Taking center stage
Be it to abide to the government diktat, or to migrate to newer and efficient IT infrastructure, data centre deployment is in the spotlight
CRN Network
The data center solutions market in the country is expected to more than triple by 2012. While market research agency Gartner has forecast a growth in the floor area occupied by data centers from 1.337 million sq ft in 2007 to 5.143 million sq ft by 2012, some vendors feel that the market could outgrow these projections.
Growth factors
Government is expected to be one of the biggest investors in data centers. The department of information technology has approved the establishment of state data centers in 27 states across the country. It will invest a total of Rs 1,237 crore for this purpose. In addition, individual departments at the center and states have their own plans for setting up data centers.
In June 2009, SEBI had announced that it would apply its stringent business continuity guidelines to not just the country’s exchanges but also to other BFSI establishments that provide services for customers to trade on different stock exchanges in the country. Similarly, in its business continuity guidelines, RBI has emphasized the need for proper data centers and disaster recovery centers.
Yet another major growth area will be telecom service providers. Last year, the government allotted licenses for 2G services to 35 new operators, and many of them are in the process of firming up their plans to roll out their mobile services. This is expected to boost the demand for data centers that would house the IT and telecom infrastructure of the new players.
Other segments such as media, entertainment and manufacturing are also investing in data centers. In addition, there is a spurt of activity in projects to migrate data centers. While customers are ordering new software and hardware, security vendors are lining up their solutions.
New data centers are being looked at by customers planning desktop virtualization, since the paradigm demands shifting the data and applications from the desktop to a centralized computing space.
| Quick Five |
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» Market is expected to more than triple by 2012
» The department of information technology is expected to be one of the biggest investors
» Channels have opportunity to sell products and services associated data centers
» However, only about 100 tier-2 partners will be able to participate due to stringent skill-set requirements
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Channel opportunities
Almost all large vendors are getting their partners ready to address the data center opportunity. However, since the requirements in terms of investments and skill-sets are stringent, most vendors are aligning only with select partners. The estimate by top vendors is that in the next year only about 100 tier-2 partners will be able to participate in opportunities that the data center boom throws up.
Also since most data centers are likely to come up in larger cities, it would be players in the A-class cities who will benefit. Besides, data center implementation requires several skills-sets that no pure IT SI possesses such as knowledge of power and cooling.
Future
According to independent studies by IDC and HP, it’s estimated that around 1,65,000 centralized computing infrastructures will be deployed across the country, of which at least 10 percent have the potential to be full fledged data centers by 2012.
Virtualization-related services are likely to form a major portion of the business that partners may get, if not directly then through outsourcing opportunities. Another area where partners are likely to gain ground is managed data center services and hosting.
Through 2010, there’s likely to be a host of new vendors wooing channels to sell products and services associated with data centers such as power and cooling management, and niche security products. |