Expecting massive growth in cloud computing in India, Reliance Communications will be investing $80 million in building two new data centres and expand two existing ones.

“We are looking at building two new data centres and expansion of two existing data centres. So the overall investments would be about $80 million over the next 2-3 years,” Bill Barney, CEO of Reliance Communications (Enterprise) and Global Cloud Xchange, told BusinessLine . The centers are expecting to start operations in the next 12 months.

Barney said he expects the Global Cloud Xchange business to contribute 25 per cent of RCom’s fixed line business over the next three years, growing at least 100 per cent year over year.

He said the expansion will be mostly funded through the company’s existing cash flow. “Most of the expansion we can fund from our existing cash flow. When we needed to get capital, we’ve been very successful in doing it. We’ve done two high yield debt issues in the last 1.5 years. So when we need to tap the markets, we do,” Barney said.

“There isn’t connectivity yet in India, we are one of the first guys to let users use our platform and get onto Amazon or Microsoft with a click of a button. That’s going to change things,” Barney added.

Rising cloud business

Cloud computing market is heating up in India. As per a recent Gartner report, the public cloud market alone in the country will treble to $1.9 billion (about ₹12,400 crore) by 2018.

All major global players — Amazon, Microsoft, Google and IBM — have announced their plans to setup data centres here, some of which are already commissioned. Recently, Japan’s NTT Communications also said it will spend ₹1,000 crore over the next three years in India to expand its data centre business.

Reliance already has 11 data centres in India with over 3,200 India enterprises and 14,500 global enterprises using its cloud platform in India with a combined capacity of over one million square feet.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW