Data center outsourcing can work
Saturday, 19 April 2008, 18:14 IST
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New Delhi: Several companies are outsourcing their data center operations or specific tasks like email, web or help desk services to third-party vendors, also called managed service providers (MSPs). The drivers of the trend are complexity of business demands, cost constraints, data growth and staffing issues, reported Business Standard. Reliance Communications (RCom), Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Bharti, Netcore, and Ctrl S are some of the MSPs. The biggest outsourcers are enterprises, banks and financial institutions at 28 percent, followed by manufacturing - 25 percent, public sector - 18 percent, telecom - 9 per cent and retail - 8 percent. Ayyappa Nagubandi, Managing Director, Nowpos, a Hyderabad based voice technology company, which outsources its data center jobs to Ctrl S, admits it is cheaper "and saves recurring operation costs of managing an in-house data center". "Outsourcing jobs to a third party means reliable power supply, sufficient bandwidth, ample disk space and reliable security. It is a complete hostage facility. It hosts enterprise-level applications for which we are not technically equipped," said Niranjan Prasad, Director, Metamind Software, another client of Ctrl S. According to a Symantec report, IT managers in the Asia-Pacific region rely on outsourcing data center operations more than their peers. India's current data business is pegged at $983 million (around Rs 4,000 crore), a mere 2 percent of the world market share. Web research firm Data Monitor predicts this business will grow at 22.2 percent per annum. The Indian managed services market is currently dominated by telecom companies as it is a value-added attraction for their customers who may already be subscribing to various telecom facilities like broadband and leased lines. "Globally, web hosting is an increasing trend. Besides that, data center services are seeing more growth among other managed services," says Abid Qadiri, vice-president-product management (Managed Services), Tata Communications. Soumitra Agarwal, marketing director-India, NetAppa - partner of Tata Communications in providing storage services - agrees with the view. In the 2008-09 Budget, the government announced a Rs 275 crore package for setting up state data centres, which is expected to give this trend a further boost.
Source: IANS
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