Why the cloud can come down to earth in India

This is the reproduction of an article published in Information Week today .

http://www.informationweek.in/cloud_computing/13-07-02/why_the_cloud_can_come_down_to_earth_in_india.aspx
The author illustrates how the network and infrastructure can be the differentiator between success and failure in deployment of real time technology solutions like exchanges and cloud computing applications

In 1991, I was a key member of the team to build the first automated stock exchange in India known as the OTC Exchange of India on dial up telephone lines and subsequently an overlay network network on an Government built X.25 backbone with an X.28 dial up connectivity. The internet was unheard of those days, though a few Software Technology Parks (STPI) did have this connectivity and I remember the slow browser which connected me to the Harvard facility from the STPI in Hyderabad.

We had limitations because we could operate only in 26 cities in India with dialup connections, because the rest of the cities were challenged to carry data on a dial up network.

The second exchange set up by the same promoters used VSAT connectivity to connect brokers across India and became a success, this exchange was the National Stock Exchange.
Picture Left to Right : Sudesh Puthran, the author, Late R. Ravimohan, Sandeep Bagalkar & Karthik Shah 

The OTCEI had a VSAT network to deploy the stock prices through the teletext offered by Doordarshan and National Informatics centre. But unfortunately there was  only one government vendor of the teletext boxes could not supply enough decoders to service the 1000 brokers of the exchange. And the teletext died a natural death and it was back to Press Trust of India and Reuters.

This illustration is to show how the network and infrastructure can be the differentiator between success and failure in deployment of real time technology solutions like exchanges and cloud computing applications.

I was recently in Bangalore conducting a course on Cloud Computing Business and I heard the same sentiments echoed after two decades that poor data connectivity thorough the internet beyond 50 miles outside of Bangalore city was pathetic and hampers cloud computing deployment. This was in the IT capital of India, what a shame.

Without assured broadband connectivity which is reliable and effective roll out of cloud computing pan India is doomed. Though DOT may have laid the cables up to every district headquarters in India and will subsequently cover it to the taluk level with an investment of about Rs. 2000 crores, the issue of access to the internet in the last mile continues to be a challenge as it was in 1991.

I remember in 1991 we had 500 dial up lines with MTNL Delhi, and about 250 dial up lines in Chennai, Bangalore , Ahmedabad and other cities just to make sure that our brokers could route through the overlay X.25 network, but the design and execution could not deliver the desired connectivity and the exchange buckled under poor network infrastructure.

I see the same writing on the wall for cloud computing in India, without a robust internet connectivity there cannot be deployment of cloud computing in India. RIP advantage cloud India.

It is time to focus on cloud computing delivery and back end support to countries which have a robust internet backbone connecting most of the population, one of the countries  that meets this criteria is the USA and it is no surprise that cloud adoption and growth is exponential in that country.
LS Subramanian is a cloud evangelist who believes "The Future of Computing is the Cloud", he is the founder president of NISE. The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author