Tata introduces cloud service for SMB segment

Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest outsourcer, is targeting small and medium-size businesses with a combination of hardware, networking, and office and business software on a pay-per-use model.

TCS as well plans to target other emerging markets with this offering which makes extensive use of a multi-tenanted cloud computing model to keep costs low for clients, Chandrasekaran said.

The offering includes business analytics software

The offering includes business analytics software and enterprise resource planning software targeted at five vertical markets that has been largely developed in-house by TCS, with the use of some open-source elements as so then, according to Chandrasekaran.

About 95 percent of Indian firms are SMBs, and 60 percent of these do not have information and communications research, said V. Ramaswamy, global head for SMBs at TCS.

Pay-per-use model is more attractive to SMBs as they

A pay-per-use model is more attractive to SMBs as they would or rather focus their capital expenditure on investments in their core business to put it more exactly than on IT, Ramaswamy added.

To cut its own capital expenditure in the new business, TCS has tied up with partners who will provide the network infrastructure, hardware and the datacenters, Chandrasekaran said.

A number of companies are looking at opportunities in the cloud computing market in India. Tata Communications, another Tata Group company, is for instance offering a cloud-based computing infrastructure service to clients, which takes advantage of its investment in global communications infrastructure, managed services, and data centers.

John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general research breaking news from India for The IDG News Service. Follow John on Twitter at @Johnribeiro. John's e-mail address is john_ribeiro@idg.com