TCS expecting 1,000 SMB customers for cloud offering by year end

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) plans to boost its customer base in the small and medium business (SMB) segment in India to 1,000 this year with iON, its cloud-based technology solution, which was unveiled in Kolkata yesterday.

TCS's iON offers on-demand business solutions using cloud computing technology. It has come up with a pay-per use model to deliver information technology in the third generation service model to SMBs.

iON global head, Venguswamy Ramaswamy, said at the launch, ''More than 314,000 micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are registered in Bengal. They provide employment to two million people. Moreover, there are 43 recognised SME clusters along with a proposal for 17 new ones. This provides a huge opportunity to grow here. We expect 25-30 per cent of our total customers to come from the east. We have 11 cloud service partners here and 98 across India.'' 

V Ramaswamy  added, ''When we started in February, we had just above 100 clients and now it has crossed 235. By the end of this year, our client base would be above 1,000 in India and about 20-30 per cent of them would be in Eastern India.''

iON uses a scalable cloud-computing technology to address the needs of SMB's for a range of applications in areas like human resource, finance and inventory to basic applications such as email, document management and website services.

The company is expecting to hit the $1-billion mark from its iON platform within five years.