Tapping into fresh demand for storing data locally in India, software giant Oracle unveiled its first India data centre in Mumbai on Friday, which would be followed by another one in Hyderabad by early next year.

BusinessLine was the first to report in April that Oracle would be setting its data centers in India this year.

Read more:How Oracle is recreating China success model in India

This aggressive expansion is in line with Oracle’s plans to add 20 new Gen 2 Cloud data centres globally by the end of 2020. With a stronghold in government and large enterprises, Oracle is betting on expanding rapidly in India with the help of a local data centre. Indian data centre has already become the fastest growing cloud data centre for Oracle globally even as the company officially opened it up for all customers on Friday.

“Data localisation requirements in India has created a massive latent demand for local cloud data centres. Demand has already outstripped our expectations from Mumbai datacentre,” Andrew Sutherland, SVP-Technology, Oracle EMEA and JAPAC, told BusinessLine .

Oracle has signed up some of the large banks like HDFC Bank, Federal Bank, and Vysya Bank as clients for its India data centre. For now, the data centre will act as a direct competitor to AWS, Google, Microsoft and IBM. Oracle however is in the process of bringing its cloud application services also, making its applications accessible from anywhere.

Autonomous cloud database

Oracle is a new entrant to the cloud data centre market in India. But it is betting on higher value services to get large enterprises and government to move to its clouds. According to Sutherland, Autonomous data centre will completely change the job of a data administrator in India. “Autonomous database is a true disruption. It is a huge change. This has the capability to redefine value that can be delivered from your workforce. That value mapping will change with autonomous cloud and with machine learning within apps, much of decision making can be automated,” Sutherland said.

With Autonomous cloud, Sutherland said IT workforce will have to retrain themselves to remain relevant. What that means for enterprises is lesser number of people to run their IT and thus save cost.

“Our Gen 2 Cloud is the only modern, secure, enterprise-grade cloud that provides customers a strong foundation to unlock innovation faster and drive new business growth. We’ll help customers migrate to Oracle Cloud seamlessly as they look to scale their business for the experience economy,” said Shailender Kumar, regional managing director, Oracle India. “Over 100 customers have already signed up for the new cloud region, signifying the rising adoption of Oracle Cloud in India. We look forward to helping more customers transform into data-driven businesses, to help build India’s digital economy.”

Public cloud services revenue in India is projected to total $2.4 billion in 2019, an increase of 24.3% from 2018, according to Gartner. India is also on pace to record the third-highest growth rate in 2019 after China (33%) and Indonesia (29%), taking into consideration that their revenue base is much smaller than those of mature markets, Gartner data show.

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