Chennai’s data centre market recently received a boost when three big companies agreed to invest Rs. 8,300 crore in the city. Chennai also hosts numerous smaller facilities and is country’s second major hub for data centres after Mumbai. The three firms signed MOUs with the state government and more data centre firms are expected to invest in the city.
Chennai attracts data centre companies because submarine cables landing station here, the place is close to important Asian cities, and the state government encourages the development of data centres.
In addition, Chennai has ample power and real estate, which are crucial for the industry. The state government is proactive and provides encouragement to develop IT infrastructure.
Now, let’s look at the reasons why Chennai is attracting investment in its data centre sector:
Undersea Cable Stations
CBRE states that Chennai has excellent connectivity through optic fiber networks and hosts three under-ocean cable landing facilities. These have a combined capacity of around 14.8 terabytes a second[1]. The city also has high network reliability, and all these factors contribute to its rise as a major player in the data centre industry.
Demand is also being driven by elements such as the personal data protection policy, OTT consumption, emerging technologies, smart TVs, and lower data rates. Companies are adopting cloud services and remote working is here to stay which are other reasons for the increasing demand for data centre services.
Global Connection
Chennai is emerging as a data centre hub due to its infrastructure capabilities such as the fiber landing facilities that enable data centres in Chennai to easily opt for global connections, enhancing connectivity. The high demand in the city also makes it a good choice. As India starts to consume greater amounts of bandwidth, more organizations will start building landing facilities and subsea cables that end in data centres.
From the Bay of Bengal Gateway, various submarine cables enter the city which includes i2i Cable Network, Tata TGN-Tata Indicom, BRICS, and SeaMeWe-4.
An undersea cable landing facility is ideal to host and service the submarine data traffic flowing in from the Pacific area. The submarine data cable comes to land at the location of the cable landing point. This infrastructure is crucial and is utilized to end intercontinental cables. Then, network services either transport the data further or end it in a DC. In this way, a cable landing facility serves to extend the network services offered by a provider.
A data centre stores and processes client data and typically a network ends in a data centre facility. Data centres have networks coming in and going out for transfer. Data storage technology is continuously improving, and data computing today includes machine learning, artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and more.
Favorable National Policies
The data center sector in India has received a further boost because of favorable national policies. Currently, around 40 clearances are required to set up a data centre and this number will be reduced. The government is encouraging both hyperscale data centres as well as cloud economic zones that will be a group of small and hyperdata centers.
Cloud data centres will be set up similar to SEZs (special economic zones) where the government will take care of the supply of land, power, and water as well support to do business easily. To make India a major data centre hub in the region, the government plans to reduce electricity costs as this is one of the main expenses in operating a data center. The central government is aware of it and is consulting with state governments to draft a direction or policy regarding this issue.
Currently, there are some standards regarding this, and the government is also preparing general standards for data facilities based on worldwide best practices to make the industry more efficient and competitive.
STT GDC India’s Data Centres Chennai
STT GDC India operates three state-of-the-art data centers in Chennai which are providing world-class colocation services to industries such as IT/ITES, e-commerce, OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers), automobile manufacturers, and others in the city.
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