Data Centre capacity in India to reach 5.1 m sq ft by 2012: Gartner

Mumbai, Nov 19 (UNI) The total data centre capacity in India is expected to reach 5.1 million square feet by 2012 and is projected to grow 31 per cent from 2007 to 2012, according to consultancy firm Gartner.

The data centre industry in India is expected to double its capacity in the next two years, and captive and hosted data centres capacities will grow at comparable rates. In the long term, India has the potential to become a hub for data centre 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, a Gartner release here said.

''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,'' Nareshchandra Singh, principal research analyst of Gartner, said in the release.

''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,'' he added.

The release said data centre 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 fulfil demand arising from small and midsize users.

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