Data center for hyper-scale providers

Linode India data center expands global footprint to one of the fastest growing developer and technology regions in the world. Ashwin Kumar, Director, Linode India, tells us more. Excerpts:

DQ: What are Linode's plans for the Indian market?

Ashwin Kumar: India is rapidly becoming the hub of start-ups and entrepreneurs. The country has witnessed 108 percent growth in funding in last year alone. Considering the number of software developers in India is set to grow and likely to even surpass the number of developers in the US. It’s clear that India is one of the most important technology market and a priority for us.

With the huge market potential, and growth of the public cloud services, we recently launched our 10th data center in Mumbai. The data center expands our global footprint to one of the fastest growing developer and technology regions in the world. Through this data center, we are offering the region's five million developers and the organizations they serve a local alternative to hyper-scale providers and affordability.

We are excited and committed to play a significant role in the developers’ community, and engaging with our growing customer base in India.

DQ: How will this development impact the pricing for customers in India?

Ashwin Kumar: Cloud computing is no longer an option but a prerequisite to cater to advanced technologies, and to analyze the volume of data generated by a business for curating path-breaking services. Despite increased awareness, many Indian companies are still struggling to migrate to cloud due to the exorbitant investment and complex pricing, pulling out a major chunk of their top-line growth.

This is where Linode steps in! Linode is known globally for its predictable pricing and straight forward billing model. Our aim is to make cloud simple and accessible to people, and therefore affordable and transparent pricing is one of our core USPs. Unlike some providers, whose pricing varies depending on the location of the data center, Linode’s pricing remains consistent across all the 10 data centers around the world, starting at USD $5/month for a Standard Nanode.

Linode’s entry into the Indian market will enable our existing Indian customers to migrate their data to the Mumbai data center at the same low, flat and transparent price. More interestingly, in contrast to giant cloud providers, Linode does not charge anything extra for migration between data centers. Further, even if an enterprise wants to completely withdraw their data from our center, there are no additional costs involved and we offer full support to ensure the process is completed smoothly.

Hosting the data in the home country has significant benefits, primarily by allowing businesses to reduce latency and improve flexibility of operational workloads. As the Indian government is charting out data protection guidelines and has its impetus on data localization, we are geared to facilitate businesses with cost-effective, best price-to-performance solutions within the country.

DQ: What are the differentiating factors of Linode in comparison with competition brands in India?

Ashwin Kumar: In an uber-competitive world, companies and business are looking for solutions that are customized to their needs. Whether it’s a large-scale IT provider, or an emerging start-up, web uptime and secure cloud solutions are paramount. Although the sector is filled with a diverse set of offerings and services, Linode’s key differentiators are its easy to set-up and operate solutions, transparent pricing, easy to manage interface, great specifications, and robust 24x7 human customer support for our customers, which is a first globally.

Linode’s localized multi-cloud offering gives 30-50% savings and the pricing is consistent irrespective of the location and across all data centers globally. Our transparent billing model with cheaper hosting services compared to other players in the market, are our biggest advantages.

Further, Linode offers great flexibility and platform to the developer community and companies that are considering migrating to cloud. We also provide VPS with the fastest SSDs and processors in the market and boasts of global presence which ensures a faster connectivity with low latency.

DQ: Can you elaborate more on the expansion plans for India?

Ashwin Kumar: We expanded our footprint to India based on the growing demand from our Indian customers. We have garnered numerous inquiries right from the time of our announcement of entering in India to the launch of our data center in Mumbai; the response has been fantastic. In fact, the cloud computing service instances are being consumed at such a good pace that we are now planning to further expand our data center operations in India. We also plan to capitalize on the unexplored potential of providing service to the start-up community.

Partnership with our peers is one of the major strategies to accelerate growth. We aim to partner with hardware and software/IT companies to offer customized services to developers and enterprises across finance, pharma and research sectors. Joining forces with ISP's and cloud integrator companies will allow us to provide organizations furthermore smooth transition to cloud.

With our fastest SSDs and processors in the market, coupled with the speed and a first-of-its-kind 24x7 human customer support, we aspire to grow our finance and banking customer base. As India is growing to become a hub for 3D-gaming development and VFX animation companies, we plan to capture this market with our new GPU offering in Mumbai. In support to government initiatives like Digital India and Make in India, we aim to offer our affordable cloud computing services for various government programs.