My attention came to this topic with the media attention on government requirements for various social media websites needing to have their cloud servers within the native country
This was further reinforced when some of the internet giants who wanted to enter into digital payments were not authorised by the governments citing that their cloud servers that store all the data are not located in the country.
Further, we had the RBI (Reserve Bank of India) mandating all the banks that all their transactions have to be stored in cloud servers located within the country.
So, what are cloud servers and why this sudden hype on their localisation?
I remember the first time computerisation happened in our office about 20 years ago. You had this bigger machine kept in an ac room where all the data got stored. Since we didn’t have internet or other means of connectivity those days every day there was a backup taken on a different magnetic tape and a data file, which used to get send to Head Office. Over a period of few years, the servers were linked to the main server in HO through VSAT etc. that halted the backup being taken on tapes and the daily manual sending of data to the Head Office.
But each company had their own servers and a team of people to manage the whole process…
With the improvement in internet speed, this is where Cloud servers came in…
With cloud servers, there was no need for each company to maintain their own servers and teams. There were specialised companies who had built huge servers which would take care of all your requirements freeing up space and manpower for you and helping you focus on your core competency
We are today used to having an app for everything and multiple app options for anything and everything that you want to do.
The same is happening because anyone and everyone can buy his own space in a cloud server service run by anyone…
We also have companies like an Uber or a big basket who are just internet based service providers thriving and easily able to cater to increased load with ease as they can keep on increasing their server demands as their business increases…
Therefore, cloud servers refers to saving data to an off-site storage system maintained by a third party. Instead of storing information to your computer’s hard drive or other local storage device, you save it to a remote database. The Internet provides the connection between your computer and the database.
We all use cloud servers on a daily basis:
· When we use an email service from Google or Yahoo
· When we upload or watch video on YouTube
· When we share or make friends in any of the social media apps like Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn
· When you search for anything using Google search
So, what are the basic advantages of cloud servers… i.e. what advantage we have while using a Gmail service for example
· Can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection
· Is stable and data isolated from any issues that happen to your hardware device
· Storage can be scaled up as per your requirement
India alone is seeing a huge market arise for cloud companies in and is only set to grow even further… Some examples of existing companies are:
1. Business Process as a Service…(BPaas)
As best example of the same is bill payment services. The present revenue in India is around 129 million dollars.
2. Platform as a service (Paas)
The best example for this service are the backend of the apps that are running on our mobile. The present revenue of this service in India is 191 million dollars.
3. Software as a service(Saas)
The best example of this service are front-end apps like Uber and You Tube. The present revenue of this service in India is 932 million dollars.
4. Cloud management and security services
These provide security systems. The present Indian revenue from this service is 201 million dollars.
5. Infrastructure as a service (Iaas)
All server and storage services come under this category. The present Indian revenue is 1008 million dollars.
So, what are the reasons for the anticipated huge growth in cloud services in India?
1. Government push for data localisation
2. Better economics of scale…pay as you use models
Billing options include 40ps per hour for 0.5GB of cloud space and billing is done in seconds and sometimes even in milliseconds.
This has led to 40 GB of hard disk space, 1 GB of memory one processor and 1TB of data transfer can be rented for as low as 5 dollars per month
There are also options being provided for differential billing and work allocation during the day. Say for an Uber between 12 midnight and 4 am the requirement is very less and so the workload shifts from taking live orders to analytics purposes.
3. Doubts on reliability, scalability and security put to rest.
4. Start-ups born in the cloud which are gaining scale like Big Basket
5. Brick and Mortar companies moving to cloud to focus on core sectors and to cut costs
6. Government implementing most of its government services onto the cloud
7. Less than 10% of the Indian workload is on cloud… Huge potential for growth…
8. Cloud vendors are providing several value added services like AI, machine learning, sentiment and data analytics and up to 125 such value added services.
So don’t be surprised if you see revenue from cloud services in India for the main providers like IBM, Amazon, Google and Oracle growing substantially in the next few years…
The Cloud has burst and the rains have started
