If Microsoft India’s current performance in cloud infrastructure is a microcosm of the company’s future, than that future looks extremely good for a company that is moving at a mind-numbing speed to get out of the shadows of its Windows-focused past.
In the last five years (2012-2016) Microsoft India’s revenue has grown from a mere INR 1,003.4 crores in 2012 to INR 6,201 crore in 2016. In dollar terms, revenue has grown from approximately $147 million in 2012 to $912 million USD in 2016. The best part about that growth is that things accelerated in fiscal 2016, with Microsoft doubling its revenue from $457 million in FY-15 to $912 million in FY-16, even as profits ballooned from $40 million to $199 million during that period.
Though one billion dollars in annual revenue looks extremely small for a company that’s very close to $100 billion in annual revenue, the fact that revenue has jumped by 100% in the fastest growing economy in the world bodes well for Microsoft’s future in the region.
“Microsoft India recently said it has been a year of tremendous cloud adoption in the country . It launched data centres in India late last year. Microsoft India chairman Bhaskar Pramanik said 52 of the top 100 Indian companies listed on the BSE today use the Microsoft cloud.” Times of India
Microsoft has already bagged several marquee clients, as well as well-known startups in the country, into its cloud. Microsoft was the first company to offer cloud-based services from India, opening three datacenters in the country in the second half of 2015 ahead of its original schedule, a move that has paid off really well for the company.
The public cloud services market in India is projected to grow 30.4 percent in 2016 to total $1.26 billion, according to Gartner, Inc. The highest growth will come from cloud infrastructure services (infrastructure as a service, or IaaS), which is projected to grow by 32.5 percent in 2016, followed by Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings, projected to grow by 31.7 percent.
“We are witnessing a shift from legacy IT services to cloud-based services. Cloud services are growing due to organizations pursuing a digital business strategy,” said Sid Nag, research director at Gartner.
As more enterprise-level and rapidly growing startup companies find public cloud infrastructure to be an ideal alternative to expensive IT infrastructure, Microsoft’s positioning as a pioneer in this geographical market will serve them well for decades to come. The first billion dollars is only the beginning. It might have taken them five years to get here, but with revenue starting to double year-over-year the growth runway for Microsoft cloud infrastructure and related cloud services is, indeed, extremely long.
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