A logo sits illuminated outside the Microsoft pavilion on the opening day of the World Mobile Congress at the Fira Gran Via Complex on Feb. 22, 2016 in Barcelona, Spain. (Photo : Getty Images)
Unfazed by reports about China's economic slowdown, Microsoft is stepping up its game with fresh efforts to boost its cloud computing business in the country.
According to China Daily, the tech giant is seeing a greater demand for Microsoft Azure, the company's cloud platform.
The company has revealed on April 26, Tuesday, that there are more than 65,000 China-based corporate clients for the cloud service, which was launched in the country only two years ago.
Meanwhile, there are 10,000 registered clients, "who have bought more than 1 million suits of Office 365," told China Daily.
Economic woes haunting the country do not seem to be a hurdle for the company.
"Though the GDP growth is slowing down, Chinese companies still need to focus on three points to remain relevant and competitive: innovation, productivity and the return of investments. And cloud computing can help in all of the above three aspects," Microsoft China CEO Ralph Haupter was quoted as saying in a China Daily report.
"We will focus on manufacturing, retail, automotive, media and other industries to further expand market share," Haupter added.
Microsoft, whose rivals in the cloud computing business include Amazon and Alibaba, has already slashed prices for Chinese customers.
The company's move to focus on China makes sense as domestic spending on the cloud is projected to reach $20 billion by 2020, translating to a CAGR of 40 percent to 45 percent, according to Bain & Company's estimates. The growth rate is said to be much faster than China's overall IT expenditure.
Like Microsoft, tech giants such as Tencent and Alibaba are also banking on China's cloud computing market. The two companies announced last year that they are investing heavily to boost their business here, including expansion of data centers.
However, the vulnerability of cloud computing to security breach could be a problem.
"[P]erhaps the biggest challenges are the cultural and business attitudes that steer China's businesses away from the cloud," said Forbes. "A heightened awareness of the vulnerabilities of information security has created a preference to maintain close control of workloads and data."
