BANGALORE: In a move that is likely to be followed up by several global technology majors, Microsoft is planning to set up a local data centre in India. With this new move Microsoft will become the very first multinational company to set up a data center in the country, reports Economic Times. Also it would help Microsoft offer its cloud offerings to several industry sectors, especially banking, financial services and insurance sector, which are the biggest consumers of technology.

"We are considering a data centre in India. There are a lot of different companies that are looking at cloud right now, in anticipation that Microsoft will somehow figure out how to get that work," said Jim Dubois, corporate VP and CIO at Microsoft. As of now the company offers cloud computing services to Indian customers through its global data centers.

According to the RBI guidelines storing any customer data outside of India is prohibited, as it might limit cloud adoption by financial services company. Cloud services are the fastest growing segment for Microsoft, though it contributes less than 5 percent to the company’s overall revenue as of now. "It (cloud services) is growing double, triple digit every month, not every year," Dubois said. Public cloud services market in India is expected to grow from $423 million in 2013 to $1.3 billion in 2017 according to Gartner and he also expects India to be the fastest growing market for cloud adoption globally.