Microsoft to log on to Pune with data centre

The company will also roll out a special Cloud Accelerated Program for the country.

Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman of Microsoft India, announced the setting up of the centre at the second Azure conference in Pune on Wednesday.

Refusing to divulge investment details and physical location of the Pune data centre, Pramanik said all three data centres in the country would be owned by the company. He had during the course of his dialogue had earlier said the data centres of the company were as big as a “rugby field”.

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According to Pramanik, the Azure cloud computing platform of Microsoft has the highest market share in the sector. In lieu of its expansion policy, the company would be targeting the government sector, the banking finance services and insurance sector and public sector undertakings. The cloud computing platform will be the growth driver for the company for the next 25 years. The cloud platform, Pramanik said, was transforming the company’s image as a productivity company.

“A year back, Microsoft had eight data centres and by the end of this year we will have 19 data centres across the country. This will include three in India, two in Australia, one each in Japan and China,” he said.

About Microsoft’s decision to open data centres in India, Pramanik said it would address the concerns of data sovereignty. “Once the data centres are operational in India, all concerns about data sovereignty will be addressed. Cloud managed systems will be helpful in government’s initiatives of Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile (JAM) numbers,” he said.

The data centres of Microsoft, including the one in Pune, claim to have met all security and privacy concerns. “Our data centres are ISO 2018 certified and are the only ones to do so. These are the only data centres to be so certified and it takes care of much privacy-related concerns,” he said. The cloud accelerator programme will have a three-fold drive — awareness, adoption and strategy & blue-printing.

The Pune conference had 1,500 Azure users and developers in attendance while a total of 4,000 applications were received. This was the second such conference being held in the country with the previous one being held in Bangalore last year.