its 42 global datacenters regions located in India, said it was the first global public cloud provider to offer local cloud services in the country. Financial Services and Information Technology (IT/ITeS) have emerged as the top Microsoft cloud adopters followed by the manufacturing industry and start-ups in the last year. “While cars run on fuel, our business runs on data. All the sensor data that we collect from the car..... needs to be ingested into the cloud and analysed for real-time insights in milliseconds, that is where'intelligent cloud' and Microsoft partnership comes in,” said Ankit Jain, vice-president and head of Ola Play at homegrown cab-aggregator Ola, which has partnered with Microsoft to build a new connected vehicle platform for car manufacturers worldwide. Ola said it is using Microsoft cloud, artificial intelligence and productivity tools to transform passenger experience and for predictive maintenance of vehicles. In the financial services sector, 10 of the 12 largest banks in the country, including State Bank of India, HDFC and ICICI, also use Microsoft cloud solutions, according to the firm.

Microsoft’s commercial cloud business which includes Azure is attaining strength. In October, Microsoft revealed that its global cloud business touched $20 billion in annualised revenue. It was a target that the company aimed to reach in 2018.

(The writer is in Hyderabad at the invitation of Microsoft.)