By Mylaraiah J N, Director – Sales, Enterprise Business, India & SAARC, CommScope
India has made strides in advancing industries and delivery of services on the back of the ‘Digital India Mission’ since 2018. According to a report by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), in partnership with McKinsey, the ‘Digital India’ initiative is expected to boost the country’s digital economy to USD 1 trillion by 2025. The amount of data generated grows in lockstep with technological growth, as does the demand for data centres. With India’s 5G rollout on the horizon, data is expected to grow much faster, as is the impact on data centres. According to JLL, the data center industry’s capacity will likely increase by over 1,000 MW by 2023 to accommodate rising demand amid rapid digitalization. The industry’s capacity is expected to double from 499 MW in January-June 2021 to 1,008 MW by 2023.
We also saw an increase in the number of data edge centres being developed and acceleration in cloud migration. The Internet of Things and “smart everything” is propelling cloud migration. To process increasingly enormous volumes of data and for latency-sensitive applications, AI has become increasingly important.
Let’s look at these trends more closely and how they will impact data center growth in India.
5G Services will Drive Exponential Growth in Data Consumption
Service providers and private companies will continue to assess the most cost–effective ways to boost capacity and capability for 5G implementation plans. When it comes to the data center, 5G offers faster access to information, which will lead to more edge datacenter deployments. As more data becomes latency-sensitive and demands faster access, we are seeing a shift away from large core, small edge data center architecture and toward smaller core, larger edge data centre architecture.
Cloud core 5G will considerably increase data center construction by private companies. If you can develop private 5G using cloud architecture with local radios in the cloud, you will have a data-intensive, latency-sensitive application, and that will drive growth in data centers and edge data centers as well.
IoT will Continue to Skyrocket
The Internet of Things (IoT) is growing at a breakneck pace. According to Frost & Sullivan, the Indian IoT market is projected to reach USD 9.28 billion by 2025 from USD 4.98 billion in 2020. Managers are paying close attention to how they can improve their operations – such as optimizing shipping and installing sensors in the right places to assist with that effort.
Everything boils down to data when it comes to enabling IoT and smart devices. If you think about all the tiny data points involved in something as simple as a door sensor (when is it open, when is it closed, is it locked or unlocked, who unlocked or locked it) and you multiply that by the number of sensor applications (temperature, occupancy, lighting, water usage, etc.) it’s all data that needs to be stored someplace and accessed by an application or user. The infrastructure that makes that work is all in the data center.
We’re seeing that more and more data is time sensitive, and it needs to be processed at the edge, so the IoT is also fueling the growth in edge data centers. Today, public cloud firms are responsible for most edge deployments, and some providers are constructing edge data centers for latency-sensitive applications such as video streaming and delivery. Take, for example, the rapid growth of streaming video services as a key driver of this trend. In fact, video applications – such as entertainment, security monitoring, data mining and safety – will have the biggest influence from IoT in the data center. Rather than evaluating static data or photographs, companies need to store that data and act on it in real time.
Cloud Migration Will Continue
People are flocking to the cloud because of its scalability and low cost. According to a 2022 EY-NASSCOM cloud survey, while 67% of the large enterprises already accelerated cloud adoption, 39% of medium-sized companies and 38% of small companies embarked on their cloud journey.
In late 2021, HPE reported that year-over-year orders for its GreenLake cloud platform increased 46%, and AWS’s year-on-year growth was around 40%. It is a compelling argument for the cloud when you can rent something and scale it in days rather than planning and building something over years. Cloud infrastructure, both public and private, will grow. Large enterprises will use a hybrid model, while smaller companies will use public cloud alone. What’s slowing growth is data security and compliance restrictions.
We will Increasingly Rely on AI and AR
In 2022, use cases combining AI and ML with augmented reality (AR) will increase significantly. Facebook announced a name change and is and is now orienting the whole company toward the AR-driven metaverse. AR will also be used in interfaces, so that B-to-C marketing, sales, training, and service applications will all benefit from AR. For example, AR for data center technicians can be linked to a job order application, allowing them to use a smartphone to see which cable to repair in a switch.
The rise of the metaverse will also drive increased use of AR. We can see a point in the very near future where users can duplicate a physical interaction with a virtual one. We’ve grown used to seeing each other on video, and we’ll get used to seeing each other in AR worlds.
We need AI because as you acquire more data, you will need AI to process it – you cannot do it manually anymore (think of facial recognition or contact tracing). Machine learning can be used whenever there is a lot of complex data. This could help with the supply chain crisis by, for example, automatically determining shipping routes and helping with logistics. The most risky aspect of AI is placing too much faith in it. We may place too much emphasis on algorithms rather than giving high-quality data. When it comes to data, any AI bias can lead to poor decision-making and false assumptions.
Single-Mode Fiber Use Will Grow with the Move to 400/800-gigabit Networks
Single-mode fiber adoption has accelerated. While multimode fiber remains popular, single-mode fiber deployments are growing faster than multimode deployments. As we drive to 400 or 800 Gbps in the data center, we’re seeing more single-mode fiber deployed, particularly in cloud and hyperscale data centers.
You may think that being at 10Gb or 100Gb today means the transition to 400Gb is a long way off. But if you add up the number of 10Gb (or faster) ports you’re responsible for supporting, you’ll see that the need to move to 400Gb and beyond is really not that far away.
Hybrid Workstyles Going Mainstream
In 2021, the widespread use of videoconferencing for work, education, and leisure had a significant impact on the data centre and today companies in India are adopting hybrid workstyles as well. As people record live video chats, a lot of video storage is necessary, and users demand quick, jitter-free access to that video. This will also impact data centres.
So, as 5G, the IoT, remote work and cloud migration increase demands from data centers, IT managers will need respond by expanding storage, employing AI and ML to process data more quickly, building edge data centers, and deploying single-mode fiber to boost speeds. We expect a lot more data centre activity as IT managers retool for the new normal, notwithstanding persistent COVID and supply chain issues.
