Some of the newest reports in the tech industry show that legacy operating system vendor Microsoft is opening its fourth data center in India.
Rumors of a $2 billion price tag surround this project, which Microsoft India head Anant Maheshwari called a “continuous investment” pointing out that the company doubled Microsoft capacity in India over the past two years.
Amid efforts to store more data locally, Microsoft infrastructure in India has been able to serve 340,000 companies with a workforce of over 18,000 there.
All of this serves a public cloud service market in India estimated at $10.8 billion, against a global estimate of $325 billion.
It brings Microsoft’s number of data centers worldwide up to 16, something that only a top tech company can accomplish. Microsoft’s cloud services are the main rival to Amazon’s AWS empire, and now, MS Azure and related services are powering all sorts of business.
Others are also getting into the mix, though.
“Competitors are joining the race in India,” writes Munsif Vengattil in New Delhi for Reuters. “Key rival Amazon announced in late 2020 it would spend $2.8 billion to build its second data centre in the country, while Adani Group last year announced plans to build six data centre parks across the country.”
Microsoft, meanwhile, is also creating partnerships with top Indian firms.
“In October, it was reported that Tata Group would invest about USD 2 billion in its much-awaited super app—a one-stop-shop for its consumer services, including healthcare and e-pharmacy, food and grocery, fashion and jewelry, hotel bookings, consumer electronics, payments, and financial services,” wrote an analyst last December, talking about MS and Tata at the comference table. “Dubbed TataNeu, the app is likely to be rolled out early next year after being delayed multiple times already.”
Look for more as the global tech market evolves.