In the last few years, the unprecedented demand for the data storage and processing infrastructure has created a further demand for data centers across India. For Tamil Nadu, India’s second largest state in terms of GDP, building data centers to support the State’s digital evolution has been a top priority.
In a state with a diverse economy where companies ranging from biopharma to banking ply their business, the need for a strong data backbone is key. Tamil Nadu’s location offers data centers the advantage of high submarine cable network connectivity. Additionally, the State offers extensive IT & ITeS Infrastructure, a technically qualified workforce, transport infrastructure and pro-investor policies.
Let’s analyze the factors that are making Tamil Nadu an emerging contender for the crown of India’s data center hub.
Submarine cable access
Data centers need the best access to submarine cable networks. Tamil Nadu has the second highest number of submarine cable landing stations in India with landing stations for over 30% of India’s subsea cables connected to 264 landing stations globally.
The State has an excellent Optical Fibre Communication (OFC) network and availability of reliable, large bandwidth. With 6 Submarine Cables offering 14.8 TBPS capacity in Chennai and 1-TBPS in Tuticorin, these cities offer the highest bandwidth connectivity among the Indian cities and are the closest landing stations connected to the West Coast of the US.
The Submarine Cable that links Chennai with Singapore has the bandwidth of 8.4 Terabit Per Second (TBPS). This Cable connects with C2C Cable network, SEA-ME-WE 3 and Asia Pacific Cable Network. Southeast Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) is an Optical Fibre Submarine Communications Cable System that carries telecommunications between India (Chennai) and Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Egypt, Italy, Tunisia, Algeria and France.
The India- Singapore Cable System has a landing station in Chennai. This Cable system has significantly increased the existing bandwidth capacity into India by 5.12 TBPS and is the second fastest growing communications route in the world.
DC’s & Network connectivity
The Government of Tamil Nadu has set up the State Data Centre (SDC), Disaster Recovery Centre (DRC), cloud computing facilities and Common Service Centres (CSC) for improving the access of citizens to online Government services. The State Government is undertaking efforts such as the Tamil Nadu State-Wide Area Network (TNSWAN), National Knowledge Network (NKN), BharatNet and TamilNet to improve tele-density and broadband penetration and ensure reliable and efficient telecom networks throughout the State.
Policies
At the time of writing, Tamil Nadu has signed MoUs for an investment in excess of Rs. 18,000 crore in data centers during fiscal year ending 2022. Recently, CapitaLand, AdaniConnex, Princeton Digital Group, ST Telemedia Global Data Centers, Yotta Infrastructure, BAM Digital Realty, amongst others have set up operations in the State. More are expected to follow.
Tamil Nadu has always been proactive with strategies that encourage IT and BPO’s which is evidenced in the recent policies on blockchain, Artificial Intelligence and policies for manufacturers of electronics and electrical equipment such as Tamil Nadu Electronics Hardware Manufacturing Policy (2020) and Tamil Nadu Industrial Policy (2021).
Workforce
Tamil Nadu offers the largest pool of technically qualified professionals in the country and is also home to many engineering colleges such as Vellore Institute of Technology. Around 1.16 lakh students specialize in Information Technology, Computer Science, Electronics & Telecommunication annually. Post graduate courses like MCA (Master of Computer Applications) are specially designed to suit the needs of the IT-BPO industry.
The government’s adherence to providing power, land, and connectivity infrastructure for data centers, fiscal and non-fiscal incentives, and promoting renewable energy use for everyday management has created a supportive ecosystem for setting up data centers.
As Tamil Nadu is gearing up to provide a ready, built and well-established supply chain for data centers to integrate scale within the state, we, at W.Media, to give a fillip to their efforts have come up with the Chennai Cloud & Data Centre Convention. Along with the top thought leaders in the country we are going to discuss future trends and strategies for data centers and cloud facing significant demand growth together with the analyses of the options that enterprise companies can deploy to meet their IT requirements – on-prem, colocation, multi-cloud environments, cloud migration, hybrid IT configurations – while maintaining compliance, integration and security.
Join us for Chennai Cloud & Datacenter Convention to get further insights.
