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Among all emerging IT markets of the world, India is one of the top ranking countries with an extremely favorable environment for investments related to IT industry. There are multiple factors that qualify India to be a favored IT destination including positive demography, encouraging policies of government, and sound managerial capabilities among others. No wonder, there is has been a remarkable growth of data center facilities in India.
The government has issued data center policy in India defining the role of data center as key initiators of digitalization in India.
Global research firms including Gartner have offer encouraging predictions about establishment of data centers in India. In terms of revenue spending it is estimated that it will be growing at the rate of around 6 percent.
The trend of data center development in India is nothing but a reflection of what is happening at global level. It is observed that businesses are going all out to acquire data management capacities to handle huge volumes of data that is being generated by IoT, smartphones, tablets, and many other factors.
The data center policy in India has undergone rigorous changes ever since it came into effect, following government’s effort to expedite move to digital.
Growth of data generation can also be attributed to proliferation of online shopping. The new trend is providing extremely useful opportunities of data analytics to understand market trends, buying behavior, and consumer demands. In order to survive in modern and technology driven market, every enterprise, irrespective of its size must have access to data center facilities. The new technology trends of cloud computing, security, and analytics make it imperative for every business to be ready with the basic facility of data center infrastructure.
There are several government data centers as well but they are mostly reserved primarily for government activities only.
Drivers of data center growth
Need for management of digital information was felt way back in 2005, thanks to emergence of paperless offices. Data centers assumed significance for storage and processing of digital information. This was further boosted by proliferation of internet connectivity across the subcontinent and availability of wide spectrum of internet enabled devices that started spewing out volumes of data that needed to be handled, stored, and secured in data center facilities.
Government of India has also understood significance of data centers and has established multiple data centers under the aegis of National Informatics Center. Emergence of digital organizations and software defined business processes has fuelled development of data center industry. This has also attracted major global players including Microsoft, Google, and Amazon Web Services who are having concrete plans to invest in building of cutting edge data center infrastructures and cloud hosting services in Indian subcontinent.
Growth of data centers at local levels can be attributed to revelation by Edward Snowden who encouraged serious debates regarding need for regulations and data security policies at local level. The concept of data localization has been a driving force in development of data centers in every country including India.
Indian government is planning to bring in several legislations on data sovereignty. This is going to force multinational companies to open local facilities of data centers.
The national data center India Act also lays emphasis on setting up as many data centers as possible over a shorter period of time because the IT market in India has underwent explosion.
This calls for a robust and comprehensive security policy and a strong legislation that can act as a deterrent for prevention of cyber crimes and data theft. Government of India needs to look into factors that can impact data center security as well as influx of IT investment in response to the ambitious programs such as ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’.
Key impediments and roadblocks
Every enterprise needs to focus and work on adoption of energy efficient technologies, optimum utilization of space, maintenance of SLAs, skill development, and cost efficiency to name just a few. In addition to these factors, security has been one of the most debated issues and can be a major hurdle in adoption of data virtualization or cloud computing.
Need for legislations covering data privacy
Overseas IT investors need to be assured about data safety by designing and implementing stringent laws to protect data. Indian government should encourage companies from abroad who have already invested heavily in India to fulfill their outsourcing needs. With proper data protection regulations in place, these organizations will be able to freely move their data in India without need for masking their data to obviate data infringement or tracing.
Significance of data center security regulations
Although, data center security and associated legislations are viewed as impediments for development of overall data center industry, these factors are also responsible for creating a great opportunity of helping customers manage security compliance issues.
It is expected that the government will introduce regulations for implementation of firewall safety to prevent hackers from attacking data centers. Localization of data has made it mandatory for companies to abide by regulations of the country where their data resides.
Role of data centers and need for privacy policies
Cyber security regulations and policies of India need to be aligned with global perspective of data security. On its part, Indian government has already introduced several regulations as well as amendments in this regard. These are soon to be followed with data security and privacy laws. It is only a matter of time before we can taste the fruits of Digital India initiative.
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