AWS upbeat on India market, sees massive headroom for growth

Las Vegas: Within days of announcing mega investments for building in Hyderabad its second data centre cluster in India, Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Monday said it is excited about the India market, where cloud adoption offers massive headroom for growth.

Pledging its long-term commitment to the India market, AWS, Amazon's cloud computing unit, said it expects global uncertainties to accelerate the decisions by companies to opt for flexible, on-demand cloud infrastructure to pare costs, gain efficiencies and drive business innovation.

"Cloud reacts well to uncertainty," Puneet Chandok, President – Commercial Business, AWS India and South Asia, Amazon Internet Services Pvt Ltd (AISPL) told PTI.

Chandok, while speaking on the sidelines of AWS' annual flagship event 're:Invent 2022' explained that in times of slowdown, cloud technology offers flexibility as compared to conventional models where businesses own their entire IT infrastructure.

"That is the reason we see demand like never before for India," he said.

The comment comes at a time when choppy global economic environment has prompted market commentators to flash warnings, and large global companies are bracing against an imminent recession.

"When times are good for startups, they start building on innovation and for that they need tech and cloud. When times are tough, they still need technology and cloud because of lower costs and pay per use model," Chandok said, adding that cloud model helps companies get rid of "technical debt or technical legacy" issues typically associated with owning and managing computing infrastructure.

While traditionally, insurance, and media and entertainment verticals in India have been quick to adopt cloud, now banks, manufacturing companies, fintech, healthtech and gametech too are increasing opting for cloud services. It is early days yet and cloud penetration is in low single digit, he pointed out.

"We are excited for India...just the runway that we have in India, in terms of small and medium businesses, we have the third largest startup ecosystem in the world, some of the largest digital businesses are being built...there is no market today like India, and the demand and headroom for growth is massive," Chandok added.

Put simply, cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of IT resources over the Internet with pay-as-you-go pricing. Rather than buying, owning, and maintaining physical data centres and servers, businesses can access technology services, such as computing power, storage, and databases, on an as-needed basis from a cloud provider like AWS.

Last week, AWS announced an investment of USD 4.4 billion (about Rs 36,300 crore) by 2030 in building in Hyderabad its second data centre cluster in India.

The AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) region will provide developers, startups, and companies among others with more options to "run workloads with greater resilience and availability, securely store data in India, and serve end users with lower latency", the company had said in a recent statement.

AWS already has a similar facility in Mumbai, which opened in 2016.

"Hundreds of thousands of customers in India, including Acko General Insurance, Axis Bank, Clevertap, Digital India Corporation (MeitY), Dr Reddy's Laboratories, Government of Telangana, HDFC Bank, Jupiter, Lendingkart, National Skill Development Corporation, PhysicsWallah, and Tata Elxsi are innovating on AWS," the AWS statement had said.

The launch of the AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region will enable local customers with data residency preferences to store data securely in India, while providing customers with even lower latency across the country.

Meanwhile, IT major Wipro Ltd on Monday announced the launch of its new `Skills Guild' with AWS. AWS Skills Guild is an enablement program for large enterprises to build cloud skills through integrated delivery of AWS learning opportunities.

AWS Skills Guild will transform the way Wipro employees engage with clients, helping drive optimal business outcomes from comprehensive AWS Cloud training, the statement said.

"The need for upskilling and training is more important today than ever. Despite the economic downturn, the demand for technical jobs continues to grow," Andrew Sklar, Director of AWS Training and Certification - Sales and Delivery in Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) said.

In a separate release, AWS announced it will be water positive by 2030, returning more water to communities than it uses in its direct operations.

Its four key strategies in pursuit of becoming water positive by 2030 includes improving water efficiency, using sustainable water sources, returning water for community reuse, and supporting water replenishment projects.

"In India, AWS continues to support water replenishment projects with nonprofit WaterAid that include rainwater harvesting, groundwater recharge, and piped water installations in communities in Andhra Pradesh and Hyderabad, Telangana.

"This collaboration has resulted in nearly 650 million litres of water provided annually to communities and schools through 420 water point installations, 126 rainwater harvesting projects, and 120 groundwater recharge structures," the release said.