With an increased demand for data centres, organisations are adapting multi-tenant and captive data centres to suit their requirements.
But how is the scenario changing in Bangladesh?
These points were discussed in detail at W.Media’s Digital Week South Asia panel discussion titled ‘How is the multi-tenant & Captive data centre footprint changing in Bangladesh & are scalable DC’s next?’
Moderated by Sharful Alam, Director and Chief Strategy Officer, Dotlines. The panellists included Najmus Sakeb Jamil, Senior VP & Head of Technology Infrastructure, BRAC Bank. Mani Kiran Kumar, GM – Data centre Life cycle Services, Schneider Electric and Md. Abdul Muktadir, VP & Head of IT Infrastructure, AB Bank Ltd.
Captive DC and Multi-tenant DC
“If you give me a choice and all infrastructure is ready then I would prefer a multi-tenant data centre because I would not want to get into operations or arranging the manpower. That is not the core job of a bank. We would like to engage more in the technology part where we could directly add value to the bank’s business”, said Najmus Sakeb Jamil.
The data centre business is a more technical job which requires special skills and knowledge to run the data centre efficiently and hold the uptime and the performance level. We would hand over that part to the expert and do our job which we think we should do, Jamil added.
“At present, we prefer a captive data centre because the infrastructure and other facilities are not yet developed to adopt that. However for near and far DC we are thinking about it.
Different organisations come together and work in the area of data centres. The government has established a national data centre”, said Md. Abdul Muktadir.
He further added that presently captive data centre is their choice and they are looking forward to the far and near data centre. So far there is no such observation which will not allow banks to go for multi-tenant data centres.
“When we want to go for a multi-tenant data centre we have a checklist from the bank we go to the multi-tenant facility with the checklist and see what we already have and what we expect is present in that data centre. At times our expectations are more as we expect more data professional services from them.
When we go to the present multi-tenant data centre, third party or colocation services we do not get our requirements fulfilled as per the checklist”, added Jamil.
He also underlined that the organisation is keen on moving to far Disaster Recovery (DR), co-location or third party first and then we will think of our DR. The far DR is expected in a seismic zone, in Bangladesh we have three seismic zones and most of the data centres are in Dhaka region and Dhaka falls in the medium earthquake zone so we need to go to the western part of the country.
Who should move to multi-tenant DC?
“From my experience in working in Bangladesh, it is very clear that there is no restriction from any government agencies that someone can or cannot host in a multi-tenant data centre.
The adaptability and the technology evolution but sometimes there is a limitation in the infrastructure that is available to them.
If they immediately have to launch an application or come with a technology that will help their customers or users to enhance their operation experience, for which it will become important to have an infrastructure in place which most of the times will not be readily available because when you have to plan an infrastructure one needs to see various other supporting services related to power, cooling or space and it would not be an easy task.
When you don’t have the limitations in terms of the regulations then any customer can adopt for a multi-tenant”, said Mani Kiran Kumar.
He further pointed out that it is not mandatory that customers have their own captive data centre unless and until there is some internal board level decision taken.
Because, in some of the organisations it was seen that they did not want to host a multi-tenant data centre as there is a fear that there might be challenges in terms of cyber security and the access to the infrastructure would be restricted.
In a captive data centre, the infrastructure is accessible to each and every employee as and when required. In a multi-tenant data centre, when one is planning for some DR in the western part of the region in Bangladesh then the accessing of that particular DR side could become difficult as the organisation will need to have the required resources in that area.
“We found that 70 percent of our customers have their own captive data centre and they have some applications and some systems in the multi-tenant data centre. These may not be very critical or accessed on a regular basis or it could be a test or a development application, which can be done in a multi-tenant”, added Kumar.
He further underlined that all of this depends upon the organisation as to how they want to adopt and what is the feasibility that they have to opt for a captive data centre or a multi-tenant data centre.
Hybrid architecture is the ideal architecture, where there is a core data centre and then the regional data centre and a small edge data centre.
The edge data centre is a captive or an in house data centre, it cannot be a multi-tenant data centre. Any organisation that adopts the hybrid architecture with three layer connectivity, then the core and the regional and be a multi-tenant and edge can be a captive data centre.
