Aircel Gets Cloudy With Virtela

With significant demand for cloud-based services expected in India in the coming years, Aircel Ltd. has struck a partnership with managed network security and cloud services provider Virtela Technology Services Inc. to provide hosted, on-demand IT resources to Indian companies, particularly those that have international operations. (See Aircel Partners With Virtela.)

Aircel is using Virtela's Enterprise Services Cloud (ESC) platform, which delivers a variety of on-demand enterprise applications and services (that can be used and paid for by the hour) from 50 local cloud centers, including two based in India. Virtela claims its architecture and application acceleration techniques speeds up access and response times and enables enterprise users to access and use hosted applications from any device (smartphone, laptop, desktop PC). (See .)

"Overall, there's been tremendous interest from service providers in leveraging ESC to expand their footprint and service portfolios with advanced cloud services, such as application acceleration and mobile device management," says Jian Li, Virtela's CTO and Vice President of Asia-Pacific Service Provider Partnerships in an email response to Light Reading India's questions about the partnership.

"Aircel is an excellent partner for Virtela, as one of the leading Indian carriers, and we benefit from their established presence and in-country expertise. This partnership presents excellent growth opportunities for both companies. In fact, we already have joint customers," adds Li.

The Virtela man believes the Indian cloud services market is set for significant growth. "The potential for enterprise cloud services uptake in India and other emerging markets is phenomenal. These high-growth markets present many greenfield opportunities and service providers need a way to enter them quickly, efficiently, and with strong service differentiation... Service providers and their enterprise customers can leverage Virtela's ability to move functionality into the cloud to gain the benefits of disruptive pricing, faster time to market and better end-to-end performance between international offices and business partners, to sharpen their competitive edge," states Li.

Virtela isn't the only company expecting rapid uptake of cloud services in India. Ericsson AB is pinning its India strategy around demand for mobile broadband and cloud services and IBM Corp. sees potential for cloud-based mobile applications delivery, while a recent Gartner survey cited by Virtela found that cloud computing is the leading technology priority of Indian CIOs currently (ahead of mobile). (See Ericsson Puts Focus on Mobile B'band, Cloud, , IBM Proposes Cloud Platform for VAS and Ericsson Boosts Global ICT Capabilities in India.)

In addition, a recent study conducted by EMC Corp. and Zinnov Management Consulting concluded that the "total cloud market in India, currently at $400 million, will reach a market value of $4.5 billion by 2015." (See EMC Adds to India's Cloud.)

Of course, Aircel isn't the only service provider in India seeking to win cloud deals from the country's enterprise users. Tulip Telecom Ltd. has identified cloud services as a key growth driver while Bharti Airtel Ltd., Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL), Tata Communications Ltd. and Reliance Communications Ltd. are already promoting cloud services. (See Tulip To Focus On Cloud & Govt. Contracts, Savvis, Bharti Cloud Up India, , , and Reliance Communications Launches Cloud Computing Solutions in India on Microsoft Platform.

For more on Virtela, see these stories:

Ray Le Maistre, International Managing Editor, Light Reading

Interested in learning more on this topic? Then come to Carrier Cloud Forum India 2011, to be staged in New Delhi, Nov. 15, and Mumbai, Nov. 17. For more information, or to register, click here.