Chasing after Amazon and Microsoft, Google is now also planning to setup data centers and expand its cloud services to developers and enterprise organisations in India. Announced today at an event in San Francisco, the company plans to expand its cloud regions and setup a data center in Mumbai by 2017 — its first in the country.
With more than a billion end users, Alphabet-owned Google has gained significant traction from developers in India, as well as across the world. This announcement is part of the company’s global strategy to tap eight more locations and setup one new cloud region in each every month. It hasn’t dispensed any details regarding the investments it will make to setup the new data centers.
In India, this expansion strategy will not only cater to a large number of customers but gain acceptance from government and financial service industry — who’re weary of data being transmitted outside the country. Also, having a data center in the country will reduce latency and make Google Cloud Platform services even faster. This will motivate enterprises to drop other services and opt for Google as their partner.
Commenting on the expansion plans, Brian Stevens, VP at Google Cloud, says,
By expanding to new regions, we deliver higher performance to customers. In fact, our recent expansion in Oregon resulted in up to 80% improvement in latency for customers. We look forward to welcoming customers to our new Cloud Regions as they become publicly available throughout 2017.
This announcement by Google not only reiterates the company’s focus and commitment towards India, but also adds fuel to the already heated up competition.
Google is the next American technology giant to join the ranks of Amazon, Microsoft and Digital Ocean to setup a regional cloud data in the country. Amazon has recently announced the expansion of its cloud-computing platform to India with the launch of its first data center location in Mumbai. And, Digital Ocean, one of the largest cloud service providers in America, has also joined the party with its currently operational region in Bengaluru.
In the official release, the company adds that the ‘Google Cloud’ service is currently being employed by key global customers including the likes of Snap Inc(formerly SnapChat), Niantic Labs (the creators of Pokemon Go), Telus International, and Evernote. It also cites the example of thousands of Indian enterprise customers, including major brands like Wipro, Ashok Leyland, Smartshift by Mahindra & Mahindra, who’re building products on their cloud platform.
In India, the Internet scene has started to take off, there are startups, Reliance is putting up a huge network, I think its called Jio. Clearly with that there will be more Internet to everybody and so therefore more ecommerce and more opportunities be it business to business or business to customer,
tells Urs Hölzle, senior VP for technical infrastructure at Google to ET.
This announcement also comes at the heels of reorganisation of Google’s own cloud portfolio. The new ‘Google Cloud’ service clumps together the vast cloud infrastructure, Android, and Pixel hardware products and also brings alongwith the rebranded ‘Google Apps for Work’.
The company has recently also launched ‘India-specific’ initiatives to further push its services into the hands of the users. It has launched a toned-down ‘offline-first’ version of its video streaming service called ‘YouTube Go’, along with plans for expansion of free Wi-Fi hotspots to major public places around the world under the ‘Google Station’ moniker.
