5G and Edge computing are expected to drive the data centre market growth going forward.
However, what are the challenges associated with it and how does the future look like?
These questions were discussed in detail at W.Media’s Digital Week South Asia panel discussion titled ‘Creating a highly efficient Data centre for the future with 5G, Edge computing and next gen infrastructure management’.
Moderated by Mahesh Trivedi, Senior EVP, NTT. The panellists included Vikram Tiwathia, Deputy Director General, Cellular Operators Association of India. Kamlesh Harchandani, Head- Data Centre Design and Development, CapitalLand. Sanjay Bhutani, Senior Vice President, AdaniConneX, Manish Israni, Executive Vice President and CIO, Yotta Infrastructure and Sreejith G, Head- Data Centre Operations, STT GDC India.
5G and DCs
“India today consumes, that is per subscriber the highest amount of individual data at 13 GB per month. The next nearest is South Korea which is at 8.5GB per connection. This is when South Korea has had 5G networks for the last couple of years” said Vikram Tiwathia.
He further added that even though 5G has a huge potential in the future, currently 4G and LT are leading the way. India consumes about 12mbps speed per connection according to the periodic reports of Ookla or Signal with regards to the average speed.
The country is in the top five for LTE availability. Majority of the consumption of the services is done via mobile phones.
“This rapid expansion of the digital infrastructure has driven the demand for compute power”, added Tiwathia.
The explosion is yet to come with 5G and the mobility is sending a lot of data back to the data centres.
“We have only seen a data bubble. When we see these kinds of explosions happen in data, terabytes of bandwidth are creating petabytes of volume, we will definitely see that in today’s world the applications are not monolithic where users save the data and create a report and create a dashboard.
You run a lot of data massaging in the back end. Each individual’s data comes and gets segregated to multiple sets of applications. Different set of data is sent to the CRM, ERP, for billings, for BSS, for OSS and similarly now you do a lot of analytics on that which is generic analytics or artificial analytics.
But you again create a multiple set of data and then you create a decision making report out of it and send it back to the originator of the data”, said Manish Israni.
He further added that, it is also important to see that how can one accommodate this fast data, a low latency volumetric data coming to data centres where one can also reengineer it in a more densely populated compute, more densely populated east west network, more fast read write devices where the data can be processed and sent back the decision making information to the consumer.
The data centre will be the hub of not only collating and storing data but will also have to be available all the time in full capacity in order to provide the output that is intended.
Hence, the data centre capacity needs to be widened than what it can do at present.
“5G is finally becoming a reality and it is predicted that by 2023 we will have approximately 1 billion customers across the globe and from an Indian context perspective it is very important because it has got a potential to unlock approximately about 50 billion market. It will bring in a lot of system integrators, device manufactures, OEMs, TSPs, ISPs in India”, said Sanjay Bhutani.
Challenges in building DC’s and Edge computing
Challenges in setting up data centres include keeping up with the unpredictable IT demand which comes with changes in technology. “I think the interaction in the current digital world is flipping.
Today technology adapts to people and that’s where we find the change is happening. The world won’t come to your IT, your IT will need to go to the world.
I think this is the change which is driving the current digital world” said Kamlesh Harchandani.
He further added that data centres have evolved in the recent years but the basic data centre designs have not changed much.
Certain aspects have significantly improved over time ever since the green grid which introduced PUE metrics in 2007. The efficiency of data centres has been under the spotlight.
There has been a focus on increasing efficiency with changing technology to optimize PUE and others.
The next challenge comes with the server virtualisation and the consolidation that takes place over a period of time when the hardware refreshing takes place.
He further underlined that there are challenges also associated with the data centre operating parameters.
“When we talk about our Indian data centre, we all know that currently, the data centre is growing at 20 percent plus CAGR. Every time we are surpassing the number of growth that we predict. Data centre parks are the need for hyperscaler provided we bring in a complete trust for them, be it infrastructure, scale or sustainability”, said Bhutani.
He further added that when it comes to Edge computing the market is only 1 percent but in the next four years the Edge computing market will go to 30 percent of total consumptions and India it will be about more than 1 GW.
Network is going to play a key role and collaboration from a perspective network plus Edge computing when created in a city like Mumbai, Chennai or tier two town.
Collaboration with all the operators will lead to finding aggregators who will be getting data centres under one roof which will be the edge data centres.
“In the next four years we are not going to be in a place where everyone is building their own edge facilities, it will be a common facility wherein people come under one roof and use it. In my view, yes, Edge computing is going to be the key and there will be three layers, data centre parks, Edge computing and a far Edge computing”, added Bhutani.
“The kind of opportunity that is coming around with 5G coming in or due to the massive digitalisation which is taking place and even the OTT platforms are booming and there is already an increased demand of hyperscalers and other SaaS and PaaS providers coming to India and with other enterprise sectors which include the BFSI and other manufacturing sectors, the growth is going to be enormous and it is going to be a challenge for data centre providers”, said Sreejith G.
Harchandani further added that at present 300 MW -500 MW capacity will increase to 1 GW capacity in the next four to five years.
In the traditional data centres trend it is first design and then going to operation, but in the current trend it is reverse, it has to be from operation to design. A design engineer cannot just design without looking at the operations aspect, stated Harchandani.
“In today’s time the big constraints in an operations vs. design is the design capacity vs. the actual utilisation.
Even when you talk about the large hyperscalers even if they have not started utilising more than 50 percent, some of them have started using 60 percent of the contract usage.
It is there and it is a massive challenge. This eventually impacts the capacity management of the organisations or service providers in terms of back to back contracting with utility providers.
The demand coming from the hyperscalers is dynamic. They would want a 2 MW capacity or 5 MW capacity immediately which is going to be a challenge to factor the design. What is going to be the design and what kind of modularity in the design is required to meet such requirements.
The next three to four years will witness competition amongst service providers” added Sreejith G.
When there are such dynamic requirements and if that requirements can be fulfilled by the service provider then the business is there.
