 |
| Photo by panumas nikhomkhai: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photo-of-mining-rig-1148820/ |
India ostensibly has everything that is required to help it make one of the leading data centre hubs in the world. From low infrastructure and manpower costs to active government support, it apparently has things neatly lined up to help it do just that. But given the existing power situation in the country and the excessive reliance on coal-generated electricity, there are many challenges to be overcome in order to get there. These include straining the water resources available in the country, which are already under intense pressure to cater to the needs of nearly a billion and a half people. Land acquisition and the creation of a suitably skilled workforce are other major challenges that need to be addressed.
Data Centres- The Only Path Ahead for the Indian IT Sector?
The IT sector is one of the few success stories that the country has seen with regard to providing a well paying career path to millions of Indian youth this century. Apart from the technically qualified who take up jobs in this sector, there is an even larger number of people who find indirect employment working as security staff, drivers, real estate managers and canteen personnel.
The impending wind-down of the IT sector puts millions of livelihoods at stake, which makes it imperative that the opportunity afforded by the likely emergence of data centres as a major growth area acts as a godsend. Worldwide, the massive growth of cutting edge technologies like AI, 5G, cloud computing, and the IoT has led to an enormous surge in the demand for data storage, thereby making data centres a vitally critical component of the upcoming and emerging technology eco-systems. Besides, data centres are also required to help manage the data as well as processing needs of the high-growth sectors like finance, e-commerce, healthcare, gaming and a host of other industries that rely on dependable digital support in the shape of world class data centres.
In lieu of this, India is seeking to vastly enhance its data centre capacity in 2026 and the subsequent years leading up to 2030, by which time a large number of big data centre hubs would have become operational. It is heartening to note that an investment commitment of more than a $100 billion dollars is expected to be achieved by 2027. As a matter of fact, it is raining investments in India, when it comes to major Indian and international business groups' interest in helping grow thedata centre sector. From the home grown Adani group looking at investing $100 billion towards developing hyperscale AI-ready data centres over the next decade to US technology behemoths like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and others deciding to invest as much as 67.5 billon in the Indian data centre space, there does seem to be a momentum towards building data centres up as the next big thing to happen to the Indian IT space.
Can focusing on data centres move India down the IT value chain?
For all those tom tomming the impending rise of India as a major global data centre hub, there is a contrary school of thought which fears that this could possibly move the Indian industry down the IT value chain. It suggests that rather than be known for low end server farms, India should stride ahead with a focus on creating world class SaaS products, designing chips and building cutting edge new age AI models.
Conclusion
Despite the misgivings of a few, the overriding consensus is that data centre growth augurs well for the Indian IT industry as it helps lay the foundation for the accelerated growth and adoption of AI and Cloud technologies across the world. Global management consultancy firm KPMG believes India is witnessing a data centre revolution that is helping achieve the trillion dollar digital economy dream of the country.
They hold that it makes eminent sense for a nation that boasts the largest and most data intensive mobile user numbers in the world to work on expanding data centre capacity expansion on an unprecedented scale. Besides, the rapid and massive growth and adoption of AI have necessitated that data centre growth in the country be encouraged in every possible manner. Doing so also helps protect data sovereignty, something to which the government is fully committed.
That India is well on its way to becoming a major global data centre hub is borne out by S&P Global Commodity Insights estimates which expect the nation to likely become the second largest consumer of data centre electricity in the Asia Pacific region over the next two years, exceeding such demand by Singapore and Australia.
Clearly, the data centre story has just begun in India.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.