Cloud services could act as saviour for smaller firms, helping keep their cost of IT infrastructure to a minimum.
According to experts, infrastructure services on pay-as-you-go basis, termed Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), is set to take off faster in India than other cloud computing services.
Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby computers are provided shared resources, software, and information are on demand.
In IaaS, an organisation outsources the equipment used to support operations, including storage, hardware, servers and networking components. The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible for housing, running and maintaining it. The client typically pays on a per-use basis.
The cloud computing market in India is currently very small, about $200 million estimates Milan Sheth, a researcher at Ernst & Young India. But the potential for this service in India is huge.
“Today the largest spenders on IT in India are the government, PSUs, BFSI and telecom sectors. Together, they account for three-fourths of IT spending. There are a few pilots currently on, and interest in cloud computing is huge. We expect that by 2012-13 about 10% of the $25 billion IT spending in India — or $2.5 billion — will be spent on cloud related projects,” Sheth told DNA.
In India, half of IT expenditure of smaller firms is hardware-specific. This is why IaaS will see faster uptake than other categories of cloud computing such as software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS).
Internet service providers (ISPs) and third-party data centre providers in India are actively positioning themselves for offering IaaS. Among them are Sify, Bharti Airtel, Trimax, Hathway Cables and NetMagic.
“ISPs own and operate many of the larger data centres. Telecom ISPs have invested substantially in bandwidth creation, and currently, the market has excess bandwidth capacity,” wrote Sheth, in his report ‘Cloud Adoption in India’, published this month. The report followed a survey by E&Y India that revealed 81% of respondents were aware of IaaS while 67% were aware of SaaS and 41% aware of PaaS.
“Even at its current stage of maturity, cloud IaaS is a viable proposition for most enterprises in the SMB (small and medium business) segment. Cloud IaaS services give SMBs access to technologies they would otherwise not be able to afford. The low lead time of cloud IaaS to deployment and scalability also negates technology barriers to growth,” Sheth wrote.
Sensing increased interest in cloud services, providers have started awareness programmes for companies. “Infrastructure providers of the cloud such as VMWare, NetApp and IBM have crystallised offerings for the private cloud, and have taken proactive steps in educating the consumer on the benefits of cloud IaaS services,” Sheth said.
Meanwhile the SaaS side too is seeing vendors line up their cloud offerings. For instance Tata Consultancy Services, plans to launch a new cloud project by mid-September to make IT affordable to smaller firms.
US-based Computer Associates has made its project management software available on a pay-per-use format. SAP, which makes enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, has recently launched SAP ByDesign, an on-demand ERP service targetting smaller businesses across the world.
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