BANGALORE, INDIA: IBM was the pioneer of cloud computing and as a technology it has been around for nearly a decade now. While the West has become one of the early adopters of cloud based computing, the market in India is yet to take off on a full-fledged scale.

 "We are still in the early days of cloud computing and from the India market perspective, clients are in the earlier stages of understanding the benefits of cloud computing. Every business is a potential user and can benefit from the cloud," says Anil Menon, VP, channels, software group, IBM India and South Asia.

While things are still nascent, vendors like Microsoft and Google are talking about cloud computing big time.

"Cloud is the new era of computing and it is here to stay for at least the next ten years. Microsoft has always led the industry in the software space. With businesses looking to the cloud to bring higher efficiencies, it is natural for us to extend our strength and expertise of the past fifteen years in the cloud space and offer the value of our experience to customers," says Rajan Anandan, MD, Microsoft India.

Cloud computing has been touted as the next big thing and by all means it is. But as far as the Indian market is concerned, while there is a lot of hype and interest generated around this technology, the ground realities reflect a more sobering truth: SMBs in India are still some way off from shifting to the cloud in a big way and that the initial vendor push is more oriented to the enterprise customer.

Diptarup Chakraborti, principal research analyst, Gartner said that the penetration of cloud computing in India is negligible at the moment and there have been very few deployments that have actually happened. Cloud computing involves a paradigm shift because from a situation where one was buying IT infrastructure for the last thirty years, one has to now think of taking IT assets on rent and therefore it is still at a stage where a lot of vendors are trying to build awareness around it. It is only in the last six months that cloud as a technology has gotten a push from vendors in a major way. It is all about creating awareness and tapping the latent market demand.

“In my view, it is the vendors who are not ready to address the SMB segment at the moment. Right now they are more interested in showing proof of concept models to large private enterprises because that is where they can potentially make money and so their concern as of now does not extend to the SMB customer," he added.

With businesses looking to the cloud, to bring higher efficiencies, it is natural for us to extend our strength and expertise of the past fifteen years in the cloud space

Cloud for SMBs

Most channel partners across the country are seeing increasing demand for cloud computing solutions from enterprise customers and are not very bullish in their outlook for the SMB segment.

Pune based Shro Systems recently entered this business and is confident that they will see some cloud computing deals this year.

"A lot of inquiries that we have been getting are from bigger enterprises looking to migrate to a private internal cloud setup and so we have been only addressing the top layer of our customer accounts,” said Anirudh Shrotriya, CEO, Shro Systems.

He further said that the key verticals for cloud include manufacturing, IT/ITeS and BFSI. This is because their setup is huge and they typically have multiple projects with multi-user groups. There is a need for elastic infrastructure to be available as per the peak and dip in demand patterns. This is best offered by a cloud based environment and hence a lot of customers from these verticals are opting for the cloud.

Bimal Raj, CEO, Allied Digital Services, an SI based out of Mumbai added, "We are just a year old in this business and while today cloud computing may be just a single digit percentage of our revenue but we see this business growing at an aggressive rate in the years to come. We are predominantly seeing traction for cloud based solutions from the upper mid-market to large enterprise customers and not SMBs as of now. These would be customers from manufacturing and distribution, BFSI among other verticals. We recently tied up with a large core banking solution provider and we have been managing the cloud setup for their customers. We have four of such customers in the US and two in India."

"There are two types of cloud services, private and public cloud. The former normally deals with large enterprises at one location and the other is more useful for a company with multi-geographic locations. Cloud here in this country is definitely a buzzword but there is still time left before we see a mass shift of companies to the cloud environment. In India, I feel private cloud will gain more momentum than public cloud. This is our first year on cloud business and we hope to do 10 per cent of our total business on cloud by the end of this year. In the coming three to five years I see around 60 per cent of my business coming from cloud services which is quite substantial."

There are some partners who believe that SMBs are ready for cloud already. Ranjan Chopra of Delhi based Team Computers is one of them.

"I feel SMBs are ready to be on cloud right away as it makes perfect commercial sense. Currently, we are seeing both enterprises and SMBs adopting cloud because of lower costs per transaction. I think the key factors which will drive growth, especially in SMBs would be lower costs and innovation and lower risks," he said.

Team Computers is expecting to make around Rs. 5 crore in its first year from selling cloud solutions.

"As far as cost saving on cloud over premise is concerned, I think the delivery costs are much lower. In my view, in the coming year about 20 per cent  of the infrastructure business will move to cloud and this will only pick in the times to come. In fact, for most new businesses which will be setup in the future, cloud makes a lot of sense," adds Chopra.

Agrees Anil Lanba, EVP, Pyramid Consulting, a Fortune 500 company, "I feel in the coming years everything would be on cloud and I foresee good growth potential from cloud solutions. For instance, Microsoft has started offering email on the cloud at a fee of Rs. 100. Similarly Microsoft BPOS which is essentially MS Exchange is also offered on the cloud. Being an MS partner, this is a business opportunity for us."

To read more on this article visit here.