Indians prefer US-European partnerships
China’s Alibaba is aiming for a significant presence in India’s Cloud market projected to reach US$7 billion by 2022 but there is trust-deficit especially in managing commercially critical data.
Alibaba has underlined the importance of Indian market at its Alibaba Cloud Summit in Singapore on 30 May 2019. Its officials highlighted Alibaba’s data centre and a major client Paytm in India with expansion plan.
While welcoming strong interests from heavyweights like Alibaba, an industry expert pointed out the uneasiness for any collaboration between Indian and Chinese technology groups.
“Deep differences and lack of trust between Indian and Chinese technology remain major hurdles in any collaboration between technology-heavyweights of the two countries,” said Deep Singhania, founder of Singapore-based AugmentSol Advisory and Consultancy Pte Ltd.
“There are multiple factors which will be impacting the speed of adaption. Most important factor will be the trust issues which are traditionally associated with Chinese service providers in India,” he said.
Alibaba plans on India are exciting from an industry viewpoint, but the mega group will face challenges in scaling up in the Indian market as per its ambitious plan, believes Singhania, a technology veteran who attended Alibaba Cloud Summit.
“Global sentiments are also getting impacted because of US-Huawei ongoing saga. Whether it is going to increase or weather down, only time will tell,” added Singhania in comments on sensitivities in managing data on cloud.
“Entrusting your business-critical data in Alibaba cloud will be a leap of faith which I believe will begin slowly.”
The Chinese will also be facing strong competition from established players like Amazon Web Services which has reported 3-fold growth to US$150+ million for fiscal 2018, he pointed out.
Likewise, Indian technology groups are also expanding their service portfolio along with industry majors Amazon and Azure but they do face a slower progress in the mega Chinese market, noted Singhania who has deep understanding and knowledge of the Indian technology groups.
“Nevertheless, growth of Alibaba cloud needs to be seen closely,” he felt.
But Singhania was quick to add: “There can be little chances of collaboration between China and India on cloud technologies, as Indian technology groups traditionally believe in partnering with US and European tech companies.”
“This journey of Alibaba’s growth in India will be an interesting one,” according to Singhania.
Entering the Chinese market is near impossible for lack of Intellectual Property rights and concern over copyrights and duplication of software among others, said an industry observers annonymously.
“The Chinese are fast at reproducing and as such foreign software companies are very concern about this,” the observer said.
The Indians, highly respected for ingenuity in creating solutions, are now planning to reduce dependence on cheaper hardware from China, the observer pointed out.
Indian cloud market is set to cross US$7 Billion by 2022, according to projections by the Indian industry body Nasscom. Fiinews.com
