When bookings for the cricket World Cup finals in Mumbai opened, the ticketing site crashed in just a few minutes as millions of passionate fans logged on at the same time. The mishap could have perhaps been averted had it been hosted on the cloud, says Mr Gaurav Mantri, Director of an Udaipur-based software company Cerebrata Software, which helps companies with tools to get onto the cloud platform.
“Anticipating a surge in user traffic, the site could have scaled up the number of servers required just for that period of time and decommissioned the servers when not required. This is possible not just in the case of the cricket ticketing site but the Indian Railways could also try it out,” says Mr Mantri.
Cerebrata is a Microsoft-registered partner and specialises in developing tools for Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud platform. Azure is a cloud platform on which any developer can build and host an application or solution.
Azure has completed one year of its commercial launch globally and has seen its customer and partner base grow in the Indian market as well. Currently, Azure has 30,000 customers globally; 700 are from India. In India, over 8,900 applications have been built on the Azure platform and much of the uptick has been from the SMB segment.
“The cloud helps democratise the experience across users – whether they are a large enterprise, a start-up or even a student. Cloud has also spurred several innovations across segments,” says Mr Moorthy Uppaluri, General Manager – Developer Platform Evangelism, Microsoft India, on the sidelines of the Microsoft TechEd event.
Marketing campaigns
While core ERP systems may not move to the cloud, there are instances of other business applications such as e-mail, collaboration and supply chain management moving to the cloud, says Mr Yousef Khalidi, Distinguished Engineer – Windows Azure. Interestingly, marketing campaigns, which have a short shelf life, are also beginning to move to the cloud.
An innovation that has come out of Azure is a child tracking system developed by an NGO that helps unite lost children with their families. While Bangalore-based company Sporting Minds has come out with a sports analytics software that analyses bowling and batting conditions and relays that data to coaches. This has been used by South Africa and a few IPL teams as well.
Other customers using Azure include Kingfisher which does cargo tracking on the cloud and Persistent which has launched a citizens grievance redressal solution for the Pune municipal corporation. Two “large” government universities are also evaluating the Azure platform.