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Microsoft opens Azure India to the world, not just Indian users
Those of you targeting Indian users can now do so with lower latency and local data storage
Microsoft's opened its three Indian Azure data centres to the world.
Azure India kicked off in September 2015 but at the time Microsoft noted that “The India regions are currently available to volume licensing customers and partners with a local enrollment in India”, adding that “The India regions will open to direct online Azure subscriptions in 2016.”
It looks like Redmond missed that deadline by a few months, because on April 11th the company announced that “global companies can now benefit from access to the three Azure regions in India.”
Those regions are West India (Mumbai), Central India (Pune) and South India (Chennai), all of which Microsoft says are first-rate bit barns for anything you want to throw at them.
Opening Azure India to non-Indians matters because using an offshore bit barn adds latency. Indians, like any users anywhere, like their online experiences to be snappy. The chance to put workloads onto Indian soil therefore means a chance to deliver a faster service for Indian users and means Azure is better able to compete with Amazon Web Services, Google and IBM's Bluemix as were already on the ground in India and open to all comers. ®
Biting the hand that feeds IT
