Coimbatore: Microsoft India is seeing good demand for cloud-based IT (information technology) solutions from SMBs (small and medium businesses) with a large number of firms in the manufacturing sector migrating to the cloud from the traditional IT infrastructure models, a top official said.

“We are adding 10,000 new customers every year in the SMB space,” said Manish Sharma, Lead, SMB Business, Microsoft India. The company is seeing a nearly 30% year-on-year increase in demand for cloud technologies from SMBs, he stated.

While the western region is leading the growth with addition of nearly 150 customers every month, the southern region came a close second, Sharma, who was here on Tuesday to showcase Microsoft’s cloud-based technologies to SMBs in the city, said. The IT spend by SMBs is projected to touch $18 billion a year in 2018, he said. Out of the nearly 51 million SMBs in the country, about 10 million are already connected either through regular internet or smartphones, he informed.

“The growth in adoption of cloud technologies has been mostly driven by start-ups in the last two years,” Sharma stated. “Businesses that deal with consumers directly are adopting to cloud (technologies) quickly,” he said. “Cloud technologies enable the SMB ecosystem to try new business models and make necessary iterations to these models at a significantly lower cost,” he stated.

Microsoft is offering cloud technologies for Rs 100 per user per month with the maximum charges not exceeding Rs 1,250 per user per month for Office 365 solutions, said Prashanth Subramanian, Executive Director, Quadra Systems, a gold competency partner of Microsoft.

The charges for server-based solutions would however be higher.

Source: Times of India