|
Listen to this story
|
Data localisation, the latest craze in IT circles, is predicted to be a game changer for India. Providing faster access to data, local data centres and can help create jobs and boost the economy. Moreover, having local data centres in India can improve the speed and performance of several programming and running tasks including AI/ML and blockchain projects.
Local data centres can help ensure that data is stored and managed in compliance with Indian laws and regulations, which can provide a higher level of security for data, including AI and ML systems. This can help protect sensitive information and ensure that AI systems are used ethically and responsibly.
As of September 2022, India’s data centre capacity was 870 MW powered by 138 data centres and is expected to cross 1,700 MW by 2025. The industry, right now, is worth $5.6 billion. Since the pandemic, a lot of new data infrastructure projects have been announced that are still under development.
Let’s look at the announcements made in 2022 about new data centres to be launched in India.
AWS
In November, AWS announced the launch of its second data centre in India, namely AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region. With lower latency and higher security, the data centre is expectedly supporting 48,000 full-time jobs. AWS is planning to invest $4.4 Billion in Indian data centres and will phase it till 2030. The fund includes setting up and operational expenditures. Additionally, AWS is planning to reduce the carbon footprint of their data centres and make them more sustainable by using renewable energy.
Yotta D1
In October, Yotta unveiled India’s first hyperscale data centre, Yotta D1, a part of the larger Yotta Greater Noida Data Center Park in Uttar Pradesh, developed by Hiranandani Group. The data centre spans 3,00,000 sqft and has seven floors with a capacity of 28.8 MW with 5000 racks and fail-safe backup of 48 hours. The Yotta Greater Noida Data Center Park is designed to be spread across 20 acres with a total capacity of 30,000 racks and IT power capacity of 160 MW.
Web Werks
Mumbai-based Web Werks announced that it is acquiring a standalone data centre in Hyderabad. With an expected IT load of 6MW, the centre offers power capacity of 10 MVA. The company set up its first data centre in Bengaluru in February with 10 MW expected load and a capacity of 20 MVA. Another data centre with 12.5 MVA capacity is being set up in Mumbai making a total of 5 data centres in India with a combined footprint of 225,000 sqft.
Read: Data Centres, Please Stop Drinking My Water
AdaniConneX
In August, Adani Groups collaborated with EdgeConneX and announced plans to build its data storage infrastructure. This 10-year project is expected to make India’s power reach 1,000 megawatt, doubling the size of data storage in India. These data centres will be set up in seven cities–Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Pune, and Bengaluru. The first data centre started in Chennai last month which offers 17MW in phase one and will offer a total of 33 MW of IT load after fully built. The data centre covers an area of 213,000 sqft.
Microsoft
Microsoft already had three data centres in India — Mumbai, Chennai, and Pune— when it launched its largest one in Hyderabad that will be operational by 2025. The data centre makes it available for companies to run AI applications on the cloud. According to IDC reports, Microsoft’s data centres in India contributed a revenue of $9.5 billion to the economy from 2016 to 2020. The data centres created 1.5 million jobs over five years, which included 169,000 skilled IT jobs.
ServiceNow
Strengthening the local data facilities of India, ServiceNow launched two data centres in India – in Mumbai and Bengaluru. The two data centres will teach 18,000 people as the company forecasts a growth of 15% by 2027. This initiative will help India embrace innovations in digital solutions. The data leading company has also been installing data infrastructures across Europe. It installed two data centres in Amsterdam and Dublin and then planned to go across five continents.
Princeton Digital Group
In December, Princeton Digital Group received the certification for their flagship facility in Mumbai, MU1. It is designed for hyperscalers for large cloud offering services to fintech, commerce, and large enterprises. MU1 will power 48 MW of IT capacity and a constant power supply with a dedicated 220kV GIS substation.
The total investment was of $300 million for building a six acres of data centre in an even larger IT campus in Navi Mumbai.
Read: What to Expect from the Data Centre and Cloud Policy?
NTT
Spread across 400,000 sqft, NTT unveiled its newest data centre in Navi Mumbai calling it NAV1A. The facility holds 5,000 racks and supports over 30 MW of IT load. The total expected capacity of the data centre campus is 150 MW and the work is already underway. This new data centre made NTT’s footprint in India reach 12 facilities with over 2.5 million square feet powering 220 MW. NTT also plans to make the data centres carbon neutral by 2030.
Nxtra
Airtel company Nxtra announced the construction of a hyperscale data centre facility in Kolkata with 25 MW capacity for serving organisations in the northeast region and SAARC countries. The company will invest INR 600 crore for the data centre and build the biggest eastern region.
Nxtra is building a clean energy data centre with the goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2031. For this, the company has announced several partners Airtel already has 12 large and 120 edge facilities in India.
CtrlS
In April, CtrlS also broke ground when it announced the opening of its data centre in Assam, powering the north-eastern part of the country. The facility will hold around 1,000 racks and is built to power small enterprises, covering 1 million sqft. CtrlS already has four facilities in Mumbai, two in Hyderabad, and one in Bengaluru and Noida, and is planning to expand in Chennai as well. The company also plans to open 500 edge data centres across India along with solar powered plants.
