With the unprecedented pandemic and the mandatory lockdowns in place, all industries and business houses have been compelled to migrate to digital domains. This has skyrocketed the demand for data centres all over the globe with the sector serving as an essential backbone of the new, digitally enabled economy.
There have been reports of traffic spikes all over the world due to necessary lockdowns. From remote working to leisure, data is reigning over all information consumption and communication. An increasing number of businesses are migrating to the digital space with customised needs and are looking towards data centres for solutions. There is also a surge of activity on e-commerce platforms as individuals try to restrain themselves from stepping out and delivery of essentials/non-essentials increases. Hence, it is clearly becoming a hotspot for data center service provider, like STT (Singapore Technologies Telemedia) GDC India.
“It’s clear that video streaming, e-commerce, games and other businesses that rely on data centres will be in a stronger position. Even more, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) across the globe would be more likely to move towards fully automated maintenance system that streamlines the support and helps data centres further improve uptime,” says Jatinder Singh Pabla, VP Sales, STT (Singapore Technologies Telemedia) GDC India, a leading ‘colocation’ data centre provider serving customers across hyperscalers, enterprises, government and retail customers. The company is leveraging its heritage and extensive skills in the colocation data centre space to help enterprises develop road maps and blueprints that align their data centre architecture with business objectives.
Talking about the trends, he states, “The increasing adoption of cloud-based services would be a key driver for the overall data centre market in these trying times when the world’s increasing dependency on emerging technologies like big data, IoT, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality seems to be shooting up. Once the lockdown ends, there is a strong possibility of sustained acceleration in the adoption of digital applications, content, processes and transactions, much beyond the upsurge witnessed during the lockdown period. This will have a salutary effect on the demand for data storage, processing and networks.”
With the surge in online services, the company has relooked and revalidated its business continuity Plan (BCP). Withstanding, STT GDC India has learnt a lot during the last few months and kept adding the best practices to the list. These best practices spanned over multiple functions including operations, engineering, finance and sales and were not essentially technical in nature. “We have now consolidated all the best practices and revalidated our BCP, so that we are more prepared to respond in case of such unprecedented situations. During these testing times,every employee across functions always believed and worked to ensure that the business must go on.”
In India, the colocation market is projected to grow at 23 per cent CAGR over next few years driven by cloud, digitisation, data localisation, IT infrastructure outsourcing and internet growth. Even Covid-19 would push more organisations to move towards outsourcing to build business continuity and optimise cost. The demand for data centres is only likely to increase and it would be crucial to simplify and centralise remote maintenance.
With the growing surge in online traffic, STT GDC India has geared latest tools and a focused task force, it has strengthened hardening for the entire BMS environment (applications, infrastructure and NW) with proper process and systems in place.
“Our Covid-19 BCP of cloud-first architecture with a cyber security focus (tools like I-tune, VPN, etc.), has helped in work-from-home access without a day’s disruption of services and in managing business continuity. Our capacity tool was developed in-house, providing near real-time capacity status. This has helped increase revenue realisation, available capacity data, etc., with information at the fingertips. The customer order portal was launched for meeting customer cross-connect ordering, reducing order booking time by 60 per cent and speeding delivery timelines. Mobile app and web-based tool were launched for customer ticket booking that was immensely successful in reducing ticket booking by 70 per cent and ticket procurement in operations queue in real-time. The adoption level stands at above 70 per cent,” says Pabla.