Adoption of cloud computing gaining ground in India, SMEs keen to tap opportunities to push growth

By Songbedna Bauri: As cloud computing is slowly emerging as a buzz word for India Inc, even the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are keen to tap this opportunity to push their growth amid the global economic meltdown.

This technology is fast gaining ground in India as it comes with the proposition of having easy access to powerful IT solutions with low cost of infrastructure and no or negligible maintenance. The technology also allows storage of data besides access to software on pay-per-use model, which proves helpful for firms to reduce costs.

This is also one of the major reasons why Centre is aiming to create a new policy framework for cloud computing to enhance the adoption of this platform in India. The move will definitely widen the market opportunity for the start-ups which offer cloud services and also at the same time cut IT operations cost for the SMEs in different industries.

While speaking to SME News about the growing importance of clod computing. T Vasu, president of ELCINA Electronic Industries Association of India, said, “Cloud computing is a very important and helpful technology for big companies and SMEs both. It helps bring volumes for manufacturing and at the same time creates plenty of job opportunities. It is a good decision on government's part to develop a new policy framework to strengthen its presence. This move will surely benefit the SMEs in a major way.”

Recently, Minister for Communications and IT Kapil Sibal stated that the Indian government would partner with the industry and academia for developing a secure and also progressive ecosystem for cloud. To a large extent, the new policy will prove beneficial for the SMEs in bringing down their IT infrastructure costs.

It is also driving many of the key IT players like IBM and SAP to make significant investment in developing cloud infrastructure and capabilities with the aim to tap the growing SME sector in India.

Recently, the national IT committee of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) teamed up with the central government to expand the reach of IT and also familiarise cloud computing among the SMEs of West Bengal. Industry body ASSOCHAM said that West Bengal is one of the leading state that creates maximum number of jobs in SME sector. The sector created more than 43,000 jobs between April 2011 and up to February 15, 2012.

Meanwhile, global auditing firm KPMG has said that the global cloud industry will grow by $2.2bn by the end of 2012. The cloud market, which was worth $12.3 billion worldwide last year, will become $14.5 bn before the end of this year.
It is believed that the global economic slowdown coupled with the tight IT budget is creating the demand for cloud computing services across the globe.

Hence, it is time for Indian government to focus on stepping up the adoption of cloud computing, especially for e-governance projects, by offering incentives to cloud players. This will help Indian firms to develop an effective cloud ecosystem.