In a bid to disrupt the domination of big tech players such as Google and Apple in the B2C cloud space, Reliance announced a disruptive welcome offer on Jio Cloud providing 100GB of free storage. Google charges ₹130 a month or ₹1,300 per annum for the same storage capacity.
“Every user needs ample and affordable data storage capacity in the cloud, with the highest levels of privacy and security. With data safely stored in the cloud, AI can deliver intelligent, personalised services over the network,” Mukesh Ambani said at the company’s annual general meeting.
What experts say
Experts are cautiously optimistic about Jio’s proposition in a price sensitive market like India. Pareekh Jain, an independent IT analyst told businessline, “Google and Apple’s cloud services are priced prohibitively high for a price sensitive country like India. Moreover as regulations also veer towards data storage and processing within borders – Jio’s proposition becomes even more important.”
However. Sanchit Vir Gogia, CEO and Chief Analyst at Greyhound Research, was more measured with his take on an affordable Jio Cloud, “The reason why consumers are willing to pay incrementally higher costs for a Google or an Apple are because they find the benefits of adopting a native cloud ecosystem to be invaluable. You must note that it is complex and cumbersome to operate on a third-party cloud service or switch to another cloud ecosystem completely.”
According to Gogia, in order to guarantee success Jio will have to make its cloud service native to a large chunk of the smartphone and app ecosystem. “This means Jio must partner with smartphone OEMs who operate their own OS, such as Xiaomi, or Oppo and ensure that their OS becomes native to those devices as well. It needs to be a complete ecosystem creation, having enough smartphone OEMs on Jio Cloud, connected TVs on Jio Cloud, developers on Jio Cloud to give the rich experience and interoperability rivaling the Apples and the Googles of the world.” Gogia also cautioned that Reliance will not be able to keep pricing affordable for its cloud service in the long run, if it is able to disrupt the market.
Reliance is indicating that it is batting decisively for AI, for which they plan to establish gigawatt scale AI ready data centers in Jamnagar Gujarat. Mukesh Ambani noted in his speech that they plan on creating AI inferencing capabilities across the nation at the lowest possible cost. Reliance is monickering its suite of AI services to be offered as “Jio Brain” and they are calling their ambition to democratise AI services – “Connected Intelligence.”
AI Service
Making separate announcements for Reliance Jio, Chairman Akash Ambani announced the launch of a new AI service called “JioPhonecall AI”.
According to Akash, this allows users to use AI on every phone call, “JioPhonecall I can record and store any call in the JioCloud and automatically transcribe it.”
Akash Ambani further introduced new features on home broadband, including Jio TvOS, with a new operating system to give a complete and contextual entertainment experience.
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