Reliance joins Microsoft for cloud computing

Encashing on the growing popularity of cloud computing in India, Microsft India today joined Reliance Communications to offer Infrastructure as a Service (IAAS) to provide virtual hosting service.

The Rs 2,900 crore enterprise Business of Reliance Communications would use Microsoft technology to provide enterprises and small and medium business units in India a variety of enterprise scale IT solutions, applications and servies on the 'pay as you go' model.

Reliance Data Centre, part of the RCom, would provide infrastructure servies such as server hosting, data storage and archival, as well as business applications like e-mail, ERP, workflow automation, document management; IT monitoring and reporting, disaster recovery, firewall services and automatic security updates.

Microsoft India Managing Director Rajan Anandan said Microsoft’s virtualization and management technologies will help Reliance reduce the input costs involved in providing these services. As a result, Reliance will be able to pass the cost benefits to its customers. Furthermore, with 'Reliance Cloud Computing Services' available on the pay-as-you-go model, businesses (both large and small) will be able to address their technology requirements without bearing costs involved in procuring, deploying and maintaining additional IT resources.

George Varghese, President of the Enterprise Business of RCom, said the division had been growing at 15 per cent quarter on quarter basis and over the last few months saw several large companies shifting both capital expenditure and operational expenditure on IT to data centres.

Serving more than 700 corporate clients in its nine data centres spread across 6.5 lakh sq ft area in nine locations, Reliance Data Centre was the most perfect target for hosting the IAAS platform, said Anandan.

''Leveraging Microsoft’s cutting edge technologies, Reliance Data Centre will deliver access to enterprise-class scalable, secure and reliable hosted IT infrastructure to help large, mid-sized and SMB companies leverage cloud computing technologies to drive business benefits. This is part of our long term vision to continuously provide the latest and best technology to our customers, so that they always enjoy a business edge against their competitors,'' Varghese said.

Today, 35 million business owners in India spend a mere 0.4 to three per cent of their total revenues on IT. Despite increasing capacity and technology requirements - high upfront costs involved in procuring and deploying IT infrastructure, and overall need for cash flows has been cited as a deterrent to technology penetration, especially in case of SMBs in India.

However, increasing awareness around the relevance and advantage of hosted solutions is changing this scenario.

''Hosted IT offerings are a cost effective model for provisioning processes, applications and services while making IT management easier and more responsive to business needs. We believe businesses have matured in their IT strategies and are now ready to explore hosted infrastructure as an option not only for short term scalability needs but also longer term requirements,'' added Mr Varghese.

In fact, according to a recent Gartner report - technology adopters are expected to purchase 40 per cent of their IT infrastructure 'as a service' by 2011.

Anandan said ''We believe that the world of technology will never be only-cloud or only in-premise. The best customer value will be delivered as a combination, and Reliance Communications represents this. By combining the best of software with the best of cloud-based services, Microsoft can deliver more compelling solutions for businesses of all sizes. Today, Microsoft is delighted to empower Reliance with the ability to offer an innovative and affordable business solution for their customers.'' Using Microsoft’s Dynamic Data Centre toolkit (an end-to-end guidance for leveraging virtualisation infrastructure of Windows Server 2008 R2/ Hyper-V coupled with System Center to create managed services and partner hosted cloud offerings), Reliance is taking the lead in making cloud computing a reality for businesses in India.

The benefits to end customers will include cost reduction, cash flow improvement, pay per use (instead of upfront capex), better time to market, high quality managed services at fraction of cost, 24x7 accessibility from anywhere in the world, no need for high end IT skill sets, unlimited scalability, focus on their core business and hence essentially peace of mind.