CRN Network, November 25, 2011, 1115 hrs
The data center co-location and hosting market in India is estimated to reach $609.1 million in 2012, according to Gartner. The market will experience consistent growth through 2016 when the market is forecast to total $1.3 billion. Indian data center capacity is poised to touch 6.6 million square feet by 2016, with service providers driving majority of the growth.
“A virtualization-led consolidation strategy seems to be the common thread across most data centers in India, which would lead to moderate capacity growth,” said Naresh Singh, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner. “Indian data center managers are becoming increasingly concerned about facilities (power, cooling and space) and disaster recovery (DR) for reasons of cost optimization and business continuity.”
As Indian organizations move through growth trajectories, it is putting significant pressure on their IT infrastructure, including data centers. The increased focus on data center efficiency, agility, reliability and cost optimization in India has led to a few interesting changes. Enterprises with a large captive data center presence may not necessarily exercise this in a big way, but the midmarket and government-owned enterprises are increasingly investing in hosting or managed services, primarily to ensure that they can focus on their core business and get a highly skilled data center partner fulfilling their infrastructure growth plans.
“Indian telecommunications service providers such as Reliance, Tata, Airtel and Sify have rapidly expanded their data center business during the last three years, adding several hundred square feet of data center space in the tier-1 cities — primarily in Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru,” said Naveen Mishra, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner . “Carrier-neutral hosting providers such as Netmagic and CtrlS have had strategic investors funding them to expand their operations by building new sites in Mumbai and Bengaluru.“
Other players are entering the market, including other Indian telecom service providers, such as Tulip, BSNL and MTNL; and system integrators such as Dimension Data (earlier Datacraft Asia), SIS and Trimax. Gartner inquiries indicate a general increase in interest by the investor community around data centers in India. Gartner analysts believe there will be increased outsourcing of data center requirements in the forecast period because of the big data center users, such as banks and government. |