Public Cloud Limited To Niche In India

The cloud technology possessed with the ‘tag of the next big thing’ is definitely something on which every IT body wants to bank on in the current era.

The technology which is divided into three segments-Public, Private and Hybrid is gaining traction among the enterprises on a rapid scale with now more and more organizations queuing up to implement cloud model as their IT backbone.

While personal and hybrid may be the hot topics among the country’s enterprises, the public cloud being offered by the operators and handset manufacturers for an end consumer has seen a miniscule growth, thanks to the absence of a consistent affordable high speed network and lack of awareness about the ease which cloud applications like Dropbox offer to an average consumer in India.

Though every handset or smart device manufacturer is betting big on the public cloud space with some device players providing a free virtual storage offering for lifetime, the concept is still far from the reach of a common man’s rational thinking who is struggling from the hefty data tariffs in the country.

‘’A 1 GB  3G data tariff in the country costs an average of INR 250 which makes it practically impossible for a user to upload his data on the cloud application offering a space of 25-30 GB and also to access it again thereby exhausting his costly monthly tariff,’’ says Deepak Kukreja, an independent analyst.

The network drawback doesn’t  just limit to the exorbitant pricing of the data tariffs but also suffers from lack of a reliable high speed wireless network even in the metros.

Also concerns regarding the security of the personal data of the user adds up to the reluctant behavior of a user to shift his data on a cloud premises.

The total market for public cloud services in India is expected to touch $1.7 billion by the year 2018, according to research firm Gartner, however if industry analysts are cited then the figure with the current penetration and prices of a high speed network is hard to achieve.

‘’I don’t think that Public cloud will gain a significant traction in the coming years as even in the metros there a handful of users who actually utilize features like Dropbox and unless the data tariffs drops down to an extent when a user can upload or download huge amounts of data without fearing the price Public cloud will continue to be a niche offering in the country,’’ says Tarun Pathak, Analyst at Cybermedia.

The sole aim of a cloud offering is to access the data from anywhere and anytime which with the hindrances mentioned above appears a distant dream for an Indian consumer as of now.