India's modernising at a frantic rate and has justifiably earned a reputation as one of the planet's top sources of technology talent. But as a market to sell into? It's getting interesting now.

To understand why, consider two nuggets of data emitted this week by the abacus-wranglers of analyst firm IDC.

The company's latest server purchasing data found that India is now buying servers at a rate of 157,061 a quarter, up a happy 19 per cent or 26,000 units compared to the previous quarter. That gives the nation an annual server-buying run rate of about 600,000. Or about five per cent of the 9.7 million servers the whole world buys each year. India's GDP is about seven per cent of the world's, so the nation is starting to pull its weight as an enterprise IT buyer.

Things are also looking good in the storage aisle, where IDC says sales fell over the US$100m line for the first time in 2015's final quarter. EMC's way out in front, natch.

It's not all roses on the sub-continent: the analyst says printer sales were down in late 2015, thanks in part to lower government purchases. But printer sales are down everywhere these days: mobility makes soft copy redundant in plenty of applications.

There's enormous upside in India too, of course. The nation may have about seven per cent of world GDP but its GDP-per-head remains low at $6,300. But India is growing at seven per cent per annum and that figure is rather less-contested than China's similar claims. India may be keen on having kit made on its soil, but isn't actively discriminating in favour of domestic suppliers in the same way China likes to do. ®