Data Center Vision for India in 2022

Data center industry capacity is expected to double by 2023. In a recent interaction with the Editor of Silicon India, Manoj Paul, Managing Director, Equinix India shared his insights on how rise of hybrid multicloud adoption, increased data consumption and generation by half a billion digital users in India are driving the need for digital infrastructures exponentially.

Share your thoughts on the evolution of data centers in India in all dimensions.

India is a high-growth digital market experiencing a data revolution. It is the fifth-largest economy in the world, with the second largest base of internet subscribers globally. Digital payments have grown 19 times in 7 years while UPI transactions grew 103% in last one year. According to the latest Global Interconnection Index (GXI Vol. 5), the pandemic forced economies into digital overdrive, with digital leaders, businesses who were already implementing a digital-first strategy, moving four times faster than pre-pandemic levels. These businesses in Asia-Pacific, including Mumbai, have compressed the time to deploy their digital infrastructure to multiple regions, expand to multiple edge locations and integrate multiple clouds.

According to JLL, Indian data center industry capacity is expected to double by 2023. Mumbai, which accounts for 45% of the total capacity, is expected to further add 267 MW between now and 2023. India has immense opportunity for continued penetration of internet infrastructure and cloud adoption. The rise of hybrid multicloud adoption, increased data consumption and generation by half a billion digital users in India are driving the need for digital infrastructures exponentially. The number of Indian businesses embracing digital transformation is growing, and with businesses demand for agility and flexibility, IT strategy of enterprises is naturally progressing towards increased hybrid multicloud transformation journey. With the growing prospect of work from home becoming a norm than an exception and new technologies like 5G, edge computing and IoT which rely on real-time processing and use huge amounts of data fuelingthe demand for cloud computing. These data-dense technologies will drive the need for data centerswhich house the compute and storage used by cloud service providers and also IT Infra of Service providers and enterprises.

So far data centers have been an option for large enterprises. How do you observe Data Centers to cater small enterprises as well?

Technology infrastructure strategies are no longer just a concern for large-scale organizations, but also for small and medium-sized businesses.The recent pandemic and resulting lockdown impacted the maintenance of IT infra of many organizationswho have inhouse data centers.  The recent emergence of edge data centers has given rise to a new type of data storage network for many small businesses. In edge data centers, storage is highly localized and can serve to store data for a building, a cluster of machines inside an organization, as well as machines outside the organization which access the internal network. Especially important in today's business environment characterized by a mixed workforce and employees located throughout the world or working remotely.

With data center collocation in third party datacenters, small businesses are freed from the burden and expense of managingthe mechanical and electrical infrastructure along with security. Managing security and providing resources 24x7x365 becomes the responsibility of the collocated data center. Collocated data center providers provide everything from trained professionals to security tools. Storage restrictions create a hard limit that a small business operating its own servers cannot cross without considerable additional investment. While theorganization may be able to afford to build a new data center or buy new servers, every moment from the moment the decision is made to the moment those new resources are finally deployed represents lost growth opportunities. In an interconnected data center, smaller enterprises can adopt a hybrid strategy and leverage the power of cloud to increase their storage capacity easily and quickly.

What are some of the latest developments in technology that have catapulted data center establishments?

There is a natural progression toward increasing cloud-led innovation across the board as more and more Indian organizations become digital-first businesses. The following trends have influenced the development of data centers and will continue to do so in 2022.

• Cloud-native infrastructure will dominate: By virtualizing and/or containerizing workloads and abstracting them from underlying hardware, new paradigms have emerged, from infrastructure as code to immutable infrastructure, enabling the rapid deployment of infrastructure resources, especially in hybrid multicloud environments. Cloud-native technologies will become more prevalent and accelerated in 2021 across virtually every layer of the infrastructure stack, as well as digital infrastructure orchestration from the edge to the multicloud.

• Edge-first paradigm will fuel innovation: In a world where data is increasingly created and consumed at the edge, computing is moving away from centralized data centers at an unprecedented rate to a distributed, interconnected infrastructure positioned at edge locations close to the source of data creation and consumption. Whether it's video conferencing, collaboration tools, streaming, gaming or ridesharing, today's modern applications are increasingly designed for automated and elastic deployment at the edge. In 2021, edge-first deployments will continue to gain traction, as will a wave of technology innovations across the infrastructure stack to address the increasing complexity of reliably scaling and orchestrating distributed infrastructure at the edge.

• 5G will be powered by optimally placed edge infrastructure: With time, 5G will become to wireless what broadband was to wireline. 5G will be a major part of enterprises' infrastructure deployment plans in 2021. Enterprises can reap the benefits of 5G by placing applications and "fixed-end" IT environments close to 5G access and core functions within a cloud-adjacent, richly interconnected data center. 5G will provide wider coverage, greater reliability, higher bandwidth, and improved security as an access network. This will open up new opportunities and possibilities for robotics, drones, autonomous vehicles, telemedicine, and tactile internet, among others.

• AI will be distributed and move toward the edge: Since AI algorithms and training work best with large datasets and auto-scaling compute clusters, public clouds have traditionally been a popular place to deploy AI. However, there is a growing need to deploy AI in a distributed and edge manner for a growing number of use cases. In these cases, additional stringent requirements in relation to latency, performance, privacy, and security make it necessary that some AI data and processing, both for inference and training, be near users and sources of data creation and consumption. By 2021, AI deployments at the edge for both AI training and inference will accelerate, as well as an increase in as-a-service capabilities for infrastructure automation and orchestration of hybrid multicloud AI environments.

• Data centers will shift toward grid-positive: Many data center companies manage their energy consumption and carbon emissions through design innovations and energy efficiency measures. By 2030, several operators promise to run their data centers on 100% renewable energy and carbon neutrality. In 2021, data centers are positioned to have a strong impact on the environment, given the growth of the digital economy. In 2022, we expect to see a significant increase in "grid-and-sustainability"-positive data center projects. The next generation of data centers will be decentralized and integrated into communities, serving as resilient ecosystems for computing, connectivity, power and heat. 

• Shaping digital infrastructure for the future: Digital growth and acceleration are here to stay, and with that realization comes the need for digital leaders to embrace the technologies and trends that will give their organizations a clear advantage. Business and technology leaders who understand and embrace these macro trends will be better prepared to contribute to our ever-changing future.

With respect to security, what do you think has been a key alibi for data centers in India?

With 5G rollout, data localization, and the growth of internet-based companies, we expect demand for data centers in India to grow exponentially over the next five years. There are also extensive discussions in India around a Personal Data Protection Bill that will shape the data center industry's operational environment. When the Personal Data Protection Bill is enacted, it will be the federal government's first nationwide data privacy and governance framework, where national security considerations will be paramount. For businesses that rely on a data center for all or even part of their operations, multiple physical and network security measures are necessary to protect the data stored in the data center from loss, malicious manipulation, and theft.

Data centers today are focused entirely on securing their physical perimeters and the data they store and manage (information security), rather than a decade ago. Data centers today contain interconnected ICSs and cloud-based servers, posing previously unimaginable cyber risks. At the moment, perimeter security and data security are not sufficient to protect data centers from failures and blackouts. In order to improve interconnectivity and predictability between different automation systems, companies need to make use of real-time system and process information. Additionally, traditional security models assume that an internal network can be trusted. Data centers have been plagued by cyber-attacks and insider threats for years, and trusting activities on an internal network haven't helped. We therefore see zero trust architecture methods being implemented more and more.

How do you perceive the future of Next Gen Tech Data Centers?

As the country moves towards a digitally empowered society, data volume and digital consumption are both increased.  In order to support emerging use cases such as AI, Machine Learning, and IoT, organizations need a robust digital infrastructure. This explosive growth is also expected to be accelerated by the upcoming launch of India's 5G network.

Currently, leaders must deal with a fragmented, complex infrastructure spread across geographic locations, present in private and public environments, and involving multiple vendors. For continued growth, they must build solutions that help connect the infrastructure necessary to accelerate their digital advantage, and architect for success at the edge. Indian businesses can transform their IT infrastructure into a resilient and agile digital platform that ensures security, performance, and a great user experience with the right connectivity and networking infrastructure. Leaders who understand and embrace these changes will be better able to adapt to an ever-changing future.

Current trends in the global green data center industry are driven by a large-scale shift toward cloud-based solutions and increased data center infrastructure. As the world's fifth largest energy market, India is already making headway towards expanding its alternative energy sources like wind and solar as it runs the world's largest clean energy program to reach an installed renewable energy capacity of 175 GW by 2022. Furthermore, solar energy now accounts for 10.7% of the country's installed power capacity. Using this existing infrastructure and expertise, green data centers can be built. Data centers need to be Green by Design from the ground up and not be an after-thought improvement or enhancement when the construction is done – incorporating green landscaping and natural water features (such as underground water sources) into the architecture will help increase efficiency, recycle wastage and reduce the cost to maintain. 

To support leading businesses around the globe in the increasingly digital world, we have transformed Equinix into the world’s digital infrastructure company by not only expanding our global footprint, but also enhancing our interconnection and edge service portfolio. We are giving digital leaders one global platform to scale, interconnecting their digital infrastructure for optimal performance, speed and flexibility so they can move fast, get to market first and pivot quickly when customer needs and market conditions change.

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