Country's energy shortfall could dampen projections that data center industry could double in the next two years.
The biggest challenge to India's booming data storage industry is the country's energy shortfall, according to a new report by research firm Gartner.
Total data center capacity in India is expected to reach 5.1 million square feet by 2012, representing 31 percent growth from 2007 to 2012. And within the next two years, the industry is projected to double, the report said.
That growth is being driven by demands of the financial, telecom, manufacturing and service sectors.
In the long run, India has the potential to become a hub for data centers for the Middle East, East Africa and Southeast Asia.
Storage demand has increased from one petabyte in 2001 to 34 petabytes in 2007, said Nareshchandra Singh, principal research analyst for Gartner.
However, India's estimated 15-percent energy shortfall has already affected data centers in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, he said 15 percent to 17 percent energy shortfall during peak demand (see India to remove cap on wind incentives).
"The biggest challenge is the concern about a lack of energy supplies in the country," Singh said.
Gartner recommended that Indian companies incorporate virtualization and other energy-savings measures (see Data centers: $7B in annual energy costs). The report also suggested combined heat and power technologies, also known as cogeneration, for the simultaneous production of electricity and useful heat from a single fuel source, such as natural gas, biomass, biogas, coal, waste heat or oil.
"Setting up energy-efficient data centers is critical," Singh said. "The Indian government’s efforts to harness alternative sources of energy such as solar, wind and water will also play a crucial role in supplying the ever-increasing energy demands of the local data center market."
Source: http://www.cleantech.com/
Monday, December 29, 2008
Gartner Says Data Center Capacity in India to Surpass 5 Million Square Feet by 2012
India Has the Potential to Emerge as the Hub for Data Center Hosting for Nearby Markets Such As the Middle East, East Africa and Southeast Asia in the Long Term
The total data center capacity in India is expected to reach 5.1 million square feet by 2012 and is projected to grow 31 percent from 2007 to 2012, according to Gartner, Inc. The data center industry in India is expected to double its capacity in the next two years, and captive and hosted data centers capacities will grow at comparable rates. In the long term, India has the potential to become a hub for data center hosting for nearby markets such as Middle East, East Africa and Southeast Asia. There is enough capacity and diversity of network connectivity to these regions to allow applications to be managed out of India.
“There has been a significant increase in storage demand in India, growing from one petabyte in 2001 to more than 34 petabytes by 2007, thereby increasing the data center uptake in companies”, said Mr. Nareshchandra Singh, principal research analyst, Gartner. “The potential for Indian data centers is large with the external-controller-based (ECB) market expected to grow by more than 22 percent in 2008, making India the fourth-largest market for ECB storage in the Asia/Pacific region”.
Data center growth will be driven by increasing domestic requirements from sectors such as financial institutions, telecom operators, manufacturing and services. While large financial institutions and telecom companies are likely to build data centers for hosting their growing data storage needs, data center hosting providers will also put significant investments into growing their capacities to fulfill demand arising from small and midsize users. (See Table 1).
Table1: Data Center Space Forecast for India (Square Feet in Thousands)
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 CAGR (2007 to 2012)
Captive* 726 1,209 1,723 2,145 2,391 2,571 29%
Hosted* 611 1,090 1,749 2,108 2,371 2,573 33%
Total 1,337 2,299 3,472 4,252 4,762 5,143 31%
*Note: Only facilities with gross space capacity of and above 1,000 square feet are included. Captive data centers include those being outsourced to system integrators (SIs).
The growth in storage demand has resulted in existing data center capacities being fully utilized and, consequently, the need has arisen to build significantly more capacity. Companies are also investing in additional data centers to enhance or meet disaster recovery and business continuity requirements.
However, the development of data centers in India faces a few major obstacles, including security concerns and data retention worries. “The biggest challenge is the concern about a lack of energy supplies in the country,” said Mr Singh. “Even several Tier 1 cities, such as Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, have experienced several power blackouts each year. This can become a serious issue as data center energy requirements in India continue to grow with the rapid implementation of high-density equipment”.
Gartner recommends that Indian companies building data centers need to incorporate innovative designs and adopt the concept of Green IT and virtualisation technologies. For example, new data centers should use combined heat and power technologies, also known as cogeneration, for the simultaneous production of electricity and useful heat from a single fuel source, such as natural gas, biomass, biogas, coal, waste heat or oil. Cogeneration not only is fundamentally more efficient than traditional power generation, but also has the potential of pulling in the heat generated from solar energy. Companies that adopt these technologies and processes at the outset will attain the highest level of energy efficiency.
The ‘Green IT’ agenda is gaining momentum in India and it has attracted private and government funding. Investing in Green IT provides two distinct benefits to the companies, namely; brand value as an environmentally friendly company and the significant reduction in the energy cost component of the IT budget. “Setting up energy-efficient data centers is critical. The Indian government’s efforts to harness alternative sources of energy such as solar, wind and water will also play a crucial role in supplying the ever increasing energy demands of the local data center market. Around 30 percent of energy coming from solar power for mid-size data centers of around 10,000 square feet within the next four years should be the government’s goal,” said Mr. Singh.
Source: Gartner
The total data center capacity in India is expected to reach 5.1 million square feet by 2012 and is projected to grow 31 percent from 2007 to 2012, according to Gartner, Inc. The data center industry in India is expected to double its capacity in the next two years, and captive and hosted data centers capacities will grow at comparable rates. In the long term, India has the potential to become a hub for data center hosting for nearby markets such as Middle East, East Africa and Southeast Asia. There is enough capacity and diversity of network connectivity to these regions to allow applications to be managed out of India.
“There has been a significant increase in storage demand in India, growing from one petabyte in 2001 to more than 34 petabytes by 2007, thereby increasing the data center uptake in companies”, said Mr. Nareshchandra Singh, principal research analyst, Gartner. “The potential for Indian data centers is large with the external-controller-based (ECB) market expected to grow by more than 22 percent in 2008, making India the fourth-largest market for ECB storage in the Asia/Pacific region”.
Data center growth will be driven by increasing domestic requirements from sectors such as financial institutions, telecom operators, manufacturing and services. While large financial institutions and telecom companies are likely to build data centers for hosting their growing data storage needs, data center hosting providers will also put significant investments into growing their capacities to fulfill demand arising from small and midsize users. (See Table 1).
Table1: Data Center Space Forecast for India (Square Feet in Thousands)
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 CAGR (2007 to 2012)
Captive* 726 1,209 1,723 2,145 2,391 2,571 29%
Hosted* 611 1,090 1,749 2,108 2,371 2,573 33%
Total 1,337 2,299 3,472 4,252 4,762 5,143 31%
*Note: Only facilities with gross space capacity of and above 1,000 square feet are included. Captive data centers include those being outsourced to system integrators (SIs).
The growth in storage demand has resulted in existing data center capacities being fully utilized and, consequently, the need has arisen to build significantly more capacity. Companies are also investing in additional data centers to enhance or meet disaster recovery and business continuity requirements.
However, the development of data centers in India faces a few major obstacles, including security concerns and data retention worries. “The biggest challenge is the concern about a lack of energy supplies in the country,” said Mr Singh. “Even several Tier 1 cities, such as Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, have experienced several power blackouts each year. This can become a serious issue as data center energy requirements in India continue to grow with the rapid implementation of high-density equipment”.
Gartner recommends that Indian companies building data centers need to incorporate innovative designs and adopt the concept of Green IT and virtualisation technologies. For example, new data centers should use combined heat and power technologies, also known as cogeneration, for the simultaneous production of electricity and useful heat from a single fuel source, such as natural gas, biomass, biogas, coal, waste heat or oil. Cogeneration not only is fundamentally more efficient than traditional power generation, but also has the potential of pulling in the heat generated from solar energy. Companies that adopt these technologies and processes at the outset will attain the highest level of energy efficiency.
The ‘Green IT’ agenda is gaining momentum in India and it has attracted private and government funding. Investing in Green IT provides two distinct benefits to the companies, namely; brand value as an environmentally friendly company and the significant reduction in the energy cost component of the IT budget. “Setting up energy-efficient data centers is critical. The Indian government’s efforts to harness alternative sources of energy such as solar, wind and water will also play a crucial role in supplying the ever increasing energy demands of the local data center market. Around 30 percent of energy coming from solar power for mid-size data centers of around 10,000 square feet within the next four years should be the government’s goal,” said Mr. Singh.
Source: Gartner
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Top 10 CIO challenges/technologies for 2009
Top 10 CIO challenges for 2009:
* Budgeting and ROI
* Keeping operating costs in check without compromising on quality
* Recruiting the employees with right skill sets without affecting OPEX
* Scalability and futuristic architecture with less dent on CAPEX
* Enterprise data protection/Privacy
* Remote management and high uptime even in remote locations
* Assessment, partnering and implementation
* Consolidating common IT business/mission functions
* Unifying disparate systems across similar business lines
* Integrating legacy applications
* Budgeting and ROI
* Keeping operating costs in check without compromising on quality
* Recruiting the employees with right skill sets without affecting OPEX
* Scalability and futuristic architecture with less dent on CAPEX
* Enterprise data protection/Privacy
* Remote management and high uptime even in remote locations
* Assessment, partnering and implementation
* Consolidating common IT business/mission functions
* Unifying disparate systems across similar business lines
* Integrating legacy applications
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Green IT technologies gaining popularity in Asia Pacific
Analyst firm IDC has found that Green IT technology is gaining strong momentum and mindshare across the region.
IDC announced as part of the results it obtained in a survey on power management, automation and virtualization in data centers. amongst data center managers in the Asia Pacific region, excluding Japan (APEJ).
According to IDC, the survey of nearly 600 respondents, found that Green IT technology is gaining strong momentum and mindshare across the region as rising power costs in datacenter operations are becoming a top concern of IT decision makers. In the report IDC said that applications that can help to better manage power and cooling and improve management, automation, load and capacity administration of these servers, will be in demand. IDC has classified these applications into three main categories: power monitoring and management tools, asset management and automation tools, and server virtualization software. IDC says that Green IT software can enable significant economical benefits as well as environmental sustainability through the efficient management of existing hardware or services within data centers.
More than 75% of respondents in the survey said that their decision to implement green solutions is largely driven by benefits from cost savings, followed by corporate social responsibility (CSR) and compliance. "As businesses in APEJ continue to grow, power consumption in energy hungry datacenters also increases. Green IT technologies has become even more appealing as businesses look towards energy efficient solutions to reduce power consumption and to alleviate the costs," says Adren Lim, Market Analyst of IDC’s Asia/Pacific Software Research.
The report also found that software was playing an increasingly important part of an attempt to green a data center saying that, "...While mainstream green IT in the data center is largely a combined effort of more energy-efficient hardware, best practices, and consultation services, software is playing an increasingly important role in facilitating the whole "green engine" to achieve business and environmental sustainability".
"A large portion of Green IT practices and supporting software revolve around virtualization products, but equally important, is the management of these consolidated virtual and physical assets that will bring value through lower power, hardware, and manpower costs," Lim added.
When asked if businesses were adopting Green IT solutions because of or despite of the economic downturn, Lim said, "Green IT has been gaining good mind share in APEJ even before the downturn and is poised to become the next big trend. The current economic climate should further accelerate the cost saving advantages Green IT can offer". He adds that it is good to bear in mind that this report looks at Green IT only from the software perspective, which is a component within the whole "green" engine.
IDC announced as part of the results it obtained in a survey on power management, automation and virtualization in data centers. amongst data center managers in the Asia Pacific region, excluding Japan (APEJ).
According to IDC, the survey of nearly 600 respondents, found that Green IT technology is gaining strong momentum and mindshare across the region as rising power costs in datacenter operations are becoming a top concern of IT decision makers. In the report IDC said that applications that can help to better manage power and cooling and improve management, automation, load and capacity administration of these servers, will be in demand. IDC has classified these applications into three main categories: power monitoring and management tools, asset management and automation tools, and server virtualization software. IDC says that Green IT software can enable significant economical benefits as well as environmental sustainability through the efficient management of existing hardware or services within data centers.
More than 75% of respondents in the survey said that their decision to implement green solutions is largely driven by benefits from cost savings, followed by corporate social responsibility (CSR) and compliance. "As businesses in APEJ continue to grow, power consumption in energy hungry datacenters also increases. Green IT technologies has become even more appealing as businesses look towards energy efficient solutions to reduce power consumption and to alleviate the costs," says Adren Lim, Market Analyst of IDC’s Asia/Pacific Software Research.
The report also found that software was playing an increasingly important part of an attempt to green a data center saying that, "...While mainstream green IT in the data center is largely a combined effort of more energy-efficient hardware, best practices, and consultation services, software is playing an increasingly important role in facilitating the whole "green engine" to achieve business and environmental sustainability".
"A large portion of Green IT practices and supporting software revolve around virtualization products, but equally important, is the management of these consolidated virtual and physical assets that will bring value through lower power, hardware, and manpower costs," Lim added.
When asked if businesses were adopting Green IT solutions because of or despite of the economic downturn, Lim said, "Green IT has been gaining good mind share in APEJ even before the downturn and is poised to become the next big trend. The current economic climate should further accelerate the cost saving advantages Green IT can offer". He adds that it is good to bear in mind that this report looks at Green IT only from the software perspective, which is a component within the whole "green" engine.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Enterprises look at BI and analytics to beat recession
With global economic recession having an impact on almost all industries, Businesses Intelligence and Analytics can present companies with an effective solution to the challenges they now face.
Downtime is when revenues nosedive and enterprises look at issues affecting them more seriously than ever before. Adopting business intelligence and analytics solutions can help enterprises get to the heat of issues and take decision timely decisions.
Dr. Mukund Deshpande, senior architect (BI) with Persistent Systems, Pune, says that enterprises are often faced with questions like: Which product promotions have the biggest impact on revenue? How are sales across regions, products? Which of my customers are most likely to switch to my competitor? And so on!
According to the senior architect, the profitability of any enterprise lies in identifying key issues and taking appropriate decisions at right time. To accommodate the exponential growth in data generated by business processes, organizations have invested heavily in building data warehouses that store this data and allow it to be easily queried. However, even with all of this data available, there are a few applications that exist which help business users with their decision-making.
Dr. Deshpande says the increasing global competition and the need for sustainable growth is driving businesses to increasingly looking to analytic applications to provide critical business insights. Whether focused on achieving a return on asset investments, understanding the competitive landscape, improving product and service quality, analysts and executives need to improve decision-making.
While data mining and analytics applications help business in decision-making, they are not widely adopted because of the unique nature of every business. A deep understanding of the business domain as well as expertise in data mining algorithms is required to build applications that are relevant to business users.
The biggest adaptors of BI and analytics in India or elsewhere are large enterprises in the business of telecom, retail, and BSFI. The economic downtime is when enterprises in these verticals fight it out for survival leading to greater demand for applications that can help in proper decision making.
Analytics for KPOs
How can KPOs leverage existing data to enhance their offerings and drive revenues by increasing their customer footprint?
As the global KPO landscape matures and becomes increasingly competitive, leading organizations are looking toward analytics to provide critical insights for driving revenue and continuous innovation. Customers are looking to their KPO partners to provide actionable insights that increase flexibility and responsiveness to anticipate customer and market demands, says Dr. Deshpande.
According to senior architect analytics, professionals are partnering with KPOs to extend core analytics capabilities to provide their customers with the kind of insights they are truly looking for. Leveraging on fully integrated and extensible analytics solutions, KPOs can exceeded their customers' expectations and service level agreement, he adds.
He said that Persistent has been in the business of helping ISVs develop BI solutions for nearly two decades. "In fact, Persistent can point to many industry-leading BI solutions in the market today where we have contributed to product development. This intimate understanding of the underpinnings of market leading solutions, coupled with our solution accelerators translates to rapid time to value for your BI projects," he says.
Specializing in predictive modeling techniques such as boosting, association rule mining, clustering, neural networks, regression, support vector machines, time series analysis, decision trees and Bayesian inference, and optimization methods such as linear programming, nonlinear methods, and genetic algorithms, Persistent's BI experts can jumpstart your BI initiative.
source: http://www.ciol.com/
Downtime is when revenues nosedive and enterprises look at issues affecting them more seriously than ever before. Adopting business intelligence and analytics solutions can help enterprises get to the heat of issues and take decision timely decisions.
Dr. Mukund Deshpande, senior architect (BI) with Persistent Systems, Pune, says that enterprises are often faced with questions like: Which product promotions have the biggest impact on revenue? How are sales across regions, products? Which of my customers are most likely to switch to my competitor? And so on!
According to the senior architect, the profitability of any enterprise lies in identifying key issues and taking appropriate decisions at right time. To accommodate the exponential growth in data generated by business processes, organizations have invested heavily in building data warehouses that store this data and allow it to be easily queried. However, even with all of this data available, there are a few applications that exist which help business users with their decision-making.
Dr. Deshpande says the increasing global competition and the need for sustainable growth is driving businesses to increasingly looking to analytic applications to provide critical business insights. Whether focused on achieving a return on asset investments, understanding the competitive landscape, improving product and service quality, analysts and executives need to improve decision-making.
While data mining and analytics applications help business in decision-making, they are not widely adopted because of the unique nature of every business. A deep understanding of the business domain as well as expertise in data mining algorithms is required to build applications that are relevant to business users.
The biggest adaptors of BI and analytics in India or elsewhere are large enterprises in the business of telecom, retail, and BSFI. The economic downtime is when enterprises in these verticals fight it out for survival leading to greater demand for applications that can help in proper decision making.
Analytics for KPOs
How can KPOs leverage existing data to enhance their offerings and drive revenues by increasing their customer footprint?
As the global KPO landscape matures and becomes increasingly competitive, leading organizations are looking toward analytics to provide critical insights for driving revenue and continuous innovation. Customers are looking to their KPO partners to provide actionable insights that increase flexibility and responsiveness to anticipate customer and market demands, says Dr. Deshpande.
According to senior architect analytics, professionals are partnering with KPOs to extend core analytics capabilities to provide their customers with the kind of insights they are truly looking for. Leveraging on fully integrated and extensible analytics solutions, KPOs can exceeded their customers' expectations and service level agreement, he adds.
He said that Persistent has been in the business of helping ISVs develop BI solutions for nearly two decades. "In fact, Persistent can point to many industry-leading BI solutions in the market today where we have contributed to product development. This intimate understanding of the underpinnings of market leading solutions, coupled with our solution accelerators translates to rapid time to value for your BI projects," he says.
Specializing in predictive modeling techniques such as boosting, association rule mining, clustering, neural networks, regression, support vector machines, time series analysis, decision trees and Bayesian inference, and optimization methods such as linear programming, nonlinear methods, and genetic algorithms, Persistent's BI experts can jumpstart your BI initiative.
source: http://www.ciol.com/
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