Demonstrating its commitment to delivering trusted cloud services that enable people and organizations around the world to achieve more, Microsoft announced the availability of Microsoft Azure Services via local datacenter regions in India. As the first public cloud provider from India, Microsoft has opened three new regions: Central India in Pune, South India in Chennai, and West India in Mumbai. Governments, large businesses, small and medium businesses (SMBs) and citizens can use the massive computing power now available locally to fuel India’s inclusive growth, spur innovation and accelerate digital transformation.

In the words of Bhaskar Pramanik, chairman, Microsoft India, “The Microsoft Cloud in India will transform the way computing is done in the country.  The hyper-scale cloud will empower governments, businesses and users and offer enough computing power that will support all their existing workloads. We are happy to partner with government and businesses to make the Microsoft Cloud work for India and for Indians.”

Built on foundational principles of security, privacy, control, compliance and transparency, Microsoft Cloud Services are designed to enable individuals and organizations to achieve more.

In addition to the Microsoft Azure services launching today, Office 365 services are slated for availability in October 2015, with Dynamics CRM Online services to follow in the first half of 2016.

Millions of users in India are already using Microsoft Cloud Services leading to the cloud business growing by more than 100 percent year-on-year over the past two years.  With the local cloud services, regulated industries such as BFSI, government departments and state-owned enterprises will now be able to leverage public cloud services and be able to take advantage of local data residency. In addition, businesses that deal with large amounts of data will benefit from data replication in multiple regions within India for backup and recovery, reduced network distance, lower latency and the option of a private connection to the cloud.

Microsoft local cloud services are well-suited for governments and businesses that already have significant investments in owned IT infrastructure.  They will now be able to extend their existing IT infrastructure and private clouds to Microsoft local (public) cloud, thereby creating compelling hybrid cloud scenarios and reducing their cost of IT operations significantly.  The impact on citizens is expected to be all the more significant as it will accelerate e-governance and roll-out of citizen services at unprecedented scale and speed by governments, thereby accelerating the governments’ Digital India and Smart Cities programs.

Newer and transformational scenarios of computing will also be possible.  With the assurance of local data residency, programs like digital lockers and digital identity will also move quickly and enable better citizen services.

In addition,

• Startups and SMBs will gain a competitive advantage with enterprise-grade technology to help them innovate and grow their business to a global scale.
• Education Sector will witness transformational digital learning.  Just one offering, Microsoft Edu-Cloud, is expected to benefit 10 lakh teachers and 60 lakh students across 1,500 institutes over the next 18 months from local Microsoft Cloud.
• Developers, IT Professionals, ISVs and Partner ecosystem will see newer opportunities and innovative business models.  From providing cloud assessment to cloud roadmap creation; from writing new cloud ready applications to migrating existing workloads to cloud; locally delivered cloud services will help hosters, ISVs and partners scale their business using the cloud.

Microsoft’s local cloud momentum

In the preparation to launch cloud services from local datacenters, Microsoft created a special private preview program to allow early customers a preview into using the new local Azure services. This has seen significant interest from BFSI, government departments and organizations, ISVs, ecommerce organizations and startups with participation from over 125 customers. Organizations such as Mahindra,  Robert Bosch, Honeywell, Kotak Life, Bajaj Finserve, Medi Assist, Fortis Healthcare, Narayana Health, AIIMS, Haryana State Electronics Development Corporation, MIDC, TN ePDS, Rediff, Meru Cabs, Sony Corporation, Aspect Software, Gupshup Technologies, NanoBi Data and Analytics, Ideal Invent Technologies, and many leading Indian banks have been using Microsoft local Azure services under this private preview program. Read real customer quotes citing benefits of local datacenters and private preview experiences.

Microsoft also launched Cloud Accelerator Program along with its partners to help businesses create cloud adoption blueprints to identify applications which can move to the cloud. More than 15 Microsoft partners including HCL, Wipro and Tech Mahindra are a part of the Cloud Accelerator Program in India.

To build momentum around India Cloud initiative, we are happy to announce our flagship summit, Future Unleashed, a unique business-technology symposium and expo of the kind India is yet to see. This two-day summit will address 3,000+ business decision-makers in-person and over 150K across the country, including a galaxy of CXOs, TDMs, government elite, educators, IT pros, developers and our partners.

We will have some of the most influential internal and external thought leaders including Satya Nadella and Scott Guthrie, speaking about the forces driving growth and the pivotal role transformational technology will play in making those changes happen.

I urge you to register for Future Unleashed. Go ahead and spread the word with #ADateWithTheFuture.