Digital Connexion has launched its first data center in India. Named MAA 10, the facility is built on a 10-acre campus in Chennai, the capital city of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
Digital Connexion (previously known as BAM Digital Realty) is a three-way joint venture between India’s Reliance Industries, Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management, and and US-based Digital Realty.
According to a press release, “MAA10 is the first phase of the 100MW-capable campus and will offer 20MW of IT load. It features a modular infrastructure design, enabling customers to scale infrastructure as needed to accommodate diverse workload demands, from single-cabinet to multi-megawatt requirements. The facility is ready to support emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, offering standardized and bespoke configurations to meet the high-density power requirements (up to 70 kilowatts per rack), suitable cooling infrastructure, and interconnectivity demands of AI workloads.”
Why Chennai?
Chennai has fast emerged as the second most sought-after data center market in India, after Mumbai. According to Mordor Intelligence, “The Chennai data center market is valued at 135.6 MW in the current year and is expected to register a CAGR of 22.18% during the forecast period, reaching 566.2 MW by the next five years.”
Tamil Nadu aspires to become a trillion-dollar economy by 2030, and has been wooing both regional and global investors, mainly in the technology, banking, financial services and real estate spaces. Many top data center companies such as Sify, ST Telemedia, NTT, Nxtra by Airtel, Adani Connex etc. have already set base here and many projects by top players such as Web Werks, Yotta etc. are in the pipeline.
The MAA 10 facility was inaugurated by Dr. Palanivel Thiagarajan (Minister of Information Technology and Digital Services, Tamil Nadu). He said, “I am delighted to observe Chennai’s rapid emergence as a highly sought-after hub for data centers within the Indian landscape. The convergence of entities such as Jio, Digital Realty, and Brookfield at this event is indeed a commendable collaboration.” He further said, “As India undergoes digital transformation, marked by the digitization of our economy, substantial growth in exports, and Software as a Service (SaaS), Chennai stands prominently as the capital of SaaS in the country. In light of these developments, I anticipate a significant upswing in the establishment and expansion of data centers to meet the demands of our increasingly digitized society.”
CB Velayuthan, CEO of Digital Connexion said, “We are excited about the launch of our first data center in Chennai. This 100MW campus in Ambattur is ideal, given the availability of the necessary power supply, high number of submarine cable landing stations in the local area, and the state government’s aspirations to make Chennai the top data center destination in India. We look forward to making this campus a destination of choice for customers, partners, cloud and service providers looking to expand their reach in India, starting with MAA10, the state-of-the-art first phase of this highly scalable campus.”
The press release further explained how MAA 10 fits into the company’s broader vision saying, “MAA10 leverages Jio’s (Reliance Industries) massive digital and connectivity ecosystem and strong enterprise relationships to give customers seamless connectivity across India. The facility is also a vital addition to PlatformDIGITAL®, Digital Realty’s global data center platform, which hosts a rich connected data community of customers, partners, cloud and network service providers on a footprint of 300+ facilities in 50+ metros across 25+ countries on 6 continents. The data center will also be ServiceFabric™-enabled this year, which will further allow customers to rapidly configure and provision connectivity on-demand across their digital infrastructure to fit their needs.”
