The demand for data centres has been on a constant rise, ever since the COVID19 pandemic began and people started working from home.

The increase in the number of data centres has also led to a concern with regards to the consumption of electrical energy.

According to a report in Cooling India, in data centers, about 40 per cent of the total electrical energy is consumed for cooling the IT equipment.

Cooling costs are, thus, one of the major contributors to the total electricity bill of large data centers. Particularly, two major factors affecting data center cooling energy consumption, namely air flow management and data center location selection. 

Two cooling systems, computer room air conditioning (CRAC) cooling system and airside economiser (ASE), have been used for cooling purposes of large data centers. It is found that the cooling efficiency and operating costs vary significantly with different climate conditions, energy prices and cooling technologies. As climate condition is the major factor which affects the airside economiser, employing the airside economiser in the cold climate yields much lower energy consumption and operation costs.

The demand for hyperscale data centers and managed services has surged in the past two years as more businesses move their IT infrastructure to the cloud. A key driver is consumer demand for app-based and OTT services running on the cloud. Increased digitization efforts of the Indian government and plans for smart cities is another driver. Data localization mandates driven by the government have also led to increased regional presence by the MNCs and big tech companies–Google, Apple, Amazon/AWS, Microsoft, Facebook, as well as e-commerce giants. Large enterprises like banking institutions, telecom companies, retail/e-commerce companies and MNCs servicing clients in India need hyperscale data centers. These specialized data centers are different from the regular data centers and more challenging to build, especially in areas where real estate and power are scarce or expensive, a Digital Creed report added.

W.Media is hosting a digital event ‘South Asia Awards Summit 2021 (IN, LK, BD) on 27th of July.

Experts from the tech industry will be a part of this event and will help in understanding the scope of hyperscalers and cooling technologies in South Asia.

The topics that will be discussed during the day include ‘Building hyperscale data centers to meet South Asia’s digital economy demands’, ‘The innovation and trends in power and cooling technologies for the hyperscale data center era’, ‘Building renewable energy data centers to tackle community and climate challenges and others’.

Renowned speakers will be a part of this event including Rahul Dhar, Country Director – Data Centers, Microsoft, Ramaiy Kapoor, Head of Investment & Commercials – Data Centre Group, CapitaLand India, Soumya Prasad Garnaik, Executive Director, Energy Efficiency Services Limited – Ministry of Power, Gov of India, Krishnamurthy Rajesh, Head – Information Technology, ICRA Limited, Dr. Chandrasekhar Panda, Senior Director – Digital and Core Tech Strategy, McKinsey&Company and R.N Mohanty, President – Technology, Pidilite Industries Limited to name a few.

“Demand drivers for Data centers have also changed. Earlier the Data Center was majorly built by enterprises or governments.

However, with an increase in demand for cloud, OTT and e-commerce have also fuelled the demand for Colocation Data Center,” said NK Singh, Founder & CEO, Data Center Guru.

He  further added that IoT, AI, and ML will further boost the demand for Colocation & Edge Data Center.

Edge Data Center can be Captive as well as collocated. More than 50 percent of the demand for Data Center is driven by hyper scalar where they want Colocation Data Center only.

Most of the enterprise data centers are old and don’t have scope for expansion. Due to the advantages of Colocation over Captive, now almost all the enterprises are preferring to go for a colocation data center rather than a captive one.