aws2Part of the $3 billion that Amazon earlier this week pledged to invest in India will go toward building an AWS data center for the region, according to a published report.

Amazon will open a Web Services cloud region in India this year, and India will become home to Amazon’s largest software engineering and development center outside the U.S., Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos said Tuesday, according to Reuters. AWS declined to confirm the report.

Speaking at the US-India Business Council annual leadership summit in Washington, D.C., Bezos announced the company will bring its total investment in India to $5 billion, both to strengthen its e-commerce position and to build up its web-services business.

In a press release last June, AWS said it would open a cloud region in India this year. It said “tens of thousands” of customers in India were already using AWS from one of 11 regions outside of India, including flower retailer Ferns N Petals, media firm NDTV and automotive manufacturer Tata Motors Ltd.

Cloud competitor IBM in late 2015 said it had opened its second Indian cloud data center, in Chennai. It announced its first center there, in Mumbai, in October 2014. Microsoft in September 2015 announced it had three Azure centers operating in India — in Chennai, Mumbai and Pune, Information Week reported.

Salesforce 200x140For its part, Salesforce on Tuesday said in a release that it will hire more than 1,000 people in Hyderabad by 2020 and will open offices there, creating “one of its largest engineering and customer-success centers.” It will begin moving into those offices by year-end, it said.

Gartner has projected that the Indian public cloud services market will grow 30.4 percent this year, to $1.3 billion, according to figures furnished by Salesforce. Salesforce customers there include Bajaj Finserv, Inmobi, PayTM, Snapdeal and Urban Ladder.

Editor’s Note: Salesforce is a GeekWire annual sponsor.

 

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