eGovWatch: Internet Infrastructure: Amitabh Kant stresses on creating domestic ecosystem for data centres

In its report, the IAMAI has said that the data center industry in India would mainly be driven by the kind of policy frameworks that government prepares.

Amitabh Kant pointed out that it was essential for the government to be able to ensure key infrastructure facilities that are necessary for the data center business so that the aimed objectives are achieved.

Individuals sharing and downloading music, movies, photos across the internet in India are seen as the propellers for data consumption in India. However, the surge in data usage expected in the coming years makes it “necessary and imperative” that data centres are set up in India itself, NITI Aayog’s chief executive officer Amitabh Kant said on Tuesday, while releasing a report on data centre infrastructure by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI).

“What India is witnessing today is the fact that a billion mobiles, a billion biometrics by 2024, hopefully we’ll have a billion smartphones, and the important thing is that connectivity will grow and expand. I think connectivity should grow at a rapid pace across the country. As we grow and expand, we need to create the right ecosystem for data centres to be hosted here,” Kant said.

The IAMAI in its report titled ‘Conducive Policy & Regulatory Environment To Incentivise Data Center Infrastructure’, has said that data consumption in India is expected to grow twice as fast as the worldwide rate from being around 40,000 petabytes in 2010 to 2.3 million petabytes in 2020. One petabyte is equal to 1,000 terabytes, or 1 million gigabytes.

“The e-commerce market is just at its beginning phase, we’re just at $20 billion, but I expect the e-commerce market to grow in a very rapid manner. And therefore it is necessary and imperative that data centres are hosted here. We at the NITI Aayog will take this lead up with the departments of information technology, telecom, and energy to ensure in the coming days we take the initiative that we have the best possible infrastructure in the world,” Kant added.

He also said that the right ecosystem for data center infrastructure could not be created through mandatory directions, but by working in partnership with the private sector, which would ensure that companies actually used the data centers that are hosted in India.

According to Cyber Media Research, India is expected to have a $4.5 billion data center market by 2018 and is likely to reach $7 billion by 2020 at a growth rate of 23 per cent. Further, the country’s share in global market is also expected to increase with the current investments made in the data center infrastructure business.

In its report, the IAMAI has said that the data center industry in India would mainly be driven by the kind of policy frameworks that government prepares.

“With higher real estate and energy costs driving data centers to rural or smaller emerging markets, the policies formulated by the governments of emerging markets are going to play a key role in determining where the opportunity shifts,” the report said.

In the Asia-Pacific region, Singapore and Malaysia are considered to be the preferred hubs for shared services and data centers, and attract all major global providers due to the policy initiatives taken by the governments to boost the sector.

Amitabh Kant pointed out that it was essential for the government to be able to ensure key infrastructure facilities that are necessary for the data center business so that the aimed objectives are achieved.

“We also need to ensure that we are able to provide connectivity, power, and that we are able to provide a cutaway from all the red-tape. To my mind, we seem to be on the right path, and we will accelerate this. Data centers will be a very key business in the days to come, this is a sector which will grow and expand,” Kant said.