ESDS creating its own space both as a Data Center and as a Cloud Service Provider

Piyush Somani, MD & Chairman, ESDS Software

Growth of next-generation data center market
The Central Government released a comprehensive Draft Data Center Policy in November 2020 which focuses on (a) providing infrastructure status to the data center sector, simplifying clearances for setting up data centers in India and Formulation of Data Center Incentivization Scheme for promotion of data center parks, (b) enabling a favourable ecosystem - ensure reliable power, internet connectivity and business continuity, recognize data centers as a separate category under the National Building Code because of the requirement of different norms with respect to other commercial buildings/offices and data centers to be declared as “essential services” (c) setting up of at least 4 data center economic zones in India as a central sector scheme and creating an ecosystem of hyperscale data centers, cloud service providers, IT companies, R&D units and other allied industries and (d) promoting local manufacturing, establishing joint ventures with foreign companies, human resource development by promoting research and capacity building.

A Challenge or Opportunity
As ESDS' Data Center & Cloud division has grown, the R&D team has created several products to complement it. We build Cloud platforms that are secure, flexible, scalable, and reliable, compared with on-premises IT, by combining Cloud infrastructure with well-architected solutions. In ESDS’ journey of 16 years what we have been able to achieve is creating our own space both as a Data Center and as a Cloud Service Provider because of our emphasis on research-based solutions and services. So, as a team, we at ESDS consider this more as a remarkable opportunity than a challenge, because the growth of data centers as an industry is going to be the way forward not just for the industry but for our country both as an economy and a technologically evolving society.

Competition in the data center server CPU innovation market
We believe that the ongoing competition between Intel and AMD may provide a good opportunity as it has accelerated the development of server CPUs, enabling new applications and services opportunities in the data center. It may result into improved CPU performance further translating into increased speed and agility for service providers as well as Data Center customers.

IoT adoption to support next-generation data centers
The automation of business and IT processes through Government SaaS or PaaS initiatives, aimed at digitalization of services have been accentuated by the Covid-19 pandemic, increase in the use of mobile phones, rapid increase in subscription-based cloud services, increase in use of biometric authentication, regulatory enforcement of individual privacy, etc. Cloud industry in India is witnessing a surge in adoption by various industry verticals such as Government sector, manufacturing industry, IT Industry and others. IoT services, big data, and cloud computing are expected to integrate where cloud computing is expected to play the role of a common platform for IoT.

Expectation of High-level consolidation by 2023
India is one of the largest generators of data currently, with a growing young “tech-savvy” population. India’s data consumption is expected to increase at a CAGR of 16% to 25 GB per month by 2025 from 12 GB per month in 2020. India’s plan to have a digital economy would create $ 1 trillion worth of economic opportunities by 2025 thereby helping the cloud industry grow.