Cloud & Data Centres: Scaling New Heights in South Asia

South Asia is home to almost 25 per cent of the world’s population. With the pandemic impacting many lives and livelihoods, businesses have realised that they are left with no option but to adopt Digital. This is fuelling a boom in data centre and cloud adoption.

Several global colocation and data center service providers have been showing inclination towards the Indian data centre market, which is likely to contribute to the market growth. For instance, in August 2020, Equinix entered India with the acquisition of GPX Global Systems in Mumbai, which is likely to close by Q2 2021, a Research and Markets report added.

The report further added that in December 2020, Adani Group announced plans to set up a hyperscale data centre facility with an investment of around $340 million in Chennai. The company had partnered with the global colocation service provider, EdgeConneX, to build and operate 1 GW of data center campuses across the country, powered by renewable energy power plants in India.

Government agencies and enterprises are setting up their own data centres in India. The deployment of on-premises infrastructure solutions continues to grow in the market. Also, the National Payments Corporation of India, State Bank of India, National Payments Corporation of India, and Information Technology Department Tamil Nadu are investing in their self-built facilities in the country.

The COVID19 pandemic has affected the organisations in various ways, the most difficult one being shifting the workload from office to cloud. Organisations that planned to accelerate their journey of digital transformation had to do it earlier than they planned due to the pandemic.

In the last two years physical events and in person interactions became almost non-existent due to the restrictions put by authorities due to the COVID19 pandemic. This wait is finally coming to an end as W.Media is hosting its first physical event after two years in association with CIO Klub.

“Mumbai Cloud & Datacenter Convention & Awards 2021” will take place in St. Regis Mumbai on the 25th of November from 9 am to 6 pm IST.

The event will include the opening address by the Gov of India: – Advancement in 5G as a vital factor for India’s economic growth & a digitally connected India by Shri KP Pariselvan, Deputy Director General, National Informatics Centre and Special Address by Chief Guest, Khushbu Jain, Advocate, Supreme Court of India.

The event will also include various panel sessions like developing data center’s at scale in the wake of accommodating to India’s growing digital economy demands, fetching along the fresh approaches for data center UPS, cooling and resilient power technology needs, taking a closer look at smart data centers – cloud with AI ML and RPA and digital transformation trends & know how for harnessing the needs of the future.

The event’s silver sponsor includes Starline, Best Power Equipments Pvt. Ltd, Uptime Institute and Kohler. Industry sponsor includes Yotta Infrastructure Solutions and WebWerks Data Centers India. Bronze sponsor’s include EnerSys, Jika, Hoppecke, Seagate, AFL Hyperscale and nVent Schroff.

‘Digital-First’ is the latest buzz word for every business that also increases the demand for cloud computing experts across the globe. Cloud developer, cloud security engineer, front-end developer, back-end developer, solutions architect, cloud security specialist, cloud migration specialist and many more profiles are in demand that need skilled cloud experts. India alone recorded nearly 379,000 job openings for cloud roles in the past year, and this demand is only set to grow with time, a NASSCOM report added.

“The demand for digital skills today (including cloud) is around 8-10X higher than the supply that exists in India. To make India the first cloud-nation, NASSCOMInsights has worked on the report to understand the existing cloud talent landscape in India and the demand-supply analysis by 2025. We could then realize the full potential of cloud and in the process, make India the talent nation for the digital world,” said Debjani Ghosh, NASSCOM President.

The event will consist of leaders from the technology industry and involve panel discussions and presentations focusing on various areas which include development of data centres, cloud migration, cooling and power needs, digital transformation, cloud security, cybersecurity to name a few.

Here’s a sneak peak of what the industry experts have to say

“Workforces should be digitally empowered and the infrastructure and processes should be agile and self-service,” said Sucharita Mallik, DGM(IT-Data Centres and Cloud), State Bank Global IT Centre, explaining SBI’s journey of digital transformation.

“The importance of the Infrastructure and operation team in an organisation is equal to the role played by a Radar in a successful  Air Operation,” said Sudheesan Nair, Facility Manager, OCS Group India Pvt Ltd.

“Digital transformation is fueling the need for on-demand access to cloud-based services. Enterprises need high bandwidth, low latency, and secure access to applications, databases, and other services to run fast and compete in today’s business. This paves the way for hybrid cloud architecture and drives increased cloud adoption.

Hybrid multi cloud architecture offers the best of both worlds (on premises, private or public cloud) that today’s business demands as a part of their cloud enabled solutions. This gives customers uncompromising availability, greater flexibility, predictable network performance, and better cost economics to drive business,” said Manoj Paul, Managing Director, Equinix India.

 “Interconnection helps create many-to-many connectivity options, which is of immense value in a connected era. It not only allows enterprises to reduce latency as distances are reduced but also helps in improving the overall user experience and cost. Customers also get single-hop connectivity to other cloud providers. In addition, data center interconnection services help reduce bandwidth costs as more traffic is locally exchanged,” said Sunil Gupta, Co-founder & CEO, Yotta Infrastructure.

“We are living in an age where interconnectivity across geographic locations and time zones is the defining criteria for business efficiency. Organisations are now embracing the digital, all thanks to the dynamism and spontaneity of the current economic environment. They are on a constant hunt for better infrastructure management that will deliver flexibility and IT operations efficiency while maximising their reach.

Hence, organisations are building their digital roadmap having a hybrid multi-cloud model comprising private cloud, multiple public clouds, and third-party colocation. Interconnection is at the core of this approach, which is nothing but private data exchange between businesses. It is the deployment of IT traffic exchange points that help you integrate direct, private connections between counterparties,” said Nikhil Rathi,  Founder & CEO Web Werks Data Centers.