Digital India, a Government of India flagship programme, was conceptualised with a vision to digitally empower the country’s society and economy. The main objectives of the Digital India initiative are to provide digital infrastructure to every citizen, offer digital governance and services and empower citizens with digital literacy. The rapid digital adoption in the last few years in India brought changes across sectors along with an explosion of data. The shift toward cloud computing and the demand to safely store data are the factors responsible for the rapid establishment of data centres in India.
The data centre industry of India is anticipated to grow with the rapid adoption of digital infrastructure, increasing digital use, cloud consumption and impending 5G rollout. The industry will concentrate its growth around coastal cities Mumbai and Chennai in view of infrastructure advantages, location and cable landing stations. Landlocked cities like Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, Pune and Bengaluru will also be beneficiaries of the data industry.
What is a data centre?
To be precise, a data centre is a facility that stores and shares data and applications. It is designed on a network of computing resources that enable the delivery of shared data and applications. Rapid digitalisation has undoubtedly led to an explosion of data that needs to be kept safely to avoid breaching. Setting up of data centre can be a solution to solve this crisis.
How can data centres be used to channelise the vision of Digital India?
Since 2018, India has witnessed a significant increase in internet data usage, and this has been made possible with the introduction of the lowest telecom tariff. Besides internet usage, India has seen a paradigm shift towards digitalisation in the last two years. The transition in the digital space point toward volumes of data that needs to be managed and secured. The total amount of data created, stored, and replicated is estimated to grow from 33 ZetaBytes in 2018 to 175 ZetaBytes by 2025, as per a report by Nasscom.
Like private organisations, the Government also generates a massive amount of data that needs to be secured and managed as they are confidential information of citizens. To secure data, the Government must ensure that the data centre will perform at the highest level. As per a report by Anarock-Mace, within the next three years, 28 data centres are expected to be constructed with power capacity above 1,400 MW.
Considering the significant role a data centre can play in government operations, Government must analyse threats and risks that could affect strategic operations, processes, and financial performance that are related to data. The Government must ensure that the systems are working efficiently to provide service even during a disaster.
With the Indian Government’s determination to promote and develop the Digital India initiative, the Government is expected to attract more investments in data centres to fulfil its vision of building a data-driven economy. Moreover, the impending 5G rollout is anticipated to increase the demand for data centres as it would pave the way for introducing new applications.
Conclusion
With India’s mission to emerge as a digital economy, the future will witness an increase in data, and sectors like online education, e-commerce, digital healthcare, and live entertainment are expected to generate massive data. All these will require secure, agile, and scalable IT infrastructure, and in such a scenario, data centres will play a vital role in realising the vision of Digital India.
The interview was published in Times of India
