Data CenterInterviews

Today, it is imperative that companies in India invest in predictive maintenance and strategies : Mohammed Atif, Park Place Technologies

Park Place Technologies is a global data center and networking optimization firm. Powered by the world’s largest on-the-ground engineering team, a robust group of advanced engineers and their fully staffed, 24x7x365 enterprise operations center, Park Place Technologies offer a robust portfolio of IT solutions to optimize networking and data center uptime and performance. Mohammed Atif, Director, Business Development, India, Park Place Technologies in a conversation with CXOToday shares his insights about the evolving data centre industry in India, key trends, and the contribution of Artificial Intelligence.

 

  1. What do you think of the evolving data centre industry in India?

The Indian data center market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8 % over the forecast period 2021 to 2026. The rapid adoption of cloud-based business operations has encouraged businesses to acquire data management capacities to handle huge volumes of data that are being generated. The increased proliferation of online shopping due to the availability of user-friendly interfaces, high-speed internet, and smart devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc. is expected to drive the market in the future.

The relationship between businesses and data centres in India will continue to strengthen and the dependency of businesses on resilient data centres – which are growing in capacity and complexity – will grow. In India, property consultants such as JLL and Knight Frank are predicting a doubling in data centre capacity in the next year. Mumbai and Pune currently have the lion’s share of all capacity in India while at the same time states besides Maharashtra are also providing incentives for the data centre industry. Of course, the property consultants see data centre operators making strategic land acquisitions to meet this increase in demand.

Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Kolkata are expecting an influx of data centres. Gurgaon, Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Kochi, and Jaipur are expected to house Edge Data Centres in the short-term to serve their specific geographic zones. As digital transformations accelerate in states the demand for data centres also increases. Consolidation in the industry is also underway both in India as well as across Asia.

 

  1. How does Park Place Technologies support customers in India with network optimisation?

In India’s economic atmosphere, IT resources can be stretched thin. Fortunately, there are two immediate Park Place Technologies solutions that can help with network optimization.

Network performance monitoring software is a type of software that helps you track the performance of your network. This type of software enables you to optimize your enterprise network across devices supplied by a host of different vendors.

Enterprise network monitoring software can automate network device discovery and provide intuitive workflows that make it easy to identify when faults arise. Responsive dashboards let you quickly assess your network health or drill down to the device level to quickly fix network problems.

Entuity™ Software supports network infrastructure monitoring for thousands of devices out of the box across hundreds of vendors.

Network management as a service (NMaaS) provides managed engineer assistance for optimizing your network. Network management services can help you with a variety of tasks, including monitoring performance, identifying issues, and implementing solutions.

NMaaS providers can help streamline your network management processes by taking care of hybrid environments, supporting new networking technologies, and ensuring outstanding end-user experiences. Some of the best network infrastructure management providers, like ParkView Managed Services™, are backed by an Enterprise Operations Center (EOC) that ensures a smooth deployment with a tailored onboarding plan that includes custom set-ups for network device management, custom dashboards and reports that cater to your organizational goals.

 

  1. What is your plan for the next five years in India to revolutionize the industry?

There has never been a more compelling argument for digital transformation, as India works and plays online while pondering a more hybrid future. Businesses continue their digital transformation journeys, depending on data that resides on-premises, in public and private clouds, devices at the edge and within networks and operation centres.

Today, it is imperative that companies in India invest in predictive maintenance and strategies. Identifying and addressing problems before they happen is key to maintaining the competitive edge. Gaining insights through automation and analytics saves time and money, streamlining operations and ultimately enabling businesses to shift precious capital towards innovation, putting them on the cutting edge of their industry. This makes IT infrastructure a strategic business asset. Businesses in India can no longer ignore the opportunity to maximise uptime, create cost efficiencies, enable greater infrastructure control and visibility, and enhance asset performance through support. It’s sink, or swim – and the ripple effect will be felt for the next five years and beyond.

 

  1. How is AI contributing in optimizing data centres?

The use of automation technologies in data centers is hardly new. For example, Google has explained the use of DeepMind AI for cooling. However, companies are yet to leverage AI/ML to the fullest. Factors such as distrust in technology have obstructed many organizations to take a leap towards AI. While the most known use cases for AI deployment in data centers are temperature control and predictive maintenance, AI’s potential to enhance the efficiency of a data center infrastructure is far more than widely known.

IDC predicts that by 2023, 80% of enterprises will use AI-assisted, cloud-linked governance services to manage, optimize, and secure dispersed resources/data.

The AI future might seem like a far-off concept right now – but the reality is we are already halfway there. Our advanced digital infrastructures, data fabric, emerging technologies, and a growing generation of digital natives hungry for smarter tech-first products and services are setting the pace. AI is embedded within devices and software packages providing benefits barely registered by the average consumer. It delivers real-time weather reports, highlights important emails, and transforms business prospects with powerful insights. To implement advanced monitoring with existing workforce capabilities, enterprises of the future will have to look at AI-powered analytics systems for IT automation.

For example, the flood of events in the event of a fault must be independently analyzed and pre-summarized by the monitoring software. These analysis functions already exist, of course, but with an AI-based solution, fluctuations from normal operation become visible more quickly and, above all, more comprehensibly for humans. Administrators are thus able to identify the affected components much more quickly. They can also more accurately assess the potential impact on business operations.

 

  1. Where does Park Place Technologies stand in terms of Innovation?/How are the emerging technologies benefitting you and your customers?

Park Place Technologies leads the industry in innovation and pushing technology forward.

Our proprietary Entuity Software TM optimizes network performance through full discovery and auto-topology of network assets. These analytics offer real-time visibility of health, performance, and usage. Monitoring and analyzing this data allows us to proactively identify and isolate events to reduce MTTR and stop issues before they impact operations. Constant evaluation of data allows clients to easily scale and configure networks, and reduce CapEx and administrative overhead. It even allows clients to identify policy violations and ensure compliance.

Our exclusive ClearViewTM Contract Analyzer produces a detailed report that projects pricing comparisons along with answers to key questions that are critical for capturing savings, protecting compliance, upholding service performance – and providing an objective recommendation on which devices should:

  • Stay with OEM support
  • Which should be moved to Park Place Hardware Maintenance support
  • Which should be moved to NetSure+ support, which leverages customer-owned and entitled spares purchased by the customer through Cisco’s authorized VAR channel (and are 100% compliant with Cisco policies).

Within two business days, we provide an impartial recommendation on the optimal mix of support including:

  • The devices that should stay on manufacturer support
  • Those that we recommended moving to Park Place Hardware Maintenance™
  • The equipment that is a good match for our NetSure+ service that combines support with third-party logistics.

Storfirst Software is the industry’s most secure, OEM- and platform-agnostic (cloud, hybrid cloud and on-prem) file system migration and information management software. Storfirst allows customers to manage the movement of their data from production servers to disaster recovery servers, on-prem and to the cloud; the software enables customers to control the movement of all file data.

Storfirst’s versatile, fully automated data migration and management software eliminate costly and time-consuming “rip-and-replace upgrades,” providing a single pane of glass to view and manage data and migration projects. Storfirst reduces costs across your entire file estate. It even helps manage risk associated with storing and managing regulated data, such as HIPAA.

ParkView Storage Management™ is our latest new addition to our suite of ParkView Managed Services™. ParkView Storage Management™ combines our 30-year strong Storage expertise and our in-house tools together, to support and optimise block and file storage systems.

Delivered by the ParkView Enterprise Operations Centre (EOC), this new managed service streamlines IT Storage operations by simplifying the management of a storage environment. With ParkView Storage Management™, our EOC provides our customers with 24×7 monitoring of equipment health and performance, incident management, provisioning, patching, and optimisation.

 

  1. What are the key trends driving the growth of data centre industry?

Integration and Scaling: Integrated systems allowing more modular capacity have become the most popular offering for data centres. The demand for larger, better-integrated systems will grow. These integrated systems are already bringing benefits in the form of reduced construction and deployment times as well as more flexibility in capacity management. There is a side-effect: new servers are smaller and newer servers need more power.

Edge: Edge data centres and inter-connectivity of the edge is becoming important as the rate of growth is increasing. Companies are starting to look for “Edge as a Service” offerings.

Connectivity: 5G rollout in India will have a ripple effect across existing, traditional data centres as upgrades will be required to support the increased data processing needs.

In addition to 5G satellite broadband from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites like SpaceX’s Starlink constellation offer low latency connectivity as well as providing connectivity in remote locations across India. This improved connectivity combination will enable Edge data centres in remote regions as well as improved inter-connectivity with traditional data centres.

Regulations: The requirements of the Personal Data Protection Bill to have data storage in the country has made a huge impact on the demand for local data centre capacity.

 

  1. Your views on the talent pool in India. Are the emerging technologies impacting it?

India is placed in a unique position in terms of talent because of the sheer volume of educated talent that is available. Due to the understanding of the key role that IT plays in jobs of the future, there is a huge pool of talent that is IT-focused. This talent is spread across several emerging technologies such as AI, Robotics, IoT and ML. Therefore, there are different pools within the larger landscape to choose from. The talent is increasingly becoming aware of the specializations that they want to focus on. As a result of this, in the new future, we will have more talent contributing to the emerging technologies. This is extremely important as the world grapples with the lack of qualified talent in emerging technologies.

We have our main office located in one of the key IT hubs in Hyderabad.  Our office contains personnel operating in several departments including operations and service delivery, including a group of 20 people in sales. We recently trained and invested in a class of a dozen in-country business development associates. Training consists of rigorous simulations, tests, and customizations of proprietary strategies.

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