Cisco, the security and networking major, is bullish about the adoption of cloud in India and has launched Meraki India Region to help businesses in the country accelerate their move to the cloud. This move is likely to help Cisco's customers to meet their local data storage and privacy needs.
The Cisco Meraki India Region is a new cloud region that is hosted on a cloud service provider empanelled with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. The Meraki India Region will empower businesses across the country to embrace a cloud-first transformation while helping Cisco’s customers meet their local data storage and privacy needs.
Meraki is Cisco's cloud networking platform and has been embraced by 75 per cent of Fortune 500 companies. Meraki simplifies operations and helps businesses deliver more secure networking and will help them scale new experiences in a single dashboard. The platform has more than 8,10,000 customers globally offering networking (Wired, Wireless, SD-WAN), and IoT (Sensors) capabilities that will help businesses with centralised visibility and control, unified management of wireless and wired networks, and reduced operational expenses.
Meraki ensures data privacy and protection as no end-user data will be stored in the cloud and will have only network management data. Besides that, the platform has security features such as data encryption, penetration testing and vulnerability scans. It also has high redundancy and high availability with a scalable architecture.
Cisco has customers that are a mix of large, small and medium enterprises in India and this platform is being aimed at all the customer segments. “Launching the Meraki India Region is a critical step to ensuring customers can securely connect and scale their business with the simplicity they expect from Meraki. The Meraki India Region helps our customers meet their local data storage needs with advanced security features such as penetration testing and daily vulnerability scans, continuing the drive towards digital transformation across the country,” said Lawrence Huang, SVP and GM – Cisco Networking – Meraki and Wireless.
Interestingly, Cisco is launching this platform in India at a time when the demand for data localisation and privacy is rising rapidly. According to the Cisco 2024 Data Privacy Benchmark Study, 97 per cent of organisations in India believe data is inherently safer when stored within their own country or region, and 94 per cent trust global providers to protect their data more effectively than local providers. Of late there has been a demand to prioritise local data storage from public sector entities, government, education, financial institutions, healthcare, and professional services and the Meraki India Region is expected to offer a suite of benefits that align with their cloud transformation.
“India is one of the top ten markets for Cisco globally and we aim to become one of the top five markets globally. As businesses continue to embrace a cloud-first environment, they are seeking a comprehensive networking platform that offers agility, flexibility, and secure access to drive operational efficiencies and succeed in an interconnected world. With the launch of the Meraki India Region, we aim to do just that,” said Daisy Chittilapilly, president, Cisco India and SAARC.
India is riding the digital wave and it is the third-largest digital economy in the world the Indian public cloud services market is expected to reach $ 17.8 billion by 2027. It is also expected that 50 per cent of enterprises in India will use cloud platforms by 2028. Besides that 60 per cent of IT companies are opting for hybrid work that will further enhance the potential of cloud in India.