New Delhi The blockchain and crypto community may be promoting the idea of a decentralized and serverless Internet, but Microsoft is not surprised. In an interview, Microsoft India Chief Operating Officer, Rajeev Sodhi shares his thoughts on the importance of the third generation of Internet (Web3), how 2021 shaped the cloud ecosystem in India and how the tech major has to optimize its strategy. is changing. Indian rules. Edited excerpt:
How did the cloud ecosystem shape up in 2021?
The public cloud services market (in India) was estimated to be around $3.5 billion in 2020, and is expected to reach $10 billion by 2025. This is a very strong growth. Moreover, it is no longer just a thing of the past in the IT and technology industry and some other pockets. What you’re seeing now is adoption across the board. The second big trend is about hybrid work. This is causing a fundamental shift in not only where we work and what kind of work we do, but why we do it. We are also seeing growth in citizen developers. This is a big trend where the cloud will again play a central role. At the end of the day, this whole need for innovation and digital transformation is creating an enormous need to build applications. In fact, over 500 million applications will be created in the next five years. So, you’ll see that most citizen developer platforms—low code and no code platforms—make it essential to their businesses, without necessarily getting into a lot of coding or technicalities.
How have your cloud services evolved? What can we expect in the future?
In the end, Microsoft is a platform company. We always build the platform on which other companies build their innovations. So, when Microsoft started out as a company, the platform was Windows. Today, it’s Azure. We’ve actually brought that thinking to the cloud world as well. And, Teams is the newest platform, not just Azure. It is not just an application or an offering for remote meetings, it is fast becoming the user interface (UI) for the enterprise.
As people use Teams to connect with colleagues, it is also becoming a framework where your applications can live, so that you can use the same UI not only to collaborate and work with your colleagues but also use the application without leaving the interface. We certainly see a trend of collaborative applications coming in as we move forward.
Are you changing your strategy based on regulatory steps in India?
We work closely not only with global standards, but also with local governments. We make sure that we are in compliance with the country we are operating in, and of course India. We were the first cloud provider to receive the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology certification. The key is to provide transparency in how you’re dealing with the various regulations – that’s where the Trust Center plays a role.
How Will Microsoft Services Evolve for the Web3 Ecosystem?
We continue to invest in the platform. Web3 is going to have a significant impact. Blockchain and crypto will play an important role. The new set of open protocols and services being developed will be instrumental in how Web3 ultimately shapes up.
We aim to make sure that as innovations happen, we provide it on our platform.
Does the concept of decentralization for Web3 bother you?
I’d say it’s perfectly fine. If you look at our approach to the way we work with our customers, we’ve always said it’s about Intelligent Cloud and Intelligent Edge. As we all know, devices are proliferating, be it IoT, be it edge-on edge computing market is growing very fast. There’s going to be a play in 5G. But as it becomes decentralized, one thing we’ve learned is that data has gravity – computing is going to go wherever data is presented, which is clearly an edge.
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