The Ministry of Electronics and IT, on March 2nd, 2022, held a Post-budget webinar on Technology-Enabled Development. The webinar, inaugurated by the Honourable Prime Minister Narendra Modi, featured a panel discussion on ‘Making India a Global Hub for Data centres and the Cloud.’
The panel was introduced by Dr Rajendra Kumar, Additional Secretary at MeitY. In his opening remarks, Dr Rajendra Kumar laid out a broad overview of the country’s current data centre capacity and a roadmap on how India can emerge as a global leader in data centre and cloud solutions.
He pointed out that the current 500 MW capacity is low compared to the US, which possesses around 2700 MW capacity, but at the same time, it puts India in the same group as Singapore and Germany.
Even though at the current pace, India is set to double the capacity in the coming years, the National Data Centre and Cloud Policy of 2022 aims to bring the overall capacity to 2500 MW in the next 4 to 5 years, he added.
Dr Rajendra Kumar further noted that there are numerous challenges in reaching that goal, and he welcomed the panellists to provide insights into measures that can be adopted to overcome these challenges.
The panel which participated in this discussion featured some of the stellar names in India’s tech governance and industry, such as Neeta Verma- Director General of National Informatics Centre at MeitY, Sridhar Vembu- CEO and founder of Zoho Corporation, Rahul Sharma- President, AWS India and South Asia, and Suresh Rathod- President Colocation Business at CtrlS Datacenters Ltd.
In her opening remarks, Neeta Verma pointed out how digital solutions and cloud infrastructure have enabled many government programs like Swatch Bharat and other services. Furthermore, she pointed out that the COVID19 pandemic has accelerated the rate of digital transformation leading to higher demand for infrastructure, which can only meet through various industry partnership models.
Another critical point Neeta Verma highlighted was the shortage of skilled professionals in the management of data centres and cloud infrastructure. She urged skilling platforms to focus more on data centre operations and cloud-based management course offerings.
Sridhar Vembu followed up with the importance of data centres to our technology and national security. He suggested that we build data centre facilities in rural India, where the land is cheaper than urban centres. He reiterated that the government procurement policy must mandate local storage of data. He proposed a 3-5 year plan to ensure that Indian citizens’ data are kept on Indian shores. According to him, this will enable data sovereignty and promote data centre capacity.
As per Rahul Sharma of AWS, India can become the beacon of tech for social good, not just for India but also for the world. He pointed out the impact tools such as Aarogya Setu and COWIN played in recent times and explained that India has an opportunity to create more global platforms in areas such as agriculture and healthcare, which can drive the country’s data centre usage and capacity.
Suresh Rathod provided some data-backed insights. He stated that the global market for data centres and cloud is expected to be $200 billion per year by 2025. With other countries in APAC, such as Hong Kong and Singapore, reaching saturation point, it will open up the door for India. His forecast put India’s data centre market to hit $5 billion by 2025, with $11.4 billion committed for the development of data infrastructure from the private sector.
Finally, the Honourable Minister of State in the Department of Space and Department of Atomic Energy, who was in the audience for the whole session, stated that we need to have Indian data for the Indian solution.
Source: indiaai.gov.in
