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As has been the case in the United States and Europe, IBM announced that its IBM Cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) as well as platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings are gaining traction with startups in India.
Indeed, IBM said several startup organizations across India have adopted IBM Cloud to develop applications and expand their businesses based on IBM’s Bluemix PaaS technology.
Bluemix offers a developer-friendly catalog of cloud services and tools to help developers create apps. Indian startups Yipeedo, WolkenSoft, KlickDoc and Opteamize Cloud Solutions Private Limited have selected IBM’s Bluemix as the platform of choice to build their cloud applications.
India is a major hotspot for developers and startups. A study by Evans Data Corp. indicates that, with 2.75 million developers, India is currently ranked as the country with the second-highest number of developers, behind the United States with 3.6 million.
However, by 2018, India will have 5.2 million developers, a nearly 90 percent increase, and is expected to surpass the United States. The presence of a strong developer community is fueling the startup environment in India. According to The National Association of Software and Services Companies’ (NASSCOM) “Startup Report 2014,” India has the world’s third-largest and the fastest-growing startup ecosystem. The country has 3,100 startups, and nearly 800 are added every year. The number of startups in India is likely to grow to 11,500 by 2020.
Since launching Bluemix, IBM has engaged with more than 1 million developers across India, including thousands of startups, incubators and accelerators, via 15 hackathons run by IBM Cloud and Bluemix meet-ups held throughout the country. IBM has also created eight co-working spaces where IBM Cloud experts drive weekly office hours across Bangalore, Chennai, New Delhi, Mumbai and Pune, India, to mentor and guide developers from startups.
“In India, and across the world, Bluemix is getting tremendous response from the startup and developer communities due to its unique capabilities,” Vivek Malhotra, director of cloud services for IBM India/South Asia, said in a statement. “Based on open source, Bluemix helps startups get a single development and management experience across any combination of public, dedicated and local Bluemix instances. Even if clients have existing infrastructure setups or APIs, they can securely connect those to Bluemix for a hybrid solution.”
Several Indian startups have adopted Bluemix, which runs on SoftLayer infrastructure, to develop new applications. Yipeedo, a mobile-only platform for helping urban dwellers discover things to do in city, helps recommend activities based on a user’s taste and preferences. Yipeedo is using Bluemix for its application development.
Wolken Software, a software development company, helps organizations improve productivity and processes through a broad range of business applications. Wolken Software built their TeamToq app on Bluemix. TeamToq is an enterprise-class app that enables secure, collaborative, device-agnostic conversations between people, enterprise apps and enterprise cloud apps.
IBM Cloud Takes India Startups by Storm
KlickDoc is a cloud-based health care platform that connects patients with doctors, pharmacies and diagnostic centers with the facility to store and access the medical records in the cloud. IBM Bluemix is being used as the development platform for their PHP runtime.
Chennai-based Opteamize Cloud Solutions Private Limited developed its Opteamize application on Bluemix for final-year students of professional courses and job aspirants. Subscription to this application gives the students and job aspirants access to the Corporate Connect marketplace, which helps them connect to IT companies for suitable jobs. Job aspirants can hone their technical skills, understand technology trends and receive push notifications about potential opportunities in the industry through this application.
“As a startup, we need app development platforms that are fast, secured and easy to use,” Srinath Ranga, founder of Opteamize Cloud Solutions Private Limited, said in a statement. “IBM has a deep understanding of the startup environment and is helping us create a market differentiation through its cloud-based solutions. Bluemix, with cutting-edge features like deep analytics or cognitive capabilities, makes apps a lot more innovative and interesting for our audiences.”
IBM launched Bluemix with a $1 billion investment in 2014. Bluemix provides access to more than 100 tools and services, many based on open-source technologies combined with IBM and third-party services.
Last October, IBM announced an expansion of its global cloud network with a new cloud center in Mumbai. The Mumbai center further expanded IBM’s global cloud footprint, which includes centers in Raleigh, N.C., London, Amsterdam, Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore, Melbourne, Toronto and Dallas.
Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the 31,000 square foot Mumbai facility offers an array of solutions, including proven cloud resiliency services. These services guarantee customers’ up-times of 99.99 percent across any IT environment, including traditional IT, public, private or hybrid cloud deployments. In the event of an outage, the center’s support team can recover data in minutes to ensure that it has little-to-no impact on business operations while going virtually unseen by customers.
“This new Mumbai center is IBM’s latest investment to create the most extensive global network of cloud facilities in the industry to help clients expand globally with cloud and tackle data sovereignty issues,” said Lingraju Sawkar, director of Integrated Technology Services in Global Technology Services for IBM India/ South Asia, in a statement at the time of the Mumbai center’s opening. “Through this new center, we are able to help usher businesses into the cloud era while delivering the levels of security that allow them to experience the benefits of this new environment and ensure they remain protected.”
In addition, IBM has committed to opening a new cloud center in Chennai, India, by the end of this year.