Digital Realty has launched its first data centre in India, located on a 10-acre campus at the heart of Chennai’s industrial and manufacturing hub and capable of supporting up to 100 megawatts of critical IT load capacity.
This is a significant addition to the company’s global data centre platform as it expands to meet digital transformation needs in key markets around the world.
India is predicted to surpass Japan and Germany to become the world’s third-largest economy by 2027. The resultant scale and quantum of data generated from this growth are expected to drive a demand surge for quality data center infrastructure across the country.
The new campus is part of Digital Realty’s strategy to provide highly connected digital infrastructure to address customers’ diverse needs, and help them navigate new technologies and the business and regulatory challenges associated with digital transformation initiatives in India.
It was developed by Digital Connexion, A Brookfield, Jio and Digital Realty Company, which is Digital Realty’s three-way joint venture in India with Brookfield Asset Management and Reliance Industries.
Dubbed “MAA10,” the facility is the first phase of the 100MW-capable campus and will offer 20MW of IT load. It features a modular infrastructure design, enabling customers to scale infrastructure as needed to accommodate diverse workload demands, from single-cabinet to multi-megawatt requirements.
The facility is ready to support emerging technologies including artificial intelligence, offering standardised and bespoke configurations to meet the high-density power requirements (up to 70 kilowatts per rack), suitable cooling infrastructure, and interconnectivity demands of AI workloads.
The facility is also a vital addition to PlatformDIGITAL, Digital Realty’s global data centre platform, which hosts a rich connected data community of customers, partners, cloud and network service providers on a footprint of more than 300 facilities in more than 50 metros across more than 25 countries on six continents.
Serene Nah, managing director and Digital Realty’s head in the Asia-Pacific region, said that with a population of 1.4 billion and a growing focus on the delivery of digital services, India represents a key market opportunity for the company and its partners and customers.
“We believe MAA10’s next-generation data centre infrastructure and Digital Realty’s connected global open data centre platform provide the foundational pillars our customers need to innovate and tap into this thriving market,” said Nah.
The facility also seeks to employ renewable energy sources where possible, starting with harvesting solar power via rooftop solar panels on-site. It will also benefit from Brookfield’s renewable energy expertise.
CB Velayuthan, CEO of Digital Connexion said the 100MW campus in Ambattur is ideal, given the availability of the necessary power supply, high number of submarine cable landing stations in the local area, and the state government’s aspirations to make Chennai the top data centre destination in India.
