Google, Facebook Have Millions Of Users In India, But No Data Centres
Bangalore: India has been witnessing loads of data from Smartphone and internet users who keep networking on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. But custodians of such data such as Facebook, Google or Amazon still don’t have a single data centres in the country.
Google which receives loads of data is reportedly said to be opening a centre in Singapore. Amazon, Microsoft, Cisco, Citrix, Rackspace and Godaddy have all set their data centres in the city state.
Though Facebook does not own a data centre in India, this year, at the end of March, it saw 78 million active users in India, which is a growth of 50 percent from a year ago.
According to a Facebook spokesman (as reported by TOI), “With regard to considering Asia or India as a destination, we’re always evaluating potential new sites as we expand our infrastructure, but we don’t have anything else to announce”.
Tech market researcher Gartner notes that India’s data centre footprint is estimated to grow to 6.6 million sq. ft by 2016, with majority of growth driven by service providers. In terms of market size, India is projected to grow to 
16,320 crore from 11, 960 crore in the same time.
Sunil Gupta, President and Chief Operating Officer at Netmagic Solutions ( a Japanese acquired data company) says that there is major demand seen from IT-enabled service providers, online portals, e-commerce companies, stock brokerages and insurance firms. But the ecosystem does not support setting up of centres as it hampered by ‘unpredictable power supply’, ‘patchy internet connectivity’, ‘limited bandwidth’ and ‘unreliable optical fiber connectivity’ between different parts of the country.
Compared to Singapore, India does not have data security privacy laws which companies mainly look for. Singapore offers reliable infrastructure and skilled workforce with business friendly regulations and commitment to transparency.
Moreover Singapore is looking on to set up a 13-hectare Data Center Park and inviting companies from across the world. The city state already has 20 centre hubs and offers tax and other incentives.
Though multinational firms are staying away from setting data centres here, telecom players are seeking the opportunity by cashing in.
Third party data centre providers in India like Netmagic and CtrlS, telecom firms Reliance, Tata Communications and Sify look on Yahoo, Ebay, Flipkart and Myntra as clients.
According to Nasscomm’s Vice-President Rama Vedashree, “Once government becomes a big cloud user, then some of the big cloud players will have to look at setting up data centre facilities here.”
