19 Sep2020
The Data Centre market in India is one of the fastest growing markets in the world. With the dawn of digital transformation, organizations, irrespective of their sizes, are adopting digital technologies and cloud computing.
The key theme driving growth in India is the rapidly increasing digital needs of Indian enterprises, the growing presence of hyperscalers, high penetration of Internet connectivity and a keen focus on data privacy. In addition, increasing IT infrastructure complexities are compelling enterprises to move to third party data centre solutions as management of captive data centre becomes difficult. The market is also expected to see many growth-related projects across verticals viz., banking, insurance, telecom, IT and ITeS. This is spurring the strong growth of DC market.
The Indian Colocation market has tremendous potential to grow leveraging key levers such as multi-tenancy, scalability and reduce CapEx etc. Colocation is now becoming more than just a cost control mechanism and is bought for its added value to the buyer.
Organization Overview and Financial Performance
Globally, the STT GDC Group has built an integrated data centre platform in key economic hubs across developed and emerging markets via STT GDC’s network of more than 100 data centres in India, Singapore, China, Thailand and the UK. The company’s global platform offers extensive global reach, together with deep sector expertise, enabling customers to rapidly deploy a scalable, global footprint while maintaining STT GDC’s premium standards of performance, reliability, security and network choice.
In India, STT GDC India is a dominant leader in data centres services industry propelled by its extensive footprint, eminent facilities and excellent customer service. The company manages the largest pan-India data centre floor area and IT load delivering, more than 105 MW of power capacity through 16 carrier neutral facilities across 8 cities in India. The company plans to expand its power capacity to more than 200 MW in next 3-4 years.
STT GDC India provides robust Colocation services to more than 1000 customers by keeping their dynamic requirement and business continuity at the core of its services and strategies.
In 2019, STT GDC India has continued the dominant leadership in Colocation market with about 1/3rd (more than 30%) of the revenue market share. The company has shown exemplary financial performance in 2019 with a double-digit YoY growth in Colocation revenues driven by acquisitions of some big customers and multiple expansion orders from existing customers.
Unique Selling Propositions/Competitive Differentiators
Overall STT GDC India deploys a flexible approach in terms of designing redundancies as per customer requirements, which allows it to offer clients 100% uptime across all sites. Moreover, it offers a full suite of best-in-class, highly scalable and flexible data centre solutions as well as connectivity and support services that best meet customers’ current and future colocation needs. The company is considered a trusted colocation partner by large enterprises such as hyperscalers, banks, financial service organisations, IT companies etc.
Technological/Product Innovations foster Blue Ocean Strategy
STT GDC India has demonstrated exceptional innovation capabilities to further enhance its data centre expertise, customer experience and technological prowess. Its continuous focus and investments in innovation helps it to be an undisputed leader in largely new territories such as Green Data centres, Edge Computing etc.
In India, the company is the first data centre service provider undertaking large-scale deployment of Li-Ion batteries for UPS Systems requiring less floor space and floor loading capacity, thereby providing higher assurance in case of recurring EB failure.
STT GDC India leads the industry in terms of green initiatives and is committed to the sustainability agenda covering the entire build-and-operations lifecycle. This is indicated in the fact that 34% of its power consumption comes from renewable power sources, and that its rainwater harvesting, and water recycling initiatives allow them to save 336 KL of water annually. The company has been installing new Green Captive power generation systems that offer clean and reliable power without surges, sags or interference, and can be used for directly powering the critical server load without some of the intermediate power conditioning equipment.
The company will also be investing in smaller edge DCs across tier 2 and tier 3 cities to capitalize on the edge momentum driven by 4G/5G, IOT and video.
Customer Service Experience
STT GDC India has customer experience at the forefront of its strategy and initiatives. The company has a Customer Experience Management department for active and responsive engagement level with customers. Customer relationship managers share monthly reports with select customers and conduct monthly reviews. Quarterly Business Review is conducted with customers’ business team to share updates, understand their future needs, invoicing/payment, Service Level Agreement (SLA) trending, queries and concerns, if any. In 2019, STT GDC India conducted over 1300 customer review meetings.
STT GDC India has a Customer Service portal for raising service requests, which enables faster and effective resolution of customer requests reducing Turnaround Time (TAT) by about 50%. The company has a mobile app and web-based tool for customer ticket booking which has helped it to reduce ticket booking time by 70% for customers.
For customer service support, STT GDC India deeply engages with customers to understand their service support needs and offers relevant support services to help them foster their performance and growth. The customers are provided with 24*7 Remote Hand support, wherein they can access on-demand technician support delivered as per instructions via phone, email or customer portal. The customers can also get premium support for their data centre services, through a dedicated specialized team that would be ready to serve them round the clock.
Customer Purchase Experience
STT GDC India has been following consultative and digital approach to provide best-in- class purchase experience to its customers. The company has a Customer Order portal to fulfill the requirement of customers’ cross-connect and dynamic order placing, which helps to reduce order booking time by 60% and stimulates delivery timelines.
The company’s sales team focuses on a consultative sales approach to optimize customer requirements and provide tailored solutions meeting their requirements. STT GDC conducts multiple workshops and iterations to ensure customers receive a solution as per their business needs along with significant cost and business benefits.
In Colocation market, STT GDC India has been the dominant leader in terms of revenue, data centre footprint and rack capacity across India and has successfully become the preferred choice of colocation service provider for hyperscalers and large enterprises in India.
STT GDC India has a well formulated strategy and vision to cater to India’s high potential Colocation market with customer centricity and capacity expansion at the core of its strategy. The company has the strategic direction to maximize performance, reliability, data security and sustainability across its data centre footprint in India.
This year, STT GDC India has demonstrated tremendous growth performance and innovation capabilities along with strong service delivery & support leading to positive feedback from enterprises. On the back of its robust portfolio, extensive DC footprint and overall financial performance in 2019, STT GDC India has earned Frost & Sullivan’s 2020 Company of the Year Award in the Colocation Services Segment in India.
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Our EHS values reflect the principles and culture that we aim to achieve in the EHS space. As we continue with our growth pace by expanding into new locations in India, STT GDC India is prepared to rise to the challenges of accomplishing consistent, exemplary performance in all Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) matters.
Data centres and carrier neutral colocation facilities in the Asia Pacific region need to utilize a minimum of four undersea cables on each global route to offer the needed reliability and availability to client organizations, states an industry study.