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Month: October 2019

Is India the Next Hyperscale Data Center Destination?

Posted on by yotta

Data consumption and data generation in India is growing exponentially. We’ve seen unprecedented growth when it comes to mobile internet penetration due to cheap data tariffs. The internet penetration of the country crossed 30% and is increasing rapidly. As per a recent study by Ericsson, data traffic per month will grow at a CAGR of 23%, from 4.6 exabytes in 2018 to 16 exabytes in 2024. This means, almost 18 GB data per user per month will be generated and will be majorly fuelled by rich video content.

Data explosion is further driven by various digitisation initiatives of the Indian government such as Smart Cities and Digital India, and rapid digital transformation of various industries such as financial services, telecom, online food delivery apps, e-commerce and even the manufacturing sector.

On the enterprise side, Public Cloud adoption is disrupting the traditional data storage and management practices. IDC reports that by 2022, 40% of new enterprise applications developed in India will be cloud-native and by 2023, the top 4 clouds (”mega-platforms”) in the country will be the destination of choice for 50% of workloads. In addition to this, as Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning get increasingly woven into enterprise fabric, there is an added load on applications which is driving the need for data centres.

As the volume of data that is generated rises, enterprises, OTT and cloud players will be required to have a robust backend infrastructure which can effectively cater to the demand of the users. Availability, Scalability and Reliability, the age-old tenets apply but the magnitude of dependence on them has significantly increased.

Adding to this demand is Data Localisation. This means, companies are now required to store critical data of Indian users within national boundaries. This regulatory requirement will help in better management, access and sovereignty of the data but at the same time will require the OTT players, Cloud Service Providers, social media, E-Commerce, Global offshore centre and Search engine players to partner with Indian data center service providers to meet their infrastructure needs.

Across the globe, data is exploding at a high velocity and there are no signs of data generation slowing down in near future. Scalability is thus an absolute necessity for data infrastructure. Hyperscale data centers as a phenomenon are gaining popularity worldwide. In 2015, there were 259 Hyperscale DCs globally which currently stands at approximately 450 DCs and is projected to cross 628 by 2021. Nearly half of hyperscale data center operators are located inside the U.S. India has much to catch up to but the outlook is very positive.

In the present scenario, the existing players are seen reacting to the demands and have been adding capacities (both space and power) when need arises rather than building purposeful Hyperscale Datacentre Parks.

However, the situation will improve drastically as some of the biggest Indian conglomerates such as the Hiranandani Group and Adani have announced their plans to come up with integrated, hyperscale Data Center parks. These organizations bring in strengths such as ownership of large land parcels across India, construction capabilities and a scalable power generation/distribution infrastructure.

Adani Enterprise has announced plans to build large data center parks in Andhra Pradesh over the next 20 years. International data center firm, Colt, has announced an upcoming facility in Mumbai to build a 100MW IT hyper-scale data centre facility.  Ascendas-Singbridge Group will also be making an investment of $1bn in new data centre builds across India over a period of five years. Many others are certain to join the bandwagon.

At Yotta Infrastructure, we have laid out a plan to build 3 data center parks with 11 hyperscale data center buildings with a combined capacity of 60,000 racks in the next 5-7 years. Our first data center will go live by end of December 2019.

Market analysis firm BroadGroup believes that the data centre capacity in India is set to increase by almost 68% from 2018 to the end of 2020. Over the next few years, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad will witness major investments in DC infrastructure by local and international players in the market.

As India goes through a complete digital transformation, right from its public sector to private companies, and internet users increasing at a breakneck speed, majority of this growth will be linked to hyperscale data centers to accommodate and process the large volume of data generated.

Decoding Hyperscale Data Centers

Posted on by yotta

You might not realize it, but the amount of data we are consuming and creating is leading to a data explosion. According to the latest report by DOMO, ‘Data Never Sleeps’, by 2020, for every person on earth, 1.7 MB of data will be created every second. Storage giant, EMC claims that there will be around 40 trillion gigabytes of data by next year. These staggering numbers almost feel unreal and abstract. Much like the data centers where all this data is physically stored.

Data Centers – The Unsung Heroes

Data centers, across the world, have been in the background doing their work round the clock, while we have been busy surfing the internet, using instant messengers or binge watching on Netflix. Not too long ago, data centers were treated more like a processing and storage space around the world. However, with the advent of cloud, big data and analytics, data centers are finally taking center stage in the IT world.

Hyperscale Data Centers are the cool kids on the block.

But What Exactly Are Hyperscale Data Centers?

Well as the name suggests, hyperscale is an ability to scale at a hyper speed to meet hyper demand. It is the ability to scale, in order to respond to the increasing demand. Hyperscale demand means ability to add capacity quickly and efficiently, with speed to market being a priority. Increased space, power, computing ability, memory, networking infrastructure, storage resources with optimized performance, is how one would generally define hyperscale data centers.

For example, while a data center (DC) may support hundreds of physical servers and thousands of virtual machines, a hyperscale facility will be able to support thousands of physical servers and millions of virtual machines. While IDC defines a facility as hyperscale if it has at least 5,000 servers and a total size of no less than 10,000 square feet, hyperscale data centers are generally much larger in size and area.

To give you a perspective, Microsoft’s hyperscale DC in Quincy, Washington, has 24,000 miles of network cable, which is nearly enough to go around the earth, and the Azure data center in Singapore is twice of that, as well as has enough concrete to build a sidewalk from London to Paris. Facebook is planning a mega-hyperscale data center in Singapore that will be 11 stories tall and will have an area spanning 1.8 million square feet. Yotta is going live with India’s largest data center at 8.2 Lakh sq.ft and 7,200 racks.

Going Beyond Scale

Apart from sheer size, one of the biggest advantages of a hyperscale DC is upward scalability. For a legacy system to scale up at a rapid pace is a big challenge. A hyperscale data center on the other hand will be able to handle horizontal or vertical scaling efficiently with minimum fuss. It will improve uptime and load times for end-users and run high-volume workloads that also require substantial power easily. A top layer of analytics and machine learning is added in a hyperscale DC.

As efficiency is the mantra of a hyperscale DC, automation is inevitable. Generally, companies that build and operate these DCs focus a lot on automation and self-healing processes. The system thus created is so controlled and automated that the inevitable breaks and delays in an environment will correct themselves, encouraging significant efficiency from the data.

Power efficiency is another pillar of a hyperscale data center. A hyperscale facility will have maximum optimization of its power architecture, bringing the costs and the environmental impact that it has significantly down. A hyperscale data center optimizes airflow throughout the structure. It ensures that the hot air flows in one direction and often reclaims the heat from that exhaust flow for recycling purposes. The Power usage effectiveness (PUE) of a hyperscale facility is much lower than the traditional DCs and much greener.

A Gold Standard: Here to Stay

According to a whitepaper by Linesight called ‘Hyperactive Hyperscale: The next step of the digital revolution’, these facilities are expected to account for more than half of all data centre traffic within the next two years, as data storage requirements grow by 40% annually. JLL reports that the hyperscale market is expected to grow at an annual compound rate of 26.3 percent to $80.6 billion by 2022.

Currently, the hyperscale market is dominated by giants like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook. However, with prominent Indian conglomerates joining the data center bandwagon, hyperscale DCs will become a norm rather than a trend.

How will Data localization impact the Data Center Market in India?

Posted on by yotta

India – the Land of Rising Data

India is one of the largest generators of data currently. Thanks to our young demographic and deep technology penetration, our data consumption is expected to grow at the rate of 72.6% by 2020 according to a study by Assocham-PwC. Digital data in India was around 40,000 petabytes in 2010; it is likely to shoot up to 2.3 million petabytes by 2020 — twice as fast as the global rate. There is a debate going on in the country currently to store the enormous amount of data within national borders.

Data Localization – Gathering Momentum

The Data Protection Act suggested by the Srikrishna committee, aims at protecting the data of citizens by storing it locally. Another reason for data localization is to help government form better domestic policies for its citizens; RBI has already come out with the mandate for companies to store all the financial data locally.

This move has led to many companies ramping up their data center capacity in the country. Amazon has invested around $197 million (Rs 1,380 crore) in its data services arm in the country. Similar aggressive plans have been announced by ByteDance, Google, Microsoft and many financial institutions. Flipkart too has been strengthening its technology infrastructure. It opened its third data center in Hyderabad in April this year after Chennai and Mumbai, especially after acquisition by Walmart. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has also announced its intention to come up with guidelines that will mandate foreign entities to store data pertaining to India locally.

This has generated a lot of interest in the data center business, among large conglomerates and global tech giants.

Rush for the Data Center Pie

The Hiranandani Group recently entered the data center space with Yotta Infrastructure with plans to build 3 data center parks across Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and Chennai with a capacity of 60,000 racks. The Adani Group has committed to developing large data center parks in Andhra Pradesh over the next 20 years. Existing data center players like Sify, STT, CtrlS, NTT are planning to ramp capacities and international players like Colt and Bridge have also announced their first data center project in India.

Most of the players have officially made statements in media that government’s decision to move forward with data localization is one of the major reasons why they are bullish on data center market. India currently needs to ramp up its data center capacity by at least 15 times in next 7 to 8 years to be able to handle the massive amount of data influx that will enter its borders because of data localization.

How Does this Help Local Businesses?

The next logical question is – will data localization help Indian businesses? It certainly will. Storing data locally will reduce network latency and improve speed. Companies can expect availability of quality talent at lower cost with all data getting stored locally and with the existence of many other strong market drivers like growth of user data, e-commerce, growth of cloud etc. Some of the latest providers with resource ownership will be able to build massive capacities of data centers at much higher scalability and quality but at much reduced costs and round-the-clock personal service. Big Basket, the online grocery store shifted its data centre from Singapore to Mumbai and noticed up to 10 per cent improvements in transaction efficiency.

If one was to compare the cost of manpower, real estate and bandwidth, India is at least 60% cheaper than US or Singapore. These savings will ultimately go to the customers looking for rack space. With large corporate houses having their own power generation and distribution capacities coming in, the cost of data centers should also reduce significantly. Some providers will also utilise selective benefits as made available by Government in terms of duties and taxes levied on power and on the imported equipment/services.

India is a more viable and economic place to build and operate large scale Data centers. Hopefully the government will stick with its decision to go ahead with data localization and we will soon be storing our data in our own land.