Sify Technologies April 2020

SIF Y TECHNOLOGIES

DIGITAL REPORT 2020

DATA CENTRE IS THE EPICENTRE OF CLOUD AND DIGITAL TSUNAMI

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

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DATA CENTRE IS THE EPICENTRE OF CLOUD AND DIGITAL TSUNAMI

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SIF Y TECHNOLOGIES

HOW SIFY TECHNOLOGIES HAS TRANSFORMED FROM BEING A STANDALONE NETWORK AND DATA CENTRE-HOSTING SERVICE PROVIDER TO A FULLY-FLEDGED DIGITAL ICT SOLUTIONS AND SERVICES COMPANY

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S

ify Technologies (Sify) was founded in 1995, as India’s first private internet services provider (ISP). Driving the nation’s consumer

internet revolution was the main focus during the late

1990s and through the company’s fledgling years as a consumer services focused business offering hubs across the country to handle cyber traffic.

At the turn of the millennium, Sify launched the country’s first commercial data centre (DC) and first MPLS network, beginning a transition towards enterprise services as India’s first commercial internet provider. The country’s emerging network requirements saw the business enter its third phase (from 2006-12), undergoing a full transformation into an enterprise services company. During this period, Sify moved out of the consumer broadband services space, focusing instead on internet-as-aservice for businesses and the launch of its cloud services offering.

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SIF Y TECHNOLOGIES

“It has been a fruitful journey across

“ WE HOST AND BUILD DATA CENTRES FOR OUR CUSTOMERS ALONG WITH THE IT, NETWORK, SECURITY AND OTHER INFRASTRUCTURE THEY NEED. WE’RE MAKING IT EASIER FOR THEM TO MANAGE THEIR IT REQUIREMENTS WITH ONE PARTNER” 06

— Kamal Nath, CEO, Sify Technologies

25 years of transformation,” confirms CEO Kamal Nath, who joined Sify in 2012. Overseeing the transformation of the company from a standalone network and data centre hosting service provider to a fully-fledged digital ICT solutions and services company, Nath’s stewardship heralded a fourth transition in 2017. The addition of further portfolios to Sify’s data centre and cloud offering set the framework for the company’s “Cloud@Core” approach, which began in 2018.

INDIAN EXPANSION Looking back at Sify’s genesis and how the company became a major force in the Indian market, Nath recalls a time when most of the data centre players were telco service providers operating data centres at their point of presence (POP). “It was a natural extension of our telco business,” he says. “However, we didn’t follow the traditional path as we thought it was important to develop data centre hubs in major cities like Mumbai, where we set up our first commercial data centre in 2000. This was the key to our

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07 expansion across India. Today, we

to diversify its suite of services is

have nine DCs across the country:

part of the Sify philosophy. “Over

four in Mumbai, and five spread

time,” he adds, “the data centre has

across Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi,

become the epicentre of Cloud and

Hyderabad and Kolkata. And we’re

Digital transformation.”

planning more in the near future.”

Sify now offers a host of man-

When Nath joined in 2012 the network to non-network revenue

aged, migration, assessment and

was approximately 80:20. Today it’s

security services for DCs. “We’ve

50:50. “We’ve grown the DC and

interconnected 48 DCs across the

DC-centric IT services business

country, not only our own but third

beyond simply being an IT services

party DCs,” adds Nath. “We’re creat-

provider,” he notes. “Both areas of

ing more value by offering extended

the business have grown, with our DC

service portfolios on top of our DCs

offering triggering a range of services

as a platform.” The constant quest

including, hybrid IT and multi-cloud.” w w w.si f y te c hno l o gi es . com

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DRIVING DATA CENTRE GROWTH

need to expand existing IT networks.

Sify’s Head of Data Centre and Cloud

Similarly, the growing use of social

Services, Sushant Purushan, notes

media and online platforms demands

that India’s DC market is currently

that the needs of high compute net-

pegged at $2bn and expected to grow

works be met to support the likes of

22% to 24% CAGR. “This includes

content providers and gaming portals.

hyperscale DC, managed colocation at

Elsewhere, the rise of elearning and

service provider location, captive DC,

the country’s growing insurance sector

DC offshoring, disaster recovery-as-a-

is increasing its investment in IT, while

service, DC managed services and DC

regulatory compliance across indus-

applications implementation,” he adds.

tries is ramping demand for the digital

Driving that demand across India is

backup and archiving of information

the rise in ecommerce and digital pay-

sensitive services. Collectively, this

ment solutions. Banking services such

drive towards digital is aligned with gov-

as ewallets and payment gateways are

ernment initiatives such as the Smart

increasing transactions, triggering the

Cities programme and Digital India with

E XE CU T I VE PRO FI LE

Kamal Nath An Electronics and Communications graduate from a premier Technology school in India, Kamal has the enviable distinction of building business from their infancy or turning the corner in others. The architect of Sify’s digital transformation journey, Kamal prefers an entrepreneurial approach to engaging with industry verticals. This disruptive, zealous methodology has seen him build a billion dollar business in his earlier organisation. Going by the reception that Sify is receiving in the market, he is on track for an encore.

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SIF Y TECHNOLOGIES

public sector companies, especially across the energy and manufacturing verticals, aggressively adopting digital.

“Under the Indian government’s National Digital Communication Policy, the three pillars – Broadband India, Secure India and Connect India – aim to connect the country’s villages and rural communities via local institutes while targeting fixed line broadband services in 50% of households, along with 10 million public WiFi hotspots,” explains Nath.

India’s digital economy is expected to reach $1trn by 2025. An entire 10

ecosystem of primary and associated services is benefiting from this Tsunami of change. This applies to core DCs, DC interconnection, edge DCs and network services for both enterprise and consumers. “In the near future, technologies in their infancy in India – IoT, AI and machine learning applications, Big Data, analytics and their application ecosystems – will see an upward associated consumption,” reasons Purushan.

EVOLUTION Sify has evolved in anticipation of this rise of digital to offer a mix of services. “We build and host data

“ SIFY HAS BEEN FOCUSED ON ADAPTING TO THE CUSTOM NEEDS OF HYPERSCALE USERS, CREATING A COMPLETE ECOSYSTEM OF CLOUD PROVIDERS, INTERNET EXCHANGES, CONTENT PROVIDERS, CDN PROVIDERS, ISPS…” — Sushant Purushan, Head of Data Centre and Cloud Services, Sify Technologies centres for our customers along with the IT and network infrastructure they need,” confirms Nath. “We’re making it easier for them to manage their IT requirements with one partner. We’re replacing legacy service providers for customers who want managed services (on-site or remote) addressing all the required models with a hosted data centre plus cloud. And through our network portfolio we not only provide data services to our clients, but also transform their network landscape influenced by adoption of cloud. They don’t need to look elsewhere, we offer w w w.si f y te c hno l o gi es . com

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it in a full stack – from DC hosting to

capacities were server hall floors in

custom-build and cloud services, we

buildings. Selection and deployment

can manage the whole piece. This is

criteria then changed to dedicated

how we’re evolving into a converged

buildings, POD-based design fea-

ICT ecosystem player offering hybrid

turing power substations within DC

IT and DC with integrated security ser-

premises offering multiple fiber paths

vices to meet the needs of businesses

for adaptive approaches to security

across verticals.”

and safety requirements. We now

The philosophy behind Sify’s DC business has evolved to support the

focus on creating DC campuses housing multiple towers.”

changing market. Sushant elaborates: “Sify has been focusing on adapt-

DC DESIGN-BUILD AND OPERATIONS

ing to specialised custom needs of

Sify’s Head of Project Design,

hyperscale users, creating a complete

Roopesh Kumar, explains that the

ecosystem of cloud providers, internet

company’s design philosophy is flex-

exchanges, content providers, CDN

ible and hybrid to cater to the needs

providers, ISPs etc. Our initial DC

of all requirements: “Both IT and

E XE CU T I VE PRO FI LE

Sushant Purushan A veteran IT professional, Sushant has been in the thick of the evolution of the Indian IT industry from a provider focused on application to one that evolved into infrastructure for the DC and the Cloud. He wet his feet with some of the big names in the industry donning roles across sales, operations, service lines & practice management, strategy and presales. At Sify, he puts a combination of these roles to play, architecting some of the unconventional solutions to Enterprise problems.

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SIF Y TECHNOLOGIES

non-IT facilities are catered to in a way

key criteria including the availability

that enterprise and retail customers

of quality power, physical connectiv-

can partake of the same colocation

ity and telecom infrastructure. “The

facility.” Sify’s approach to design has

platform to innovate is centred around

moved on from low density retrofits

the design philosophy of our infrastruc-

in shared IT spaces to purpose-built

ture,” says Roopesh. “The modular and

facilities and now a third generation of

scalable backplane design can grow

custom designed and built greenfield

with the business and also multiply

projects following an inside out design

capacity in a single floor to meet high

where the whole building is based on

demand customer requirements. The

the server hall design to support large

design allows us to increase the power

hyperscale colocation requirements.

density in a single floor by adding com-

Physical site selection is driven by 14

ponents without disturbing the working

backplane infrastructure. The SCADA

flexibility to use this total power in multi-

based building automation system is a

ples of standard POD configuration. We

new initiative we have implemented in

have floors supporting 800KW for very

the past year.”

low density to 4800KW for high density

Roopesh highlights that Sify’s DCs

customers. These flexible PODs are

are built to accommodate scale and

defined during the initial master design

flex. “Each facility may have an overall

stage, allowing the business flexibility to

capacity limited by infrastructure space

design products accordingly.”

for transformers, generators and chilldesigned, this total capacity is defined

CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE CONNECTING THE FUTURE

and accordingly the base building infra-

Sify is responding to a maturing

structure is planned. The design allows

Indian market demanding hyperscale

ers, but when a new facility is identified/

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E XE CU T I VE PRO FI LE

Roopesh Kumar Roopesh Kumar leads the data centre engineering and projects. Having built a number of large data centre facilities for Sify in the past, he is working on their “new generation” data centre facilities projects now. He brings over 20 years of experience in handling network and data centre infrastructure and projects. A technology enthusiast, he is keen to explore new technologies and products focusing on efficiency in energy and operations.

Roopesh is a computer engineering graduate and an executive MBA in information technology management. He is well acquainted with data centre standards and technologies and certified under various industry modules like uptime institute ATS, PRINCE2 project management, ITIL v2 service delivery, CCNA network basics and more.

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SIF Y TECHNOLOGIES

DCs. “Moving forward from being a service provider, India has become the offshore destination-of-choice for DCs for multiple players,” reveals Purushan, highlighting that Amazon, Walmart, Oracle, Microsoft, Alibaba and a diverse cohort of other content providers and software companies are building their cloud infrastructure in India. “The availability of disparate business segments across different seismic zones, a proactive government approach to remove the gremlins in builds, a back-office-to-the-world 16

environment, along with abundant land and power have proved to be great

“ THE PLATFORM TO INNOVATE IS CENTRED AROUND THE DESIGN PHILOSOPHY OF OUR INFRASTRUCTURE” — Roopesh Kumar, Head of Project Design & Operations, Sify Technologies

inducers for the largest hyperscale DC players globally.”

Purushan notes that, both on the government and private enterprise side, there is a concentrated effort to build data farms within networked distance of the specific business. This has helped build a secondary market of DC and infra specialist providers around the facilities. “Prospective buyers are being driven by the urgency to adopt digital forms of doing business in order to retain their

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customers in the face of increased

workload from enterprise to hyper-

threats from new age startups,” he

scale, Nath explains Sify is partnered

adds. “By themselves, startups at the

with AWS, Azure and Oracle, while in

top of the consumption chain for DCs

negotiations with Google to broaden

are the drivers for large scale automa-

the support it is able to offer custom-

tion and hence the increasing demand

ers who need to boost the digital

for hyperscale DCs. Sify has been

literacy of applications in sectors like

closely following these demands and

banking and eCommerce and main-

quickly ramping up the availability of

tain 100% infrastructure availability.

infra specialism across the country.”

“We are the only ISP who started

In creating services capable of

out in the 90s in India, survived the

managing hyperscale clouds, and

Dotcom bust and completely reen-

helping customers migrate their

gineered the business,” says Nath w w w.si f y te c hno l o gi es . com

SIF Y TECHNOLOGIES

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1995

Year founded

$312mn Revenue in US dollars

2,700 Number of employees

19 proudly. “Today, with every passing quarter we are more relevant to the market than ever before. We now compete against international technology companies with a complete digital portfolio built to meet the future demands of the Indian market and beyond.�

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