Amazon reaches the cloud to shower start-ups with data

One of the world’s biggest providers of cloud computing services in the world, Amazon Web Services (AWS), launched two data centres in Mumbai on Tuesday.

The new AWS Mumbai Region consists of two separate Availability Zones, data centres in distinct locations within a single region that can function independently.

The online e-commerce behemoth’s cloud computing arm would be taking on the likes of Microsoft and IBM to provide services to companies, from budding start-ups to industry giants such as Tata Motors and Infosys. AWS posted $7.8 billion in global net sales and $1.8 bn in operating profit last year.

The company said it had built a strong base of 75,000 customers in India and would both expand and target start-ups. “Indian start-ups and enterprises have been using AWS for many years,” said Andy Jassy, chief executive officer (CEO).  

Adding: “These same 75,000 Indian customers, along with others anxious to start using AWS, have asked for an AWS India Region so they can move their applications that require low latency and data sovereignty. We’re excited to make this available today, with the same pay-as-you-go pricing, ability to get started immediately without having to negotiate enterprise agreements or wait days for access, and unmatched functionality that customers enjoy in AWS Regions worldwide. All of which allows customers to go from idea to launch faster than ever before was possible.”

According to AWS, there are a lot of advantages of having data centres in the country, as cloud services for users would be much faster. Most of India’s AWS customers were till now using the Singapore data centre to run their operations. The company hopes to bag more clients in the segments of banking, financial services & insurance (BFSI), information technology (IT) and government contracts.

Since its founding in 2006, AWS has changed the way many organisations acquire and manage IT. It has more than a million active customers worldwide, and 70-odd services across computing, storage, data bases, analytics, networking, messaging, machine learning, mobiles, IoT, and applications.

The Mumbai Region data centre would be the sixth in the Asia- Pacific. The company has around 35 such centres across 13 regions globally. Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of the global marketplace giant recently said the company would be investing $5 billion in India.

Some of the others active in India in this segment are Microsoft, IBM, and Netmagic (owned by Japan's NTT Communications).

Tata Motors, this country's largest automobile maker, says most of its operations are on AWS.

“We have been working with AWS since 2012, steadily moving workloads to the cloud, such as test and development environments for our core enterprise systems. Werun one of the largest CRM-based dealer management implementations in the world on AWS, and many other applications,” said Jagdish Belwal, information head at Tata Motors.