Data Center is a functionality where it controls any organization’s IT operations equipment and also stores and manages its Data in addition to this it will be taking the networks most critical systems which are very critical to daily operations. Three major business groups had made their plans to enter this segment in the last five months but the business of making up large data centers has picked up its pace lately in India and while on the other hand already well known companies are going ahead to expand their business of their own.
Incumbent Oracle has already announced the launch of its Gen 2 Cloud region in Mumbai, while another planned in Hyderabad. July, the Adani group is likely to invest up to Rs 70,000Cr to set up solar powered data parks in Andhra Pradesh.
Real estate Hiranandani Group has announced 14,000Cr investment plan, and Reliance Industries partnering with Microsoft to provide cloud services to small and medium enterprises. A connected, inclusive digital economy means more amount of data is being generated across various platforms such as Cloud and social media which are accessed by more people using mobile technology. All this data needs to be stored, managed and disseminated to users through public and private cloud, making data centers a major icon in digital transformation technology.
Data centers are classified in two ways
1. On the power that they consume
2. data that they store or process
Major organizations will prefer the first metric.
Colocation setups are being introduced in India, with cloud computing architecture so while paving the country on a path to becoming one of the largest hubs for colocation data centers globally as well as they are shared where the infrastructure is used by different companies and with cloud adoption rising, a robust & scalable infrastructure is critical. In edge computing, the data is processed nearer to where it is being generated, rather than a central cloud or data centre respectively. It was estimated that over 75% of this data now resides outside the country.
Sunil Khanna, Managing Director, Vertiv India, says that In the next few years, we anticipate the edge to become the most mission-critical part of an organization’s digital ecosystem,”
Initially, the large investments in the space came from established companies like Amazon Web Services and Google and significantly cloud market is growing at a rate of 40% and a heavy amount of investment is going towards supporting this structure and making a next-gen infrastructure. Reliance had made a statement that it would offer Microsoft cloud services to small & medium enterprises through Jio, and also set up data centers that would run Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform.
In the year Reserve Bank of India mandated that all data of financial transactions should be available on servers in India and also made sure that the data which is taken in other places excluding India for processing should be brought back. Hence global companies such as MasterCard and Visa are ready to begin the process of storing data in India.
Gupta, the CEO of Yotta Infrastructure says India needs large scale data centers in the same way that it needs roadways, a company that plans to set up large self sufficient data parks which would give customers the option to increase capacity in the desired or same location and Given the number of customers, India needs 15 times more capacity.
Even as large operators double down on their own expansion plans, many small, single-city data centre operators are also now going national.
Nikhil Rathi, CEO of Web Werks says “We will go from 30,000 square feet to 2 lakh square feet by 2020-22,”, which has over the last ten years operated a single data centre in Mumbai. In addition to expanding its presence in Mumbai, will reach in to the major metros and a few other cities.
However, given the challenges of operating in India, most international established operators are keen to enter either through a partnership or by acquiring a local company.
Advantages of Data Centers:
The boom in demand for data centers has resulted in growth for other allied businesses.
Juniper Networks, has seen the transition from 90% of early internet traffic being hosted in many places other than India to almost 70% of the OTT content being hosted domestically. They are also working on making the data centre infrastructure invisible for applications to ride demand at will, rather than being constrained by defined network respectively.
Challenges
Though the opportunities are huge in this process, the challenges are still significant. The two major issues are Access to uninterrupted power supply and land banks in areas where there is demand. The lack of a clear set of rules is another speed breaker . However, expected to change with the National Digital Communication Policy 2018 which provides regulatory reforms.
