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
Sify Hybrid Multi Cloud with Cloud Adjacency CLICK TO WATCH
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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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GROWTH
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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
18
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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