Japan’s NTT Communications is planning a Datacentre (DC) campus in Navi Mumbai and a 60-MW solar plant, citing strong US$7 billion a year demand for DC-based facilities by 2020 in India.

“Demand is at an all-time high,” said Sunil Gupta, Executive Director and President of Netmagic Solutions, NTT’s Indian unit.

The Indian DC market is projected to be about US$7 billion a year in 2020, up from this year’s US$4.5 billion and more than triple from 2016’s US$2 billion, said Gupta in a presentation at the APAC Datacentres Convention 2018 held 3 July 2018.

“The DC demand is driven by e-commerce boom and a growing economy,” he said, citing the reasons for further expanding NTT’s presence in India through Netmagic which operates nine centres in Mumbai, Bengalore and Chennai.

The DCs campus, a cluster of dedicated high-security buildings hosting data processing facilities of business houses, is a long-term investment as Netmagic’s existing nine centres are almost fully occupied.

This month, NTT is launching a data centre each in Mumbai and Bengaluru.

The campus will offer DC buildings to cope with fast expanding demand from global business as well as India’s smart city programme, said Gupta.

The solar plant will be dedicated to Netmagic’s DCs in Mumbai in a way to cut power costs.

The solar electricity is cost-effective as such plants enjoy government’s incentives for green energy and would help reduce the power bill of Netmagic, which is currently consuming over 40-MW of a mixed grid-electricity with wind and solar energy at Mumbai facilities.

One of Netmagic’s Chennai DC is fully run on a 3-MW solar plant, he added.

Managing power is one of the biggest challenges for DC operators, he pointed out, adding that solar and wind energies, with incentives and lower tariff rates, make the business more competitive.

The Indian IT sector has captured 67 per cent of the US$130 billion IT market, said Gupta, citing industry-wide estimates.

“Newer technologies are leading to more centralization of compute and content,” he said.

Going forward, Gupta see insatiable demand from India’s Smart City developments where sensor-based facilities will be sending back data to dedicated DCs for safe and secure processing.

The enormous flow of data from Smart Cities will create more demand for DC campus, believes Gupta.

To date, India has 141 DCs in 22 locations, with 90 per cent of the space at Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, New Delhi, Pune and Hyderabad.

Source: fiinews.com