BENGALURU: With the explosion in consumption of digital services aided by the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), digital payments, and the Internet of Things (IoT), the demand for reliable data centres that can house powerful IT infrastructure for managing and storing data is at an all-time high. From Google to Amazon to Microsoft to Adani, most big companies have invested in data centres in India. Nasscom says India has a huge potential to take a large share of global data centre investments with annual investments reaching $6-$8 billion by 2025.
Data centre tech
Data centres use IT infrastructure such as servers, storage, network components such as switches and routers, systems and application software. Uninterrupted power supply and robust cooling systems are a must for data centres.
There are different types of data centres: colocation, enterprise (on-premises), managed service and cloud data centres (cloud computing). In the case of a colocation data centre, it enables one to rent out space for servers. Managed service data centres are managed by a third party on behalf of a company.
“Data Centres can be categorised into different tiers based on redundancy across various layers such as equipment, storage, servers, uplink, power etc. With a renewed emphasis on energy efficiency, data centres today are focusing more and more on greening and this is a major trend in all data centres being commissioned now,” says Devroop Dhar, co-founder, of Primus Partners.
The need for data localisation, consuming data in the local language and overall growth of the digital economy would be fuelling growth of the data centres in India and would also be synonymous with the overall growth of the country, adds Dhar.
Companies are increasingly investing in data centres in India as they see tremendous growth in data generation as well as consumption. “This drives the need for a reliable, automated, and sustainable digital infrastructure,” says Jeyakumar Janakaraj, CEO of AdaniConneX, a joint venture between Adani Group and EdgeConneX.
Various reports suggest that the fastest-growing segments are hyper scalers and edge data centres. These hyperscale data centres are massive facilities mainly built for supporting robust applications. Edge data centres are located at the edge of the network and these are small data centres.
According to Crisil’s recent report, data centre capacity in India will double to 1,800 MW by fiscal 2025. The report says Mumbai, which accounts for around half of the existing capacity, is expected to add 300 MW. Built-in strategic locations, security to these data centres plays a prominent role and Tier levels are significant for organisations as higher tiers indicate that their facility has more advanced cybersecurity.
Future trends in data centres