Feature
Google’s first India Cloud Platform set to empower enterprises, SMBs (Tech Trend)
By Nishant Arora
New Delhi, Jan 12 (IANS) Several Indian enterprises have chosen Google Cloud to grow their businesses in the past few years. With the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) region now live in the country, the behemoth is one step closer to helping more local firms embrace Cloud.
The Cloud region in Mumbai — that uses Google’s core infrastructure, data analytics and machine learning — offers several services, including compute, Big Data, storage and networking.
“The launch of the Cloud region opens up new opportunities for several new partners who will benefit from building their services on Google Cloud,” Mohit Pande, Country Manager-India, Google Cloud, told IANS.
Google is bullish on India when it comes to Cloud adoption.
Hike Messenger — the first homegrown messaging platform — has migrated its entire messaging application and network as well as all front-end traffic on to Google Cloud.
Since the migration to Google Cloud, Hike has seen a 25-30 per cent reduction in latency, improving the overall user experience on its platform. Google Cloud is also allowing Hike to scale with efficiency and reduce its go-to-market time and effort.
Big enterprises and emerging businesses like Ashok Leyland, Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation (CESC), Dainik Bhaskar Corp, Reliance Entertainment-Digital, Dalmia Cement, DTDC, Delhivery.com, GoIbibo, Royal Enfield, Air Vistara, Tata Sky and Walnut have chosen Google Cloud as their technology platform.
“The new GCP region will help more customers build applications and store their data, and significantly improve latency for customers and end users in the area,” Pande added.
The Mumbai region joins Singapore, Taiwan, Sydney and Tokyo in the Asia-Pacific, making it easier for customers to build highly available, “performant” applications using resources across those geographies.
The GCP region has three zones. Developers and network admins can distribute apps and storage across multiple zones to protect against service disruptions.
Hosting applications in the new region, said the Google executive, can improve latency from 20 to up to 90 per cent for end users in Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Mumbai, compared to hosting them in the other closest region which is Singapore.
With over 50 million SMBs, India is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. “We have an incredible local team of seasoned enterprise and developer experts connecting with start-ups, SMBs and large corporations to understand their needs and offer solutions accordingly,” Pande told IANS.
According to Manish Verma, Chief Technology Officer at Hungama, they wanted to have a low latency and secure cloud platform to create their active-active, high-availability and load-balanced multi-Cloud set-up.
“Google Cloud Platform gave us a low latency network, better than expected SSL [Secure Sockets Layer] performance, and the ability to optimise costs further with custom machine types,” said Verma.
For Sandeep Kalidindi, Head of Technology at one of India’s largest education networks PaGaLGuy, once the company was exposed to GCP and understood the superiority of the platform, its mindset changed from “let us do everything on our own” to “let us do what we do best” and delegate the rest.
“We are always eager to see what new services are being launched and are extremely excited about what GCP can provide as part of its roadmap,” Kalidindi added.
“We really appreciate the stability and scalability of the GCP platform. As a fast-growing start-up, we can scale our platform up and down in minutes without any worries,” Gaurav Tripathi, Chief Technology Officer and Co-founder at Innoplexus AG, wrote on the GCP Mumbai webpage.
Innoplexus caters to the life sciences industry, offering Data as a Service (DaaS) and Continuous Analytics as Service (CaaS) products.
Google recently announced a partnership with Cisco to help its customers improve agility and security in a hybrid world with a fully-supported, open solution for developing and managing applications on-premises and on Google Cloud.
To meet the growing demand for industry-ready workforce in cloud computing, data analytics and machine learning, Google has also collaborated with Coursera, a leading US-based global online education platform, to launch a series of on-demand GCP training courses.
These courses range in skill levels from beginner to advanced and include topics like cloud fundamentals, operations, security, data analytics and machine learning.
(Nishant Arora can be contacted at [email protected])
–IANS
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Entertainment
Meghalaya Reserves Legalized Gambling and Sports Betting for Tourists
The State Scores Extra High on Gaming-Friendly Industry Index
Meghalaya scored 92.85 out of 100 possible points in a Gaming Industry Index and proved to be India’s most gaming-friendly state following its recent profound legislation changes over the field allowing land-based and online gaming, including games of chance, under a licensing regime.
The index by the UK India Business Council (UKIBC) uses a scale of 0 to 100 to measure the level of legalisation on gambling and betting achieved by a state based on the scores over a set of seven different games – lottery, horse racing, betting on sports, poker, rummy, casino and fantasy sports
Starting from February last year, Meghalaya became the third state in India’s northeast to legalise gambling and betting after Sikkim and Nagaland. After consultations with the UKIBC, the state proceeded with the adoption of the Meghalaya Regulation of Gaming Act, 2021 and the nullification of the Meghalaya Prevention of Gambling Act, 1970. Subsequently in December, the Meghalaya Regulation of Gaming Rules, 2021 were notified and came into force.
All for the Tourists
The move to legalise and license various forms of offline and online betting and gambling in Meghalaya is aimed at boosting tourism and creating jobs, and altogether raising taxation revenues for the northeastern state. At the same time, the opportunities to bet and gamble legally will be reserved only for tourists and visitors.
“We came out with a Gaming Act and subsequently framed the Regulation of Gaming Rules, 2021. The government will accordingly issue licenses to operate games of skill and chance, both online and offline,” said James P. K. Sangma, Meghalaya State Law and Taxation Minister speaking in the capital city of Shillong. “But the legalized gambling and gaming will only be for tourists and not residents of Meghalaya,” he continued.
To be allowed to play, tourists and people visiting the state for work or business purposes will have to prove their non-resident status by presenting appropriate documents, in a process similar to a bank KYC (Know Your Customer) procedure.
Meghalaya Reaches Out to a Vast Market
With 140 millions of people in India estimated to bet regularly on sports, and a total of 370 million desi bettors around prominent sporting events, as per data from one of the latest reports by Esse N Videri, Meghalaya is set to reach out and take a piece of a vast market.
Estimates on the financial value of India’s sports betting market, combined across all types of offline channels and online sports and cricket predictions and betting platforms, speak about amounts between $130 and $150 billion (roughly between ₹9.7 and ₹11.5 lakh crore).
Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Delhi are shown to deliver the highest number of bettors and Meghalaya can count on substantial tourists flow from their betting circles. The sports betting communities of Karnataka, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana are also not to be underestimated.
Among the sports, cricket is most popular, registering 68 percent of the total bet count analyzed by Esse N Videri. Football takes second position with 11 percent of the bets, followed by betting on FIFA at 7 percent and on eCricket at 5 percent. The last position in the Top 5 of popular sports for betting in India is taken by tennis with 3 percent of the bet count.
Local Citizens will Still have Their Teer Betting
Meghalaya residents will still be permitted to participate in teer betting over arrow-shooting results. Teer is a traditional method of gambling, somewhat similar to a lottery draw, and held under the rules of the Meghalaya Regulation of the Game of Arrow Shooting and the Sale of Teer Tickets Act, 2018.
Teer includes bettors wagering on the number of arrows that reach the target which is placed about 50 meters away from a team of 20 archers positioned in a semicircle.
The archers shoot volleys of arrows at the target for ten minutes, and players place their bets choosing a number between 0 and 99 trying to guess the last two digits of the number of arrows that successfully pierce the target.
If, for example, the number of hits is 256, anyone who has bet on 56 wins an amount eight times bigger than their wager.