Microsoft cloud services now available from local datacenters in India

Microsoft CEO @satyanadella says they are all set to announce availability of cloud services operated out of India from next week.

— Nandagopal Rajan (@nandu79) September 27, 2015

Microsoft’s Azure cloud services will be available starting today, with Office 365 services being rolled out in October and Dynamics CRM online services being made available in the first half of 2016.

Microsoft’s presentation focused on openness and flexibility of its cloud services and the ability to create hybrid cloud with client’s own cloud on top of Azure cloud platform. With public data and local cloud, the latency will be reduced significantly and will help faster development of cloud-based services.

“The Microsoft cloud in India will transform the way computing is done in the country. The hyper-scale cloud will empower governments, businesses and users and offer enough computing power that will support all their existing workloads,” said Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman, Microsoft India in a press statement.

Microsoft’s local datacenters are located in Pune, Mumbai and Chennai and will help Indian clients deliver faster services to their consumers

Microsoft says it has over 100 datacenters worldwide and with three local datacenters, Indian customers can develop, scale and enable services faster than before.

With no proper framework or compliance being laid out in India, Microsoft says its cloud services adhere to international standards like ISO 27001 standards. It also complies with HIPAA regulation and is being audited under SOC 1 and SOC 2 standard. Microsoft says it has also added PCI DSS compliance to enable safer banking and credit card transactions.

Speaking to IndianExpress.com, Microsoft’s Tyler Bryson said the company’s cloud services don’t have any lock-ins and customers data will be deleted within 180 days from the time of request. He added, the local datacentres will help Indian startups validate and deliver their services at a faster pace than it was previously possible.  He also spoke about Microsoft’s IoT services being used by Honeywell to develop smart solutions.

The biggest beneficiaries of local cloud services would be the regulated industries such as BFSI, government departments and state-owned enterprises, which can now take advantage of local data residency.

Microsoft has clearly specified that data from computing and cloud services will be shared with government organisations upon request.