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With a large start-up ecosystem, India is a big market for cloud services

GS Paper 3

Syllabus: Science and Technology- Developments and their Applications and Effects in Everyday Life

 

Source: TH

 Direction: The article tries to explain cloud computing, its significance for India and the way ahead to promote the cloud computing ecosystem in India.

  

Context: AWS or Amazon Web Services, one of India’s largest providers of cloud-based services, has provided start-up credits that allow aspirant startups to use a suite of services from computing, storage and hosting for free.

  

Background:

  • India has the world’s third-largest startup Over the last 5 years, the number of registered startups in India has grown from 452 in 2016 to 84,012.
  • While startups in India span a variety of industries from financial tech, gaming and health tech, several are based in the cloud – the servers and data storage accessible via the internet.
  • Data-storage companies are offering a slew of incentives to draw and retain these cloud-based start-ups on their platforms.

 

What is cloud computing? It is the on-demand delivery of IT resources (computing power, storage, and databases) over the Internet with pay-as-you-go (pay for a service before you use it) pricing, from a cloud provider like AWS.

 

Who is using cloud computing? Organisations of every type, size, and industry are using the cloud for a wide variety of use cases. For example, video game makers are using the cloud to deliver online games to millions of players around the world.

 

Types of cloud computing: The three main types of cloud computing include Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS).

 

 

Benefits of cloud computing:

  • Agility: The cloud gives one easy access to a broad range of technologies so that one can innovate faster and build nearly anything that one can imagine.
  • Elasticity: With cloud computing, one doesn’t have to over-provision resources upfront to handle peak levels of business activity in the future.
  • Cost savings
  • Deploy globally in minutes

 

Cloud services and their importance in India:

Potential: The cloud computing market in India is predicted to develop at a rate of 28.1% between now and 2027.

 

 Promoting e-governance:

  • Cloud computing can further the motive of e-governance – service delivery, transparency, citizen awareness and grievance redressal, by providing a faster, easier and cost-effective platform that can be used by multiple government agencies.
  • “GI Cloud” – ‘Meghraj’, by the Government of India to harness the benefits of cloud computing.
    • The focus of this initiative is to accelerate the delivery of e-services in the country while optimising ICT spending of the Government.

 

Promoting startup ecosystem:

  • An increasing number of small and medium-sized businesses in India are rapidly shifting towards cloud computing which is emerging as the major driving factor for the marke
  • As cloud services can simulate experiments on the cloud, run tests, and learn from failed attempts, it has helped “compress” the lifecycle of a startup, allowing them to become more innovative.
    • For example, HealthifyMe, which developed an app called ‘Vaccinate Me,’ allowed feature phones to book close to 50 million vaccination appointments.
  • Cloud services are increasingly connecting to start-ups located in tier 2 and 3 cities providing training to even those with minimal education in cloud computing skills.

 

Conclusion: The way ahead lies in taking due care of security, interoperability, licensing, reducing the digital divide, etc, to promote the cloud computing ecosystem in India.

 

Insta Links: Cloud Computing

 

Mains Links:

Q. Discuss the advantage and security implications of cloud hosting of servers vis-a-vis in-house machine-based hosting for government businesses. (UPSC 2015)

 

Prelims Links

With reference to “Software as a Service (SaaS)”, consider the following statements: (UPSC 2022)

    1. SaaS buyers can customise the user interface and can change data fields.
    2. SaaS users can access their data through their mobile devices.
    3. Outlook, Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail are forms of SaaS.

 

Which of the statements given above are correct?

(a) 1 and 2 only

(b) 2 and 3 only

(c) 1 and 3 only

(d) 1, 2 and 3

 

Answer: D

All three statements are correct. SaaS allows each user to access programs via the Internet. Outlook, Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail are forms of SaaS