Digital transformation has been on the agenda of many organizations for years, the pandemic provided an unfortunate but necessary impetus to accelerate these efforts. Business leaders were forced to rethink their digital infrastructure strategy. Tools that were once considered “good to have” have now become essential. In recent months, companies have realized how important it is to deploy a powerful digital infrastructure that allows them to adjust to changing customer needs and to scale rapidly.
The pandemic showed us how crucial digital connectivity is to business continuity during crises. Businesses which had not adopted digital technologies found it difficult to support remote working, e-commerce and supply chain; Network service providers failed to provide satisfactory user experience as the network infrastructure is unable to cope with the unprecedented data traffic surge; Students in rural areas had to travel long distance for their online classes because of unavailable connectivity. Even homes in metros depending only on 4G had to go for broadband connections over fiber, which was not available in many parts of the metros.
This brings us to the core of the issue. Businesses and the country needs a much stronger digital infrastructure to cater to such heightened demand for digital services. With digital infrastructure investments being estimated to have a 4x multiplier effect on the economy, it is proven to be driver of the digital economy. This figure could rise with the ongoing pandemic and the subsequent decentralization of industries.
Favorable government policies fuel India’s Digital ambitions
India is fast becoming a location of choice for many data center giants. An ambitious incentive scheme worth up to ₹12,000 crore is under development to promote the setting up of data centers in the country. In this year’s budget, giving data centers and energy storage systems infrastructure status will attract significant investments coming for the sector. India is going through an interesting digital revolution and the continued push for digital infrastructure and the expected rollout for 5G spectrum makes the data center a lucrative space from both investment and talent perspective.
The demand for data center infrastructure in India is growing exponentially and is witnessing big investments being committed by multiple players. With growing domestic demand for data center services, the country’s geographical location, access to skilled resources, and improved connectivity, India is already emerging as one of the most important hubs in South Asia and will play a key role in the global data center market.
Rising Adoption of Hybrid MultiCloud
With enterprises adopting new technologies to meet business demands, cloud adoption accelerated during the pandemic in India. The cloud has been used by Indian enterprises to ensure business continuity for a variety of critical business applications and to handle sudden growth in demand for IT infrastructure. According to an IBM Study, 99% of organizations in India are using varied combination of hybrid cloud architecture. On that, what is getting added is the use of multicloud instead of only one cloud service provider. So, as companies progress on their digital transformation journeys, hybrid multicloud will remain a crucial part of their modernization strategies. As a result, there is a need for a reliable data center platform to collate enterprise infrastructure, and seamless connectivity between enterprises’ infrastructure and multiple cloud providers.
It’s quite clear that the importance of an interconnected digital infrastructure has never been greater, for all businesses and all markets around the world. The rise of hybrid multicloud adoption among businesses, increased data consumption and generation by half a billion digital users in India are driving the need for digital infrastructures exponentially. Addressing the growing need of digital infrastructure, Equinix entered the Indian market in 2021 with two highly interconnected data centers in Mumbai. As Equinix continues to expand its global footprint of more than 240 data centers around the world, it will contribute to the efforts towards India’s emergence as a global hub for data centers with equinix bringing in new technologies and solutions.
Technologies that will Shape Data Center Industry in 2022
The Global Interconnection Index report (GXI Vol. 5), a recent market research announced by Equinix, indicates that the pandemic forced economies into digital overdrive, with digital-first businesses moving four times faster than they did before the epidemic. Many businesses in Asia-Pacific, including Mumbai, have compressed the time it takes to roll out their digital infrastructure to different regions, access multiple edge locations, and integrate multiple clouds. Increasingly, Indian organizations are becoming digital-first businesses, which naturally leads to cloud-led innovation. In 2022, we expect the following technology trends to impact the data center industry.
- Cloud-native infrastructure will dominate: The virtualization and containerization of workloads, and their abstraction from hardware underlying them, has led to new paradigms in infrastructure, from infrastructure as code to immutable infrastructure, enabling rapid deployment of infrastructure resources, especially in hybrid multicloud environments. Cloud-native technologies will become more prevalent and accelerated in 2022 across virtually every layer of the infrastructure stack, as well as digital infrastructure orchestration from the edge to the multicloud.
- Edge-first paradigm will fuel innovation: Whether it’s video conferencing, collaboration tools, streaming, gaming or ridesharing, today’s modern applications are increasingly designed for automated and elastic deployment at the edge. In 2022, edge-first deployments will continue to gain traction, as will a wave of innovation across the infrastructure stack to address the increasing complexity of scaling and orchestrating distributed infrastructure.
- 5G will be powered by optimally placed edge infrastructure: With time, 5G will become to wireless what broadband was to wireline. 5G will provide wider coverage, greater reliability, higher bandwidth, and improved security as an access network. This will open up new opportunities and possibilities for robotics, drones, autonomous vehicles, telemedicine, and tactile internet, among others.
- AI will be distributed and move toward the edge: By 2022, AI deployments at the edge for both AI training and inference will accelerate, as well as an increase in as-a-service capabilities for infrastructure automation and orchestration of hybrid multicloud AI environments.
- Data centers will shift toward grid-positive: In 2022, we expect to see a significant increase in “grid-and-sustainability”-positive data center projects. As the next generation of data centers become decentralized and integrated into communities, they will serve as resilient ecosystems for computing, connectivity, power and heat.
With the right connectivity and networking infrastructure, Indian businesses can transform their IT infrastructure into a secure, high-performance, and reliable digital platform. Business and technology leaders who recognize and embrace this trend will be better positioned to respond to the demands of an ever-changing future.
