Veterans and stalwarts from India’s Cloud and Data Center industry came together at W.Media’s Mumbai Cloud and Datacenter Convention and Awards held recently where they discussed the myriad aspects of modernisation, the challenges involved therein, and the changes that necessitated upgrades to existing facilities.
The discussion titled Datacenter Modernisation and Upgrade: The Key Questions was moderated by W.Media’s Content, Production and Research specialist Nick Parfitt, who has been studying the Indian data center market for 18 years. Participants included industry veteran Sandeep Dandekar, as well as Sameer H. Kulkarni (CIO, Core Integra Consulting Services), Ashish Nagvekar (Head, Special Projects, Panchshil Realty) and Prashant Ahire (VP, Technology IIFL Group).
All panellists acknowledged the challenges involved in modernisation. While Nagvekar compared it to upgrading a plane while flying it, Kulkarni drew parallels with an open-heart surgery, driving home the point that the transformations need to take place without causing any hindrance to the day-to-day functioning of existing facilities.
“The frequency of the need for an upgrade, is directly proportional to the speed of change,” said Dandekar advocating for more agile systems. He weighed in on reasons that drive the need to upgrade in the first place. “There are different triggers for upgrade,” he said. “It could be statutory, or perhaps your customer wants it, or competition is mutating something. Either you initiate a change, you be a disruptor as a leader or you catch up with a disruption created by somebody,” he explained.
The panellists examined how even the most conservative enterprise data centers who preferred to keep all data and infrastructure on premises were taking their first tentative steps towards adopting Cloud technologies as part of their upgrade plans. “Some enterprises will still resist getting on a public Cloud platform. But they might consider developing their own on-premise Cloud platform, make the connection of the private Cloud to public Cloud more secure,” said Nagvekar, further postulating, “A hyperscaler would probably look at data center parks as a solution.”
Prashant Ahire also stressed on the need to upgrade in order to improve cyber security. “Whether it is perimeter firewall, micro-segmentation, anti-virus all this is important when it comes to modernisation,” he said.
During the discussion, Parfitt made an important observation that some panellists were looking to migration as a form of upgrade, instead of just infrastructure and “core and shell” upgrades. Dandekar then articulated it succinctly into the question, “Do you transform the existing one, or do you build a new one?”
Some panellists also passionately advocated for sustainability initiatives to be woven into the fabric of any plans pertaining to the modernisation and upgrade of facilities. “Sustainability is something we should not forget when we are talking about modernisation,” said Nagvekar. Kulkarni added to this by reminding everyone about the evolving nature of regulatory compliances pertaining to environmental concerns. “If we don’t take steps towards controlling our carbon footprint, compared to what we had in 2022, it would increase by 33 per cent by 2030,” he said referring to a point made by other speakers during other discussions held during the day long convention.
