Bangalore is renowned as India’s Silicon Valley, with an estimated GDP of more than US$110 billion. One-third of India’s IT exports come from the city, and its IT and data centre infrastructure is secure, intelligent, and scalable.
Banglore’s data centres have played and will continue to play a very important role in uplifting the country’s IT ecosystem. Post COVID-19, India is going through some profound changes in incentivising data centres and is transforming the country’s entrepreneurial setup.
At present, Karnataka is home to prominent data centre players like Reliance, Sify, NTT, Nxt Gen, Airtel, STT and Web Werks to name a few.
Earlier this year the Karnataka Cabinet approved a new policy that aims to attract investments worth Rs 10,000 crore in the data centre industry by 2025.
The Cabinet decided to grant Rs 100.50 crore to implement the Karnataka Data Centre Policy 2022 which offers a slew of incentives and subsidies, said Law Minister JC Madhuswamy.
Considering the growth potential W.Media hosted its annual flagship data centre convention. Bangalore Cloud & Data Centre Convention in association with the CIOKlub. On the 14th of July 2022 at Sheraton Grand Bangalore.
The sponsors for the event included Schneider Electric, Fuji Electric and STT GDC India as Gold sponsors. Starline, Site 24×7 (Zoho), nVent Schroff and Genetec as Silver sponsors. Datsons, CtrlS, Fluke Networks, Seagate IPS Mehtalia, Vass Electrical Industries and Rosenberger as Bronze sponsors. TMEIC India as Associate sponsor and Communications Today and Data Centre Guru as Media Partners.
The event was attended by more than 600 data centre professionals with more than 40 eminent speakers at the conference. Who spoke on a wide range of topics focusing on data centre and cybersecurity.
The event began with the first session from Mahadesha. V., Program Director, Center for eGovernance, Government of Karnataka in which he highlighted that India needs to quickly start rolling out 5G. He further explained that unless the businesses, government and public have access to reliable and high-speed internet, the data centres & cloud will not be usable. Thus, the role of Telcos in propelling the Data Center and Cloud business is highly critical in enhancing the reach up to the rural areas and bridging the gap between having and have-nots.
Next was a panel discussion titled Disrupting Bengaluru’s IT Hub with Future-Ready Data Centres. The panellists included Royce Thomas, President and Chief Business Officer, CtrlS, Seema Ambastha, CEO, BAM Digital Realty, Syed Mohamed Beary, Founder & CMD – Bearys Group & Chairman – IGBC – Bangalore Chapter and Manoj Paul, Managing Director, Equinix India. The session was moderated by Dr Manohar Chikkanna, Regional President – South Region, Indo-American Chamber of Commerce. The panel discussion focused on questions like how is India positioned in Cloud and Data Centre sector globally? The Data centre ecosystem is primarily dominant in places like Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi NCR, Hyderabad and now Kolkata. What really is needed to take Bangalore on top? and what is the scenario for the next age cloud and Data Centre industry globally?
In another panel discussion titled ‘Nailing the Cloud Migrate – Secure – Modernise Innovate’ the Industry leaders discussed their cloud migration journey experiences and case studies. They also discussed how migration may help boost productivity, save costs, and ensure the finest security and how the true power of this technology is speeding up the digital transformation for businesses. The panellists included Cylesh Gadi, Deputy General Manager – IT, Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd, Revanur Harikrishna, Head- Technology & Transformation, Tata Consultancy Services, Aneelkumar Savalagi, Head IT Infrastructure & Operations, Giant Eagle GCC, Sampath Kumar Sunkesala, Senior Director, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Oracle and Madhu Kumar, CIO, Nanda Group. The session was moderated by Vasudev Prabhu, Director – IT Resilience, Cognizant.
The event also consisted of a series of interesting presentations by Mayank Srivastav, Director – Cloud & Service Provider Segment (C&SP), Schneider Electric on Data centres of the Future. Serverless is the Cloud 2.0 – A DevOps’ perspective on cost, efficiency and scalability by Akash Lakra, Senior Technical Support Engineer, Zoho Corp. Innovative Power Distribution System: How Starline Busway increases the reliability and availability of a Data Center by Alfred Victor, Senior Application Engineer, Asia Pacific & ME region, Starline Holdings LLC. Data Centres for Connected World by Ashok M.N., Director Strategic Sales, STT GDC India and A unified platform-based approach to data centres’ security, operations, and business intelligence by Anand Thirunagari, Country Manager, Genetec Inc.
“I feel that this is a great format event in terms of CDC what I have witnessed before is getting a lot of stakeholders on a common platform like the dc players cloud players the government authorities and potential customers it gave us the opportunity to learn and share experiences,” said Seema Ambastha, CEO, BAM Digital Realty.
“W.Media has been on the forefront of getting the right minds together for a good discussion on relevant topics like cloud and data centres,” said Manoj Paul, Managing Director, Equinix India
“The event has exceeded our expectations, especially on the footfall. It has been really good. In terms of the stakeholders from the dc industry there has been an elevation in the expectation,” said Anand Thirunagari, Country Manager, Genetec Inc.
Other eminent speakers included Utkarsh B, Chief Architect, Flipkart, Kranti Kiran Kumar Gedela, Assistant Vice President, Deutsche Bank, Dr. Selvam. K., VP – ICT, Bangalore International Airport Ltd, Prasad Rao, Head – Infra Operations CRED, Prashantha Kumar, Partner, Fox Mandal, Shibu Kurian, Global CIO & COO, 10kInfo Data Solutions Pvt. Ltd, Mahesh Trivedi, Exec. Vice President, NTT Global Data Centers India, Mayank Bedi, Asst. Executive Director, Dalmia Cement, Subramanya Gupta Boda, Head – IT & Digital, Brigade Group, Manish Shah, Head – IT, Golden Seams Industries, Vinod Chacko, Business Development Director, Vultr Ajay Bakshi, Global Transformation Head – Shared Services, Xerox, Chirag Bharatia, Director – Infrastructure Services, Oracle Cerner Shaik J. Ahmed, Vice President Information Security, Mashreq Bank, Nitin Ajmera, CISO, Manipal Hospitals, Dr. Lopa Mudra Basuu, Advisor Cloud Security Alliance APAC Research Council, Devam Shah, CISO, Great Learning and Mubin Shaikh, Partner – Cybersecurity – Technology Consulting, EY LLP, Sreejith G, VP – Data Centre, ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (India), Subhamkar Das, VP – Data Centre Design & Build, Nxtra Data Ltd, Manikiran Kumar, Vice-president Technical Data centers, GTPL and Jatin Bhatt, Head – IT, Healthium Medtech Limited including others.