Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has announced that Microsoft will start offering its commercial cloud services, Azure and Office 365 via local data centers in India by the end of 2015. The company claims this move will benefit organizations in the country adopting its technologies, by providing them with data sovereignty, lower latency and geo redundancy. Currently, Microsoft partners in India include system integrators (SIs) like HCL Infosystems, Wipro and TCS, and independent software vendors (ISVs) such as Newgen Software Technologies, MartJack and Nucleus software which build cloud offerings using Microsoft Azure and Office 365. Other customers of the company such as Fortis Hospitals, Bajaj Finance and FCB/ULKA also adopt its cloud technologies for their solutions. Overall, the company said the number of partners adopting its cloud solution has increased by more than 200% while the number of ISV applications had grown by 100%. By localising data centres, Microsoft hopes to further drive the adoption of its cloud services in the country, which it claims have grown over 100% in revenue over the past year. The company, which claims to have over 10,000 partners in the country comprised of independent software vendors, hosters, system integrators and others, will now offer a Cloud Accelerator program to support its customers at different stages of adoption. The company also offers various other programs and initiative to encourage adoption of its cloud technologies such as the BizSpark initiative which gives startups three years of free software, support and ‘visibility’ and the BizSpark+ initiative which offers…
