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India’s edge data centre to triple by 2027 as demand grows

TCN Bureau
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India’s edge data centre to triple by 2027 as demand grows
  • Proliferation of emerging technologies underscores the increasing importance of edge computing in the nation’s digital infrastructure.

India’s edge data centre landscape is poised for remarkable growth, with capacities projected to triple from approximately 60-70 megawatts (MW) in 2024 to 200-210 MW by 2027.

The expansion, driven by the proliferation of emerging technologies, underscores the increasing importance of edge computing in the nation’s digital infrastructure.

Edge data centres, characterised by their smaller size and decentralized locations closer to end-users, differ fundamentally from traditional large, centralised data centres. These facilities enable real-time data processing with minimal latency, vital for applications requiring immediate responsiveness.

Currently, edge data centres constitute about 5 per cent of India’s total data centre capacity, a figure anticipated to rise to 8 per cent by 2027, reflecting their growing strategic role.

In India, traditional and edge data centres function as complementary pillars. While traditional data centres underpin large-scale computing, artificial intelligence, and cloud workloads, edge data centres facilitate localised, real-time services.

The synergistic relationship, often conceptualised as a hub-and-spoke model, is expected to enhance efficiencies across critical sectors including healthcare, banking, agriculture, defense, and manufacturing.

Despite these promising trends, challenges remain. Security vulnerabilities are heightened by the remote deployment of edge data centres, particularly in tier 2 and tier 3 cities.

Additionally, rapid technological advances threaten obsolescence, and there is a notable shortage of skilled professionals in less urbanised areas. Interoperability between edge and traditional data centres also poses operational challenges.

Globally, the United States leads in edge data centre capacity, holding over 44 per cent, followed by Europe, the Middle East, and Africa at 32 per cent, and the Asia Pacific region at 24 per cent.

India’s significant expansion within this global context signals its ambition to strengthen digital infrastructure and support an increasingly connected economy through advanced data processing capabilities at the network edge.

UAB to take mobile banking to next level with Lune’s technology

TCN Bureau
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UAB to take mobile banking to next level with Lune’s technology

The strategic partnership between United Arab Bank (UAB) and Lune, a prominent UAE-based fintech company specialising in AI-driven transaction enrichment and financial data analytics, marks a significant advancement in UAB’s digital banking transformation.

The collaboration aims to enhance UAB’s forthcoming mobile banking platform by integrating smarter, data-driven, and hyper-personalised customer journeys, reinforcing the bank’s reputation as both innovation-led and customer-centric.

The partnership leverages Lune’s sophisticated technology to convert raw transaction data into actionable financial insights through an intuitive interface. This empowers UAB’s customers with greater financial transparency and supports informed decision-making.

Mutual commitment

Additionally, the solution introduces intelligent digital engagement features such as personalised recommendations, contextual offers, and advanced financial planning tools, delivered via conversational digital channels.

The signing ceremony, attended by senior executives from both organisations, highlighted a mutual commitment to innovation and customer empowerment.

Emre Yalcin, Head of Retail Banking at UAB, emphasised confidence in the maturity of Lune’s technology and its potential to unlock new opportunities for customer engagement, operational efficiency, and sustainable growth.

Similarly, Lune’s leadership expressed enthusiasm about the collaboration’s potential to create meaningful value and contribute to a data-driven financial future in the UAE market.

India’s artificial intelligence strategy is bearing fruit

TCN Bureau
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India’s artificial intelligence strategy is bearing fruit

India is strategically positioning itself as a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI), leveraging its robust information technology ecosystem and government-led initiatives.

Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that the government has onboarded 34,381 GPUs from 14 empanelled service providers to support AI development.

These GPUs are made available at subsidised rates, with foundational model training using H100 GPUs priced significantly lower than commercial cloud providers, ensuring affordable access to critical computational resources.

 The average rate for these GPUs is about Rs65 per GPU per hour. 

India’s IT sector, contributing over $250 billion in annual revenue and employing more than six million people, underpins these efforts. The country’s AI capabilities have been recognised in global rankings such as the Stanford AI rankings, reflecting its skilled workforce and extensive developer community.

Moreover, India ranks as the second-largest contributor to AI projects on GitHub, highlighting its vibrant innovation ecosystem.

Government strategies

Central to the government’s strategy is the IndiaAI mission, launched in March 2024, which aims to establish a comprehensive and inclusive AI ecosystem aligned with national development priorities.

Initiatives like the IndiaAI Application Development Initiative target AI solutions addressing India-specific challenges across critical sectors including climate change, healthcare, agriculture, governance, and assistive technologies, with 30 applications already approved. Complementary sector-focused hackathons encourage collaboration with ministries and institutions.

The launch of ‘AIKosh’, a unified beta data platform, integrates extensive datasets, AI models, and development toolkits, enabling developers to innovate efficiently without redundancies.

Another significant initiative, the IndiaAI Foundation Models, focuses on creating indigenous Large Multimodal Models trained on Indian datasets and languages to ensure sovereignty and competitiveness in generative AI.

Supporting innovation, the IndiaAI Mission has selected four startups from over 500 proposals in its first phase. Concurrently, the IndiaAI FutureSkills program aims to cultivate AI expertise nationwide by increasing advanced education opportunities and establishing AI labs in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, with more than 200 students awarded fellowships in its inaugural year.

Alphabet justifies $10b capital expenditure increase in 2025

Naushad K. Cherrayil
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Alphabet justifies $10b capital expenditure increase in 2025
  • Its cloud unit is widely regarded as Alphabet’s key growth engine as the company’s traditional search business matures.

Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, has reported robust quarterly sales growth driven largely by soaring demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products.

The surge, however, comes with a significant increase in capital spending requirements. Alphabet now anticipates capital expenditures of $85 billion in 2025, surpassing earlier projections by $10 billion.

While the company’s impressive revenue and profit performance for the second quarter exceeded analyst expectations, the announcement of higher spending initially unsettled investors.

Nevertheless, CEO Sundar Pichai clarified that these investments are essential to meet rapidly expanding customer demand and to maintain a competitive edge in the AI landscape.

The competitive pressure within the AI sector is intense, as industry giants such as Microsoft Corp., Meta Platforms Inc., and startups like OpenAI aggressively ramp up their AI investments.

Analysts said that Alphabet is compelled to keep pace, particularly because emerging AI technologies, including chatbots developed by competitors, pose a potential threat to Google’s flagship search business.

Alphabet’s second-quarter performance was strong across multiple fronts, with sales reaching $81.7 billion, well above the $79.6 billion average analyst forecast.

The growth underscores the enduring strength of Alphabet’s core search advertising business alongside its expanding cloud computing operations.

Accelerating AI portfolio

To support its escalating AI spending, Alphabet is relying heavily on its entrenched advertising revenue and the fast-growing cloud segment.

CEO Pichai emphasised the urgency with which the company’s employees are being tasked to accelerate AI product development, spanning from innovative search enhancements to new cloud tools tailored for diverse customer needs.

 “We are seeing significant demand for our comprehensive AI product portfolio,” Pichai stated, highlighting the company’s strategy to leverage its broad AI capabilities.

Financially, Alphabet’s capital expenditures are expected to continue rising beyond 2025, reflecting

The ongoing necessity to fund AI infrastructure and innovation. This increased spending is also manifesting in heightened research and development costs, which climbed by 16 per cent in part due to more competitive compensation packages.

The intense competition for AI talent is driving up salaries industry-wide, with Meta in particular setting high benchmarks for recruiting researchers in superintelligence.

Alphabet’s recent acquisition of AI coding startup Windsurf for approximately $2.4 billion illustrates the premium placed on securing top talent and advanced technology.

However, monetary incentives alone are not sufficient to attract elite AI researchers. According to Pichai, the foremost talents seek opportunities to engage at the leading edge of technological progress, access substantial computing resources, and collaborate with highly skilled peers.

Gemini still trails ChatGPT

Alphabet believes it remains highly competitive in providing these critical factors, which collectively foster an environment conducive to breakthrough AI advancements.

Alphabet’s cloud computing division continues to demonstrate healthy growth, reporting $13.6 billion in quarterly revenue and $2.83 billion in operating income, both surpassing analyst predictions.

Although Google remains third in market share behind Microsoft and Amazon, its AI capabilities have been pivotal in securing new clients and driving cloud growth.

The cloud unit is widely regarded as Alphabet’s key growth engine as the company’s traditional search business matures. Central to this strategy is Gemini, an AI model being rapidly integrated into Google’s products and targeted at enterprise customers. Despite receiving acclaim for its latest iteration, Gemini still trails OpenAI’s ChatGPT in market adoption.

Pichai expressed his enthusiasm about Google Cloud supplying OpenAI—the company behind the widely impactful ChatGPT—with the essential cloud computing resources necessary for training and deploying its AI models.

Google’s decision to provide cloud infrastructure to OpenAI—an entity perceived as a direct competitor—demonstrates a strategic move aimed at reinforcing Google Cloud’s standing in the AI ecosystem.

Pichai highlighted Google Cloud’s open platform philosophy and its historical support of innovative startups and AI labs, emphasising a commitment to nurturing the broader AI community while simultaneously seizing new commercial opportunities.

Google’s competitive strategy

OpenAI’s reliance on Google Cloud is particularly significant given the constraints it faces in acquiring adequate computational power, notably Nvidia GPUs, essential for AI training and deployment.

Microsoft, OpenAI’s major investor and long-time cloud partner, has encountered supply limitations that have strained their relationship.

Consequently, OpenAI’s engagement with Google Cloud not only alleviates these bottlenecks but also diversifies its cloud service providers. For Google, this translates into a lucrative customer relationship, albeit one that entails risks.

There is an inherent tension in enabling a competitor’s technological advancement that might ultimately disrupt Google Search’s core market.

Furthermore, Google’s success in securing partnerships with other prominent AI labs—such as Anthropic and Safe Superintelligence—underlines its extensive reach and capacity within the AI research community.

Pichai credits this partly to the availability of advanced hardware, including Nvidia GPUs and proprietary TPU chips, which are critical components for AI computations.

On the AI product front, Google has reported encouraging user engagement with services like Gemini, reaching 450 million monthly active users, and AI Overviews, with 2 billion monthly active users. Despite these impressive metrics, the commercial impact and the effect of these AI products on traditional search traffic remain uncertain.

The evolving dynamics between AI-powered interfaces and traditional search paradigms will likely shape Google’s competitive strategy in the coming years.

Advertising revenues also remain a strong component of Alphabet’s earnings. YouTube, the company’s popular video platform, generated $9.8 billion in second-quarter ad revenue, outperforming estimates. This success is attributed to YouTube’s leadership in streaming to living-room devices and its substantial investments in podcast content.

Meanwhile, Alphabet’s “Other Bets” portfolio—which includes futuristic ventures such as the autonomous vehicle project Waymo—reported revenue of $373 million, falling short of expectations and highlighting the ongoing challenges in these experimental areas.

Apple’s iPhone shipments in India surge 36% in first half of 2025

Mohammed Fahad
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Apple’s iPhone shipments in India surge 36% in first half of 2025
  • iPhone 16 series command a dominant 62% share of the iPhone market in the first half.
  • Apple will maintain its strong performance in the second half of 2025, targeting an 11% market share in iPhones and a notable 33% in iPads.

Apple Inc., a global leader in consumer electronics, has demonstrated a remarkable growth trajectory in the Indian market during the first half of 2025.

Industry data released by CyberMedia Research (CMR) highlights a robust 36 per cent year-on-year increase in iPhone shipments and a 13 per cent growth in the iPad segment. These figures underscore the rising demand for Apple’s latest-generation devices in India, a key emerging economy with a burgeoning digital consumer base.

The exceptional performance of Apple’s iPhone segment can be largely attributed to the popularity of the iPhone 16 series, which commanded a dominant 62 per cent share of the iPhone market in the first half of 2025.

This was followed by the iPhone 15 series, contributing 30 per cent, while other models such as the iPhone 16e and the iPhone 14 series accounted for approximately 4 per cent market share each.

Consumer preference

This distribution illustrates a clear consumer preference for the most recent and advanced models, reflecting Apple’s successful product innovation and strategic marketing efforts in India.

In parallel, the tablet market reveals similar trends with the iPad 11 series leading the category by securing a 64 per cent share, complemented by the iPad Air 2025 series at 25 per cent.

Although older models like the iPad Pro 2024, iPad Air 2024, and iPad 10 series hold smaller market shares, their presence indicates sustained interest across different segments within Apple’s tablet lineup.

Such diversity in product uptake suggests a healthy and expanding ecosystem catering to varied consumer preferences and usage needs.

Vast untapped potential

Apple’s growth momentum in India is further bolstered by several strategic factors.

According to Prabhu Ram, Vice President of the Industry Research Group at CMR, the company’s expanding footprint is fueled by improved affordability enabled through financing schemes, a maturing ecosystem, localised production capabilities, and an enhanced retail presence.

“These elements collectively contribute to making premium Apple devices more accessible to a wider swath of Indian consumers while strengthening the brand’s long-term market positioning.”

The localisation of production is particularly significant as it aligns with governmental policies aimed at boosting manufacturing within India, reducing costs, and improving supply chain resilience, he added.

Moreover, the proliferation of digital lifestyles, characterised by increased internet penetration and mobile usage, provides a fertile environment for Apple to expand its premium device ecosystem. This synergy, according to experts, positions Apple to capitalise on the vast untapped potential within India’s premium smartphone and tablet markets.

Looking ahead, CMR estimates project that Apple will maintain its strong performance in the second half of 2025, targeting an 11 per cent market share in iPhones and a notable 33 per cent in iPads.

The forecast is indicative of sustained consumer interest and confidence in the brand, supported by ongoing innovations, strategic financing options, and an ever-deepening retail and service network.

China warns against ‘defamation’ over Microsoft SharePoint hack

Naushad K. Cherrayil
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China warns against ‘defamation’ over Microsoft SharePoint hack
  • Beijing emphasises two key points: adherence to lawful conduct against hacker activities and opposition to the politicisation of cybersecurity incidents to malign country’s reputation
  • Microsoft has been actively coordinating with key cybersecurity partners, including the Department of Defense’s Cyber Defense Command and global cyber defense organisations, to mitigate the ongoing threat.

The Chinese government has issued a formal warning against the exploitation of cybersecurity issues in Microsoft as a tool to defame the country.

The attacks in question involved three hacker groups identified by Microsoft, two of which are alleged to operate on behalf of the Chinese state.

These attacks exploited a previously unknown vulnerability in Microsoft’s SharePoint software, a file-sharing program widely used by corporations and government agencies.

The Chinese government, through Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun, expressed an official stance emphasising two key points: adherence to lawful conduct against hacker activities and opposition to the politicisation of cybersecurity incidents to malign China’s reputation.

This position suggests a dual approach of condemning cybercrime while pushing back against international narratives that may prematurely or unfairly implicate China.

Such vulnerabilities, often called “zero-day” exploits, are highly sought after by intelligence agencies due to their potential for covert data theft, password harvesting, and unauthorised system access.

Persistent challenges

The discovery and subsequent exploitation of this vulnerability underscore the persistent challenges faced by software developers and cybersecurity professionals in safeguarding digital infrastructure.

In response, Microsoft acted swiftly to release security updates to mitigate the vulnerability and protect affected systems.

Microsoft’s SharePoint server software has exposed vulnerabilities that have compromised approximately 400 organisations worldwide, a figure significantly higher than the initial count of 100 documented over the preceding weekend.

Researchers at the Netherlands-based Eye Security disclosed these findings, cautioning that the current estimate likely underrepresents the full scope of the breach. This sophisticated campaign underscores the emerging and persistent threat posed by state-sponsored cyber attackers, particularly those linked to China.

The primary actors named by Microsoft include the groups Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon, which the company has been monitoring for years due to their targeting of entities connected to government, defense, human rights, education, media, financial, and health sectors across the United States, Europe, and East Asia.

Another suspected participant, dubbed Storm-2603, was attributed with “medium confidence” to Chinese origin, suggesting a coordinated campaign by multiple threat actor groups.

Further defensive measures needed

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) confirmed awareness of the intrusion and notified critical infrastructure organisations potentially affected by the breach.

CISA emphasised that the vulnerabilities in SharePoint allowed malicious actors to gain full access to content, including sensitive file systems, internal configurations, and the ability to execute code remotely, thereby posing severe risks to affected entities.

Microsoft has been actively coordinating with key cybersecurity partners, including the Department of Defense’s Cyber Defense Command and global cyber defense organisations, to mitigate the ongoing threat.

Notably, cybersecurity analysts have raised alarms about the extent of the compromise. Eye Security’s comprehensive scanning of over 23,000 SharePoint servers revealed that more than 400 systems were actively exploited.

These breaches could permit attackers to extract cryptographic keys, enabling persistent access and user impersonation even after system patches are applied, thereby necessitating further defensive measures from affected organisations.

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