Microsoft to Expand Data Center Offering in India
Tech giant Microsoft said on Monday it plans to establish its largest India data center region in Hyderabad, Telangana, while the first phase is expected to be operational by 2025.
Since last year, some reports indicate that the company has been considering developing a facility in the area – where it already has a large Development Centre. In 2015, Microsoft opened three Indian cloud regions in Pune (Central India), Chennai (South India), and Mumbai (West India).
The Data Center Dynamics website says that in December 2021, Microsoft added three availability zones (three unique physically separated locations or ‘zones’ to provide higher availability, redundancy, and disaster recovery protection) in the India Central region in Pune.
This is the only Indian Azure region with availability zones.
It is worth mentioning that Hyderabad is Microsoft’s most prominent investment project in the country, with the highest number of employees after its headquarters in Redmond, US. Without sharing specific investment figures, Anant Maheshwari, president of Microsoft India, said it will be an “ongoing investment process which will expand.”
According to the software developer, this strategic investment is “aligned with its commitment to help customers flourish in a cloud and artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled digital economy and will become part of the world’s largest cloud infrastructure.”
In parallel with the announcement, customer demand for cloud-as-a-platform for digital transformation is increasing in India.
Microsoft data center regions in India contributed $9.5 billion in revenue to the economy between 2016 and 2020, according to International Data Corporation (IDC). Beyond GDP impact, the IDC report estimated 1.5 million jobs were added to the economy, including 169,000 new skilled IT jobs.
The Hyderabad data center region will be an addition to the existing network of three areas in India across Chennai, Pune, and Mumbai.
It will offer the entire Microsoft portfolio across the cloud, AI, data solutions, productivity tools, and customer relationship management (CRM) with advanced data security for enterprises, startups, developers, education, and government institutions.
“Cloud services are poised to play a critical role in reimagining the future of business and governance and enabling overall inclusion in the country.
The new data center will augment Microsoft’s cloud capabilities and support those working across the country. It will also help new entrepreneurial opportunities while meeting critical security and compliance needs.”
Last December, Microsoft launched Azure Availability Zones (Separate locations within each Azure region that are tolerant to local failures), in its Central India data center region to provide additional resilience options for customers’ cloud applications.
Azure Availability Zones are separated data centers with independent power sources, networks, and cooling.