How Chennai is emerging as a major DC hub in South Asia

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Chennai has been one of the major cities of interest for investors when it comes to setting up data centres. Because of the presence of big financial firms, a lot of data is generated.

Currently, there are more than 15 data centres which are live & functional in Chennai. The estimated demand for data centres in Chennai is expected to increase, according to industry watchers.

Chennai would remain a critical part of the DC ecosystem in India, primarily as its one of the five cities in the country with submarine cable landing stations. The city will continue to find mentions in the upcoming/ announced submarine cable projects that are expected to improve India’s connectivity even further.

This along with the growing IT/ ITES sector in Chennai and the increasing move towards digital services and applications by corporate and individual users would sustain demand for DC space in the city. 

Currently, Chennai has the third-highest data centre capacity in India, after Mumbai (199 MW) and Bangalore (57 MW). Chennai also has high occupancy levels (83 per cent) due to space being taken up by large cloud companies.

In light of this, the Tamil Nadu data centre policy is playing a major role as it aims to cater to the requirements of data centres and provide an attractive business environment. 

AdaniConneX and other prominent players including Equinix, Nxtra, CapitaLand and Web Werks have also announced their intentions of either building a data centre or increasing their state of the art facility in Tamil Nadu. 

Key DC Hub

Chennai has emerged as the second-largest data centre market after Mumbai. Considering the growth potential W.Media is producing its annual flagship data centre convention. Chennai Cloud & Data Centre Convention in association with CIOKlub. On the 19th of May 2022 at ITC Grand Chola.

The convention will be endorsed by the Department of Information Technology, Government of Tamil Nadu where W.Media is proud to announce AdaniConneX as a platinum sponsor, CapitaLand the leading colocation player is proud to be associated as a silver sponsor and Fluke Networks and Datsons as bronze sponsors, Open Computing Singapore as the Exhibitor and TMEIC Industrial Systems India Private Limited as the badge and lanyard sponsor. 

In today’s digital landscape, technological disruptions are transforming all elements of business verticals. Integration of technology management across organisational silos is taking center stage for delivering excellent user experience & driving customer-oriented strategy. 

“At AdaniConneX, we believe that collaboration is the key to success. Technology leaders are adopting a hybrid approach toward IT infrastructure and leveraging new technologies to foster enterprise agility, innovation and inclusive growth.

We are thrilled to partner with W.Media for the Chennai Cloud & Data Center convention and join the elites to deliberate the roadmap of contemporary digital infrastructure in accelerating the dream of a digital-first nation,” said Sanjay Bhutani, Senior Vice President, AdaniConneX. 

According to industry reports, much of the growth will centre around Mumbai and Chennai due to their business and infrastructure advantages, strategic location, and cable landing stations that are well-positioned to support and enable the growth of data centres across India. 

Surajit Chatterjee, MD, CapitaLand Investment, DC Group India, is excited to be a part of the event scheduled in Chennai. He states that the group has already signed an MOU with the Government of Tamil Nadu and committed an investment of around 1200 crores to build a world-class Data Centre in the city. CapitaLand will be building a state of the art hyperscale-designed facility to support and boost the local digital economy and transformation strategies of Hyperscalers and Large Enterprises across verticals. Our Data Center will be built on four fundamental pillars, i.e., “SAFE – Security, Automation, Flexibility, and Efficiency.

“With the introduction of another new availability region, this year started on a positive note for India. Specifically for Chennai, upcoming data centres along with the presence of all cloud majors in the city, make it a critical part of the data centre ecosystem in India. Already amongst the five cities in the country with submarine cable landing stations, Chennai with further improve its connectivity through the addition of two more cables in the next couple of years. Tamil Nadu state government’s proactive measures of laying optic fibre network in most cities, villages, and panchayats will further augment the infrastructure in the state with Chennai benefiting greatly from this initiative,” said Vivek Dahiya, MD, India Lead-Data Centers, New Initiatives, Cushman & Wakefield.

“Cloud & Datacenter are very interesting topics and need of the hour. It is great news that  CIOKlub, in association with W.Media, is having a conference on 19th May 2022 in Chennai. Being a physical conference after a long time, it would be very interesting to understand current trends through sessions and panel discussions. Let us collaborate and communicate,” said V.Sendil Kumar, CTO, Shriram Capital.
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