‘Big investments being committed on data centres’

“There is enough technology and enough development happening where we don’t have to rely on clean water,” said Sharad Agarwal, CEO, Sify Infinit Spaces Ltd., on cooling of data centres.

In the last four to five years, the term ‘data centre’ has come to the forefront primarily because of the high demand for this infrastructure setup, especially after COVID-19, when the adoption of cloud increased, Sharad Agarwal, CEO, Sify Infinit Spaces Ltd., said at The Hindu AI Summit 2024 on Thursday.

Huge investments are being committed on data centres, he said during a fireside chat on “Data Centres in the age if AI: Enabling Scalability, Security and Sustainability” with Kunal Shankar, Deputy Business Editor, The Hindu. Mr. Agarwal highlighted how new generation data centres were launched by Sify in Chennai, Bengaluru and Mumbai.

Responding to a query on water consumption in the industry, he said: “One thing that the data centre industry is doing, and we are also doing at Sify, is that net footprint on the environment has to be minimal, and we have to do it in a sustainable manner. That means water is not a mandatory ingredient for the data centres, especially the clean water is not something that is must for the expansion of a data centre.”

Mr. Agarwal said “there is enough technology and enough development happening where we don’t have to rely on clean water.”

The Hindu AI summit 2024 is presented by the SRM Institute of Science & Technology (SRMIST) and powered by Sify, in association with ManageEngine. The Confederation of Indian Industry is the industry partner and CIO Association is the strategic partner. RetailGPT is the phygital commerce partner for the summit; Tamil Nadu Health Systems Project is the healthcare partner and LatentView Analytics is the data analytics partner. Tamil Nadu Technology Hub (iTNT) has been roped in as the digital transformation partner while Tamil Nadu Skill Development Corporation has come in as the skilling partner. Chennai Metro Rail is the mobility partner and the TV partner is Puthiya Thalaimurai.

Published - November 21, 2024 11:57 pm IST