Nov 21, 2019: New Delhi, India: The sixth edition of Data Centre India 2019 International Conference was organized in New Delhi. The objective of the one-day conference was to understand and formulate strategies related to the future needs and challenges of the data centre infrastructure in the country.
While welcoming the chief guest and the panelists, Mr. T.V. Ramachandran President, Broadband India Forum, said, “While the data centre ecosystem in India has developed to some extent in the last 4-5 years, there is still potential for further growth of the sector. However, in order to facilitate this, it is imperative that the conditions for viability of setting up of data centres in the country are addressed on a high priority basis.”
At the heart of Digital India, data centre services are expected to play an important role in transformation of information into business opportunities. Also was highlighted the need to build indigenous home-grown data centres and improving efficiency and security of data centres.
During her inaugural speech, Smt. Neeta Verma. Director General, National Informatics Centre, Ministry of Electronics & IT, Government of India (GoI) said, “The three major requirements for a data center are the land, power & manpower. While the cost of the land is highest as most of the data centers are located in Tier-1 cities. The data center services companies should follow the example of a large number of PSUs setting up data parks or data townships in Tier-2 or Tier-3 cities.” In 1960’s many PSUs, like NTPC, NHPC, BHEL, SAIL, set up their manufacturing units, power plants and steel plants in remote locations and along with that they set up entire townships to provide all facilities to their employees and their workforce she added. According to her this move can help the data center companies generate employment and create economical benefits for the local population.
Today’s data centers are integrated and cloud-enabled. During one of the panel discussions, the challenges being faced like the architecture; the technology, policies and the efficiency of operations were highlighted.
According to Shri Vinit Goenka, Member Governing Council of CRIS, Ministry of Railways (GoI) setting up of indigenous data centers in India in order to avoid data colonization should be prioritized.
There is an urgent need for a robust and secure IT infrastructure which can deliver reliable and cost-effective solutions to the business to drive the digital transformation initiatives taken by government.
Acknowledging the importance of data centers and data protection in the digital revolution, Mr. Ramachandran further said, “With the growing trend of video and audio-visual content consumption across the country, and especially in the rural areas (contrary to popular belief, 65% of online video consumption in India comes from the rural market, which has only 40% internet connectivity), the requirement of storage and transmission of this immense traffic growth necessitates the development of data centers to a considerable extent. We need to be well poised to accommodate this explosion of video traffic, alongside other social media services which is imminent in the near future. Incentivizing of data centers instead of mandating them could prove beneficial for this purpose.”
During his address, Shri Vivek Banzal, Director (Consumer Fixed Access), Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited narrated an example of utilisation of data centre technology where he along with technical staff of BSNL AP circle at Vijaywada addressed all the employees of the circle in Telugu through video conferencing with minimal transmission delay. Then, he also highlighted the initiative taken by BSNL to support the Smart Cities initiative of the govt. of India through their Smart Cities as a Service (SCaS). “There is a need to make the services of Data center reach the common man, whether an individual or a business,” he further added.
“The 6th edition of ‘Data Centre India 2019’ fostered a dynamic forum for senior executives of leading enterprises to understand Hyper-converged Virtualized Network Functions and formulate strategies to enhance their data center infrastructure in line with business needs. It has brought the best minds in data center under one roof to trace the importance of various aspects of building state of the art data centers and hyper convergence of conventional enterprise data centers and Virtual Cloud based Data Center,” said Shashi Dharan, Managing Director, Bharat Exhibitions.
“The decision to switch to Hybrid Cloud is imperative for enterprises as it allows them to make the optimal use of on-premises infrastructure, while leveraging cloud for additional, burstable workloads. Future-ready enterprises are bolstering their transformation journey by adopting emerging technologies & platforms like Blockchain, AI, Chabots, DevOps, etc. in a Hybrid Cloud deployment model,” said Amit Goyal, Global Head Technology Practice, Birlasoft.
6th Data Centre India 2019 was sponsored by ORACLE, IXIA, Telesoft Technologies, Savitri Telecom Services, Allied Telesis and SIG Systems. The event was supported by Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY), Govt. of India.
