Microsoft unveils fourth data center in India – Technology

NEW DELHI: Microsoft Corp unveiled its fourth data center in India on Monday, betting on rising digital consumption in one of its fastest growing markets.

Microsoft India director Anant Maheshwari said the company was making long-term investments in the country, although he declined to confirm local media reports of a $2 billion price tag for the last center.

“A public cloud data center is not a one-time investment, it’s an ongoing investment that we have,” Maheshwari told Reuters. “Over the past two years, we have doubled the capacity of the three existing data centers.”

India’s overall market for public cloud services is expected to reach $10.8 billion by 2025, according to research firm IDC.

The Indian government has pushed foreign tech companies to store more of their data locally, a move seen as an attempt by New Delhi to gain stricter oversight of Big Tech companies.

Maheshwari said Microsoft was continuing to increase its workforce in India from the current 18,000 “both during the pandemic and in the future”.

“We already serve over 340,000 businesses in the country,” Maheshwari said.

The new data center is located in the state of Telangana in southern India.

The company’s business model, which relies on partners building additional services on top of its cloud platform, Azure, has generated approximately $10 billion in business over the past five years , Maheshwari said.

Competitors join the race in India. Main rival Amazon announced at the end of 2020 that it would spend $2.8 billion to build its second data center in the country, while the Adani Group last year announced plans to build six data center parks. Across the country.