The rapid evolution of processing power, storage technologies and availability of high quality broadband speed and big data have enabled the realization of a new computing model called cloud computing. In cloud computing, resources such as computing power & infrastructure, application platforms, and business processes are provided through the internet as general utilities to users in an on-demand fashion. A consumer can access and use these resources and services from anywhere and anytime through internet connection. The end user may not be aware of the equipment that is being used to provide him this service. Business enterprises are now increasingly seeking to reshape their business models to gain benefits from this new paradigm of resource sharing.
The use of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS has been evolving and becoming popular during the past years. Cloud server technologies to grow include fatter servers that allow larger instances or more virtual machines (VMs) per server; in-memory database instances with as much as 2 TB DRAM and remote direct access memory (RDMA) over Ethernet.
By 2022, cloud IT infrastructure spending is expected to be $300 billion, growing at 24 percent annually. The Asia Pacific region, which includes India is expected to grow at a massive 27.2 percent in this time period. The Cloud Infrastructure as a Service market is expected to be worth $209.66 billion by 2022, growing at 12.9 percent.
In India, Cloud Computing offers huge potential for industries to grow and is opening up new windows of opportunities. Verticals such as retail, railways, manufacturing, banking, education and healthcare have started switching their on-premise applications to cloud services for optimised reach and performance as well as elasticity and scalability.
Revenue of public cloud services was driven by high rates of growth in key market segments, cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS), cloud management and security services and cloud application infrastructure platform as a service (PaaS). IaaS made the largest contribution as the spending was estimated to be $104.8 million.
The overall cloud computing market reached $ 1.08 billion by the end of 2015. IT/ITeS, Telecom, BFSI, Manufacturing and Government sectors contributed largest to the cloud market in India, with nearly 78% of the total market.
The accelerated penetration of smart city technologies will drive up demand for Internet of Things (IoT) devices to 1.6 billion units next year, up 39 percent from this year, according to research firm Gartner. It also predicts that smart homes will take 21 percent of total demand for IoT devices in 2016 and will record rapid growth in the next five years. This will proportionally boost up the cloud services.
The public cloud service market in India will grow from $ 838 Million in 2015 to $ 1.9 billion by 2018. According to the TechSci Research report, “India Cloud Computing Market Forecast and Opportunities, 2020”, the cloud services market in India is forecasted to grow at over a CAGR of 22% during 2015-2020. Rising availability of cloud services at economical price models and the ease of implementation are the major growth drivers for cloud services in India.
Increased government expenditure on new e-governance projects based on cloud technology, National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) and various e-governance portals, coupled with new governmental programmes like Digital India is expected to drive the market for cloud computing. Overall ranked 8th, in the world, India’s cloud services market has generated interest among the technology leaders and optimistic predictions for the future.