India?s largest IT services firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) will roll out its much-hyped ?Nano of IT? on Tuesday ? a Cloud offering for small and medium businesses that seeks to make information technology affordable to India?s 35 million small and medium businesses. The firm has started wooing SMBs with launch offers that includes free trials, heavy discounts and money back gurantee.
If it works, the cloud offering can slash a small business? total cost of ownership of IT by 35-40% compared to the licensing model now prevalent in the industry. According to analyst reports, TCS intends to have its cloud initiatives contribute 10% of its incremental revenues next year. As part of the launch offer, TCS is offering a nine-month free subscription for a three-year contract, sources said. Another offer involves a payment of Rs 10,000 that allows five users to experience the solution for a month. Solutions for the Education vertical is being priced at Rs 70 per student, manufacturing for Rs 6,125 per user; retail for Rs 6,930; quick service restaurants for Rs 6,800 per till and Wellness for 6,180 per machine. The firm will provide hardware for Rs 500 per user and networking for the same amount. A clarification sought by this newspaper from the company remained unanswered.
FE had earlier reported that TCS had slashed pricing for its cloud offering by more than 20%.
The firm has been piloting the service for many months and sources from the firm?s partner community in North India had noted that many potential customers did not find its initial pricing attractive enough.
The origin of TCS? offering dates back to a board meeting in 2007 where members were evidently concerned that the firm?s growth was mostly linked to people?s growth, sources said.
Venguswamy Ramaswamy, the current global head of small and medium business at TCS, was subsequently asked to build the service. He spent the first six months meeting customers and was also advised by former CEO and current vice-chairman S Ramadorai and Faqir Chand Kohli, widely regarded as the Father of the Indian software industry. The development work at TCS had started in August 2008.
Cloud services, delivered over the Internet, is an on-demand paradigm that can disrupt the way IT services are delivered today.
Cloud computing uses virtualisation technologies and can potentially make an enterprise shed all of its IT assets one day ? servers, storage, and applications can all be rented as per need from cloud service providers.