GoDaddy’s new Data Centre to support the entrepreneurial ecosystem in India: Nikhil Arora, VP & MD, India, GoDaddy

Demand for Data Centres has exponentially grown in the past two years as more organisations are moving to the cloud. Government-driven mandates for data localization have also increased the regional presence of multinational corporations (MNCs) and big tech firms like Google, Apple, Amazon/AWS, Microsoft, Facebook, and e-commerce behemoths.

Joining this bandwagon, recently, GoDaddy also launched its first-ever Data Centre. Here is an exclusive interview with Nikhil Arora, VP & MD, India, GoDaddy, in which you will learn how GoDaddy’s new Data Centre is growing an entrepreneurial ecosystem.

1. What is the vision behind GoDaddy’s Data Centre Launch in India?

GoDaddy launched its new Data Centre to support the growing entrepreneurial ecosystem in India. The new Data Centre will help meet the increasing need for resources that can ensure improved web performance, better user experience, and tight security.

Through our Data Centre launch, we aim to provide the best web solutions to our customers. It will help us stay closer and understand the needs of our local consumers in India. The Data Centre will also aid our clients to comply with data localisation norms. With the new data centre launch, we are emphasising on establishing ourselves as the trusted partners for small businesses and experts like web designers.

2. How is GoDaddy’s new Data Centre going to support small businesses in India?

The launch of the new Data Centre helps GoDaddy support such small businesses in India. Local hosting will assist GoDaddy’s clients to adhere to data localization standards. Having a local Data Centre will help improve the loading time of websites, thereby reducing the bounce rate and improving the search rankings positively.

Moreover, local hosting will help our users improve their site performance and user experience by reducing the service response time. It will also aid businesses to increase the search relevancy for India-based search results, by improving Google ranking, and getting free traffic to their site. It will further aid small businesses to accomplish the goal of data privacy and security in India.

3. What are the benefits of the new data centre to GoDaddy and its customers?

GoDaddy’s data centre provides an easy-to-manage hosting offering that delivers resources without server administration. We aim to provide our customers with the necessary resources for their websites.

4. Can you please shed some light on the new product highlights and features introduced by GoDaddy for the Indian market?

GoDaddy’s new data centre provides its customers with a range of products: Web Hosting, Web Hosting Plus & VPS. Apart from that, our data centre is featured with the following-

1. Optimised hosting platform
   Our new and improved server hosting platform and hardware will reduce the server response time by up to 40%. (Based on testing conducted from Aug 2021-Dec 2021 comparing previous GoDaddy hosting platform/hardware.) By continuously evaluating, enhancing, and optimising our servers, we help you wow your customers and website visitors and deliver the greatest results.
2. Non-volatile memory express (NVMe) solid-state drives (SSDs)
   Websites containing large downloads, such as films and lots of high-resolution photos, require improved wi-fi transmissions. With our server NVMe SSDs at the new India Hosting Centre, you enjoy a 7x throughput increase in comparison to standard SSDs.
3. 24/7 network protection
   Enjoy the peace of mind that comes from knowing that our security team is always monitoring suspicious activities and helping to deflect DoS attempts. To protect visitor data, we additionally offer many layers of server-level security.
4. PHP OPCache
   The option actively supported by PHP developers, OPCache, can reduce the response time of your server by up to 33% (Based on testing conducted from Aug 2021-Dec 2021 comparing previous GoDaddy hosting platform/hardware). It enables you to avoid having to load and parse scripts with each request by allowing you to save the precompiled script bytecode in shared memory.
5. CPU and RAM resources
   For a high level of performance, any high-traffic websites, such as e-commerce websites, require extensive resources. With the help of our provisioning procedures, users can obtain the CPU and RAM resources for better performance.
6. cPanel dashboard
   With a familiar and easy-to-use cPanel dashboard, you can easily set up and manage your site. The one-click access allows you to install over 150 free apps to create forums, blogs, and CMS sites like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.

5. Why is India witnessing a surge in Data centres and will this trend sustain?

The adoption of new technologies (IoT, 5G, etc.), favourable regulatory support, rapidly expanding cloud computing, rising internet penetration, government efforts on the digital economy, and the expanding needs of hyper-scalers are some of the key factors driving the demand for data centres in the nation.

As per ICRA, The capacity of the Indian data centre industry is anticipated to rise by five times, with a predicted addition of 3,900–4,100 MW of capacity and investments of Rs. 1.05–1.20,000 crore in the next five years. In addition, the government has accorded infrastructure status to the data centres in the Union Budget 2022-23. This move will certainly motivate the tech giants to expand their presence with the Data Centre, allowing the trend to sustain and grow in the coming years.