Tata Communications plans to make inroads into the small and medium business (SMB) segment in the country by being the single point of contact for users of Google Apps' suite of online applications.
Google Apps' arrangement with Tata Communications, first announced in July this year, will mean users can get Indian pricing, billing and support.
"We are now concretising our go-to-market with the launch of InstaOffice. Google Apps are available even otherwise. But what about the support and hand-holding? That's a huge requirement. We will be the one point contact for Google Apps users in India," David Wirt, global head of managed services and senior vice-president, Tata Communications, told DNA Money.
Wirt was speaking on the sidelines of an event to announce Tata Communications' expansion of larger cloud computing offerings.
The firm has made about `50 crore of cloud specific investment already.
The company will have a team of 100 people working on the service.
As a reseller of Google Apps, Tata Communications provides companies with 25 GB of Email storage capacity, calendar resource management, instant messaging and file transfer, document creation and management, intranet / portal building and file hosting, video hosting among others, besides local phone and email support.
Google has explored several partnerships in India for distribution of Apps, such as with Bharti Airtel earlier.
Google has close to 2 million customers (or user firms) using Apps globally, and about 25 million active users, while in India, there are about 100,000 customers and about 1 million active users.
While critics of cloud computing say providers have to lay certain amount of capex on infrastructure such as data centee, virtualisation technology etc, Wirt said Tata Communication's cloud computing strategy is 'very much on track' and 'utilisation of its infrastructure is satisfactory' to achieve set targets.
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