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As of March 2013, Facebook has 78 million active users in India, yet the social networking portal does not own a data centre in the country
BANGALORE: India is witnessing an explosion of data thanks to millions of smartphone and internet users spending endless hours networking on Facebook, microblogging on Twitter and watching and uploading videos on Youtube. However, the custodians of such data – Google, Facebook, or Amazon – do not yet have any data centres here.
A few weeks ago in April, technology company Oracle opened a data centre in Singapore to offer its business-software as a service to customers in South Asia. Google, whose video-sharing website Youtube is witnessing unprecedented growth in India, is only months away from opening its data centre in Singapore.
Besides them, several other large global companies, including Rackspace, Amazon, Godaddy, Citrix, Cisco and Microsoft, have all set up their data centres in the city state over the past two years to meet storage needs in the Asia-Pacific region, including India.
At the end of March Facebook had 78 million active users in India, a growth of 50% from a year ago but the social networking portal does not own a data centre in the country still.
“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,” a spokesman said.
Technology market researcher Garner estimates Indian data centre footprint at 4 million square feet, and estimated to grow to 6.6 million sq ft by 2016, with service providers driving majority of the growth. In terms of market size, it is projected to grow to $3 billion (Rs 16,320 crore) from $2.2 billion (Rs 11,960 crore) in the same period.
“There is major demand coming from IT-enabled service providers, online portals, e-commerce companies, stock brokerages, and insurance firms,” said Sunil Gupta, president and chief operating officer at Netmagic Solutions, a data centre company which was acquired by Japan’s NTT in January 2012. “But the ecosystem does not encourage setting up own centres.”
The ecosystem Gupta refers to is hampered by unpredictable power supply, patchy internet connectivity, limited bandwidth and unreliable optical fibre connectivity between different parts of the country. When companies want their systems operating at nearly 100%, infrastructure breakdowns of the sort that India regularly witnesses are simply not acceptable.
Moreover, unlike Singapore, India does not have a data security privacy law, which is vital for companies and governments.
“Singapore offers an ideal combination of reliable infrastructure, a skilled workforce and a commitment to transparent and business-friendly regulations” is how Google explains its choice of the city. Oracle cites “excellent telecommunications infrastructure and efficient, well-qualified manpower”.
Much like India set up software technology parks to nurture its IT services and BPO industry, Singapore is setting up a 13-hectare Data Center Park and inviting companies from across the world. It already has some 20 data centre hubs and offers tax and other incentives.
“India offers skilled engineering talent, and there is demand, but rising real estate costs and the issues around ready infrastructure are key challenges,” said Sid Deshpande, senior research analyst at Gartner.
Even as large multinational companies stay away setting up data centres here, local players, including telecom operators, are cashing in on the growing opportunity.
India-based third-party data centre providers like Netmagic and CtrlS, telecom firms Reliance, Tata Communications and Sify count Yahoo, Ebay, Flipkart and Myntra as clients.
IT industry body Nasscom thinks that the government, which is digitising land records and citizen data at a fast clip, can be a significant driver of the data centre market in India.
“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,” said Rama Vedashree, vice-president at Nasscom. “I think this will take a long time in implementation.”
Credit and Source: Akansha Prasad for The Times of India
