The Incredible India Cloud

To most who watch the cloud computing space telling you that there is an incredible amount of interest in Cloud Computing is rather obvious. Often times you'll hear me talking about the opportunities from the pacific rim nations or the other various emerging economies around the globe. So the fact that interest in cloud computing is exploding in India shouldn't come as a surprise, or should it?

India is an interesting place for technology, it's a country that has a population just slightly smaller than that of China making it the second-most populous country with approximately 1.17 billion people (estimate for July, 2009 according to wikipedia). Statically the country consists of more than one-sixth of the world's population and has more than two thousand ethnic groups. Or to put it another way, India occupies 2.4% of the world's land area and supports over 17.5% of the world's population. So like other high growth markets, India's rapid economic rise is based mostly on their massive population base and diversity.

Which brings us to Cloud Computing in India. One of the side effects of the CloudCamp series of events is within it's ability to provide the pulse of the emergent cloud computing opportunties from around the globe with India currently leading the charge with a series of events happening this week in India.

Currently underway, the CloudCamp India Tour features five CloudCamp events over the next eight days from a variety of the largest cities in India, illustrating the the growth of the movement in one of the largest technology communities in the world.

To give a little background, in recent posts on both ReadWriteWeb and the Janakiram blog outline the challenges and opportunity perfectly. Janakiram MSV (yes, that's his name) who works with Alcatel Lucent as Deputy General Manager, Bell Labs-India makes some great points about why India is poised for significant growth in his post about the battle ahead in the cloud computing market. Saying:

"Indian Subcontinent is a very unique and a potent geography for platform vendors. The reason for that is the presence of an end to end IT ecosystem.

1) India hasn’t hit the saturation levels yet. Unlike Americas and EMEA, India and APAC have ample scope for IT adoption. This market has a huge, untapped potential at every level – Let that be enterprise, Public Sector or ITES.

2) India is a playground and a test bed to pilot strategic adoption techniques. No other geography will give the platform vendor access to the whole ecosystem. Want to engage with ISVs and excite them to develop on your platform? Well, India is the place to go. Do you need a mature developer community to pilot a SDK adoption plan? Want to setup a Center of Excellence to showcase the capabilities of your platform? Go, talk to Infosys or Wipro!

3) The Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) story is just warming up. Some of the inherent problems that India has been grappling with can now turn into a great opportunity for Cloud vendors. Think of how you can empower the clusters of small businesses through the Cloud and you have a winning story there. Convince the academic institutes to subscribe to Cloud Services that provide student / teacher / parent collaboration on subscription. Read CK Prahlad’s ‘The Fortune At The Bottom Of The Pyramid’ to realize the potential that the Indian SME and the consumer has."

For those of you in India please make sure to attend an upcoming CloudCamp and be part of the incredible Indian Cloud opportunity.

CloudCamp Tour, India

February 20, 2010 in Delhi, India

February 23, 2010 in Chennai, India

February 25, 2010 in Hyderabad, India

February 27, 2010 in Pune, India

February 28, 2010 in Bangalore, India