In the last decade, only ISPs such as Reliance, Tata and others operated data centres. However, due to huge demand, the industry has seen rapid growth in this decade.
Currently, there are about 26 data centre providers with 172 colocation data centres in India and 494 colocation data centres in Asia. These are the number of data centres that are present across India and currently operated.
As far as the wide space is concerned, India currently has an operating capacity of 6 million sq ft with 375 MW power capacity and this is further expected to increase by 2026 to about 30 million sq ft 1050 MW power capacity.
This is almost a three-fold increase in power capacity and a fivefold increase is expected in this industry. As far as the market size is concerned currently it is $ 2-3.5 billion in India and $25 billion in Asia. This market size is expected to grow to $ 8 billion in India and $60 billion in Asia.
This growth is expected by 2026 with a CAGAR of 21 percent and 13 percent in India and Asia respectively. There are several factors that are responsible for this growth pandemic, one of them which has forced everyone to go online for their businesses and work which has led to an increase of huge demand everywhere.
“Government policies such as data localisation is the reason why many international firms have established their data centres in India. This particular policy has also been a major reason for the growth of this industry.
Immense growth has been seen in digitalisation, e-commerce, digital banking in India, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam,” said Ganesh Pawar, Director, Facilities Operations, GPX India. IoT and cloud computing sectors are also booming. He was talking at W.Media ‘APAC Data Centre Security Symposium’, which was hosted by Axis Communications, Genetec and Mitkat.
The panel was moderated by Sushil Kumar, COO, MitKAt Advisory Services Pvt. Ltd, India and panellists included Ganesh Pawar, Director, Facilities Operations, GPX India Pvt Ltd, Sudhanshu Datt, Director, Data centres, AECOM, Jose Thomas, National Sales Manager, Axis India, SAARC, Axis Communi
cations, Ashwin Ijantkar, Principal Consultant, Epsilon Design Consultancy Pvt Ltd and Malcom Kunder, IBMS Lead, Design Data Centres, AdaniConnex.
As far as the different global standards are concerned, there are different standards for the design and operation of a data centre. In the designing standard, the data centre players are using Uptime Institute’s Tier Certification of Design Documents, which is based on a rigorous set of criteria covering mechanical, electrical, structural and site elements, as defined in the organisations’s Tier Standard: Topology specification. Uptime Institute categorises data centre designs as Tier I, II, III or IV based on increasing levels of redundant capacity components and distribution paths present in a facility’s engineering and architectural design specifications.
The second standard of NCTI and N42 is the telecom industry association standard, this standard also provides the classification of a data centre on the scale of 1 to 4 on a similar line of Uptime Institute, wherein the standard provides redundancy levels and uptime guarantee based on electrical, mechanical, architectural and telecommunication assessment.
Some data centres also follow the local standards like the NFPI while designing the data centre. When it comes to the operational standards most of the IT standards get replicated in the data centre. These include ISO9001 quality management system, ISO14001 environmental management system, ISO27001 primarily for information security, PCI payment card industry security standard, SOCK SA70, SSAE 16 and Uptime Institute’s Tier Certification of Operational Sustainability. These are the global standards which are being used in data centres for operational and design practices. Uptime Institute also offers a certification that verifies a constructed data centre has been built as designed, and is capable of meeting the defined availability requirements. This is called Tier Certification of Constructed Facility.
“The best practice adopted by data centres these days is the lead design data centre. Lead is leadership in energy-efficient data centres. Lead provides data centre certification based on the gold and platinum rating based on the green data centre which has been designed by the data centre service provider.
Data centres are now also coming up with renewable energy, data centres with the lowest PUE are being designed. The competition between data centres that reduce the PUE and come up with the lowest PUE, the lowest PUE which is being offered in India is 1.32 which is in one of the data centres in Mumbai.
The highest level of automation is also one of the best practices where data centre service providers do not want human intervention in the power distribution and mechanical distribution or cooling distribution in the data centre and the highest level of security wherein different levels of authentication is implemented. Free cooling wherein cold and hot air containment are some of the best practices which are being used across data centres,” added Pawar.
He further added that India has a great potential for the data centre industry due to the great geographical advantage of the long coastal areas and good landing stations Mumbai and Chennai being amongst those.
The government has also been supportive and drafted the data centre policy wherein the infrastructure status will be awarded to the data centre industry and data centres are also classified under essential services.
“The new hubs which are coming across India one of them being Mumbai, second is Chennai which is emerging as a strong data centre location because of its geographical location, landing station where connectivity has been established.
Apart from these Hyderabad, Pune, Bangalore and Delhi-NCR have also been witnessing a good amount of growth in terms of data centre landscape and smaller cities are expected to see a growth in edge data centres because data centre service providers are expected to go as close as possible to the consumer.
Apart from that, outside India Indonesia and Malaysia these are the two places where we can see growth and establishments of data centre hubs,” pointed Pawar.
Global Data Centre players
Global data centre players are also trying to find their foothold in India as it is an exponentially fast-growing market. The need for data centres has multiplied over the last five years and in the next five years, we will see a further increase in the demand for data centre space.
“If you look at the current data centre inventory across the geography of India, it is something around 425 to 450 MW of installed capacity and this could double over the next five years and I think there will be enough space for everyone to play and survive and there should be healthy competition,” said Pawar.
