Wednesday, October 28, 2009

BWI: Reliance Communications Launches ‘Cloud Computing’ Solutions in India on Microsoft Platform

Press release from Business Wire India
Source: Microsoft
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 12:28 PM IST (06:58 AM GMT)
Editors: General: Consumer interest; Business: Advertising, PR & marketing, Business services, Information technology, Telecommunications; Technology
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Reliance Communications Launches 'Cloud Computing' Solutions in India on Microsoft Platform


Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, Wednesday, October 28, 2009 -- (Business Wire India) -- -- Takes the lead in leveraging virtualization & management technologies to deliver cloud computing for large enterprises

-- Offers 'Pay as you go' enterprise class IT infrastructure & reduced IT management hassle for SMBs

-- Reliance Cloud Computing Services to target 35 million businesses

In a move that combines the power of virtualization technology and cloud computing - Reliance Data Center (a part of Reliance Communications) today announced the launch of "Reliance Cloud Computing Services" - hosted infrastructure service for its customers, based on the Microsoft platform.

With this, Reliance will provide enterprises and SMBs in India, access to a variety of enterprise scale IT solutions, applications and services on the pay as you go model. These include infrastructure services such as server hosting, data storage and archival, as well as business applications like e-mail, ERP, workflow automation, document management; IT monitoring and reporting, disaster recovery, firewall services and automatic security updates. Microsoft's virtualization and management technologies will help Reliance reduce the input costs involved in providing these services. As a result, Reliance will be able to pass the cost benefits to its customers. Furthermore, with "Reliance Cloud Computing Services" available on the pay-as-you-go model, businesses (both large and small) will be able to address their technology requirements without bearing costs involved in procuring, deploying and maintaining additional IT resources.

"Leveraging Microsoft's cutting edge technologies, Reliance Data Center will deliver access to enterprise-class scalable, secure and reliable hosted IT infrastructure to help large, midsized and SMB companies leverage cloud computing technologies to drive business benefits. This is part of our long term vision to continuously provide the latest and best technology to our customers, so that they always enjoy a business edge against their competitors", said Mr. George Varghese, President & Head, Enterprise Business, Reliance Communications.

Today, 35 million business owners in India spend a mere 0.4 to 3 percent of their total revenues on IT. Despite increasing capacity and technology requirements - high upfront costs involved in procuring and deploying IT infrastructure, and overall need for cash flows has been cited as a deterrent to technology penetration, especially in case of SMBs in India. However, increasing awareness around the relevance and advantage of hosted solutions is changing this scenario. "Hosted IT offerings are a cost effective model for provisioning processes, applications and services while making IT management easier and more responsive to business needs. We believe businesses have matured in their IT strategies and are now ready to explore hosted infrastructure as an option not only for short term scalability needs but also longer term requirements", added Mr. Varghese. In fact, according to a recent Gartner report - technology adopters are expected to purchase 40% of their IT infrastructure "as a service" by 2011.

Mr. Rajan Anandan - Managing Director, Microsoft India said, "We believe that the world of technology will never be only-cloud or only in-premise. The best customer value will be delivered as a combination, and Reliance Communications represents this. By combining the best of software with the best of cloud-based services, Microsoft can deliver more compelling solutions for businesses of all sizes. Today, Microsoft is delighted to empower Reliance with the ability to offer an innovative and affordable business solution for their customers."

Using Microsoft's Dynamic Data Centre toolkit (an end-to-end guidance for leveraging virtualization infrastructure of Windows Server 2008 R2/ Hyper-V coupled with System Center to create managed services and partner hosted cloud offerings), Reliance is taking the lead in making cloud computing a reality for businesses in India. "Thanks to Microsoft, we can cut down on server sprawl and related capital costs across Reliance data centers - and are geared up to deliver what is arguably India's largest cloud infrastructure today", added Mr. Varghese.

"Microsoft's virtualization and management technologies deliver one of the highest return on investment in the market today. Reliance is betting on Microsoft to deliver the power of cloud computing to customers in India, and this is a true testament to the strong value that Microsoft can deliver", added Mr. Anandan.

'Reliance Cloud Computing Services', targeted towards SMB as well as enterprise customers will essentially involve creation of a central computing + data storage IT infrastructure at the data centre, and then offering the same to multiple end customers as a standardized packaged offerings, accessible through public Internet, on a shared / virtual, pay on usage model.

Various software applications (including mailing, sales force automation, HR automation, logistics, supply chain, ERP, document management, work flow automation, billing, CRM) and underlying IT infrastructure like server computing, data storage and retrieval, disaster recovery, application development platforms and security tools will be offered by us under this banner.

The benefits to end customers will include cost reduction, cash flow improvement, pay per use (instead of upfront capex), better time to market, high quality managed services at fraction of cost, 24*7 accessibility from anywhere in the world, no need for high end IT skill sets, unlimited scalability, focus on their core business and hence essentially peace of mind.

About Reliance Communications

Reliance Communications Limited founded by the late Shri Dhirubhai H Ambani (1932-2002) is the flagship company of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group. The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group currently has a net worth in excess of Rs. 64,000 crore (US$ 13.6 billion), cash flows of Rs. 13,000 crore (US$ 2.8 billion), net profit of Rs. 8,400 crore (US$ 1.8 billion).

Reliance Communications is India's foremost and truly integrated telecommunications service provider. The Company, with a customer base of over 90 million including over 2.5 million individual overseas retail customers, ranks among the Top 5 Telecom companies in the world by number of customers in a single country. Reliance Communications corporate clientele includes 2,100 Indian and multinational corporations, and over 800 global, regional and domestic carriers.

Reliance Communications has established a pan-India, next generation, integrated (wireless and wireline), convergent (voice, data and video) digital network that is capable of supporting best-of-class services spanning the entire communications value chain, covering over 24,000 towns and 600,000 villages. Reliance Communications owns and operates the world's largest next generation IP enabled connectivity infrastructure, comprising over 190,000 kilometers of fibre optic cable systems in India, USA, Europe, Middle East and the Asia Pacific region.

About Microsoft India

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (NASDAQ "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software - any time, any place and on any device. Microsoft Corporation India Private Ltd is a subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation USA. It has had a presence in India since 1990 and currently has offices in thirteen cities - Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Indore, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Nagpur, New Delhi, and Pune.


CONTACT DETAILS
Freddy Castro, Reliance Communications, +91 9321925648, Freddy.castro@relianceada.com
Anuj Bakshi, Reliance Communications, +91 9321721722, Anuj.bakshi@relianceada.com
Tushar Makkar, Microsoft India, +91 9810437303, tmakkar@microsoft.com
Divya Bahri, Text 100 India, +91 9810774745, divyab@text100.co.in

KEYWORDS
CONSUMER, MARKETING, BUSINESS SERVICES, IT, TELECOMMUNICATIONS, TECHNOLOGY

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