Microsoft, which is seeing a good traction for its cloud platform Windows Azure, is betting big on growth of Hybrid cloud environment in the Indian market for increasing customer base as it feels the solution enables organisation to derive maximum benefit from the cloud infrastructure.
According to Srikanth Karnakota, Director (Server and Cloud Business), Microsoft, cloud computing has already become mainstream in India. “It is no longer in nascent stage…adoption of cloud started with Private cloud model and the growth has been phenomenal. If you look at the overall cloud market 70 per cent of it private cloud today, while 30 per cent in public cloud,” he said.
Explaining the concept of a private and a public cloud during an interview with The Hindu , he said, “Private cloud is like a large mansion you have and it is all yours. A public cloud is like a massive apartment… not just yours.”
He said security concerns mainly drove companies to opt for private cloud model rather than going for a public cloud. However, now that these concerns have been dealt with, organisations are moving to public cloud, giving rise to increasing use of Hybrid cloud environment.
“Companies opted for private cloud because of security concerns. But that is changing. No longer are people worried about security on public cloud. Companies are adopting it and they are looking at what applications can be put on public cloud. The savings there are phenomenal,” he said.
Talking about the change in trends, he said, “Today conversation has shifted from security but to how can companies shift more apps to public cloud. Can an end user log into an app in-house (private cloud) and need not log in again into an app running on public cloud…so single sign on for both, that is hybrid cloud.”
Sounding confident of the adoption of the cloud model, he said, “Companies are not entirely moving to public cloud. They still want some apps running in-house. But private cloud alone will not grow. That is why the trend is Hybrid. In the next two years every thing will be on Hybrid.”
Hybrid means the ability to have a choice to run certain apps in-house my data center and run certain apps on a public could without having to loose control on any of them, he explained.
Windows Azure is seeing a 300 per cent growth rate and has over 15,000 customers in India, adding over 2,000 new India customers every month.
