Going green with Scalable Modular Data Centre

Aditya Singhal, country manager, Infrastructure Services, IBM India/S Asia, talks to Sudhakaran of CyberMedia News about SMDC and its advantages

Green and economy are the two major things the corporates world around are talking about. In this context, how do you see the relevance of Scalable Modular Data Centre?

Companies of all sizes are looking to reduce operating costs, respond to the increasing demand for data center capacity, enable continuous technology refresh while improving the resiliency and security of their infrastructure.

As the physical conditions of a data center directly influence the performance of the IT infrastructure, in order to meet the business goals, it is imperative to establish facilities that run efficiently, can accommodate additional computing equipment, are easily refreshed with new technology and operate reliably.

Agility and the speed of introducing new technology are important for organizations planning for IT growth. Unless new data centers are designed in a modular way, enabling speedy expansion, organizations will not be able to change fast enough to meet user requirements.

And how does it help save energy and money?

IBM’s SMDC includes conditioned and distributed power, equipment cooling, equipment rack systems, security and monitoring. It does not require raised flooring and can be designed and installed in nearly any working environment - potentially in less time and for a lower cost than a traditional raised-floor data centre.

Clients can readily add power, cooling and rack capacity to support their growing server and storage needs as business and IT requirements change. Since it is using a bundled solution with all-inclusive pricing, facilitates better and consistent budget planning and controlled expenditures, an SMDC can also help manage costs. SMDCs also meet the business continuity and resiliency requirements of clients while optimizing costs.

In addition, a lesser administrative investment means you can reinvest in other areas of your business.

The pre-configured data center solution including servers, storage devices and infrastructure along with power, cooling and management architecture is available in the 500-1,000 square foot range.

Most of these SMDCs have a strong 'Green' component and are primarily targeted at mid-sized enterprises. We are committed at the highest levels of management to energy savings and, wherever possible, reducing the impact of climate changes.

We have used our expertise and energy smart technology innovations to outline a five-step approach that is designed to dramatically improve energy efficiency for clients. These five steps are diagnose, build, virtualized, manage and cool; through which data center managers could set up their data center and handle challenges.

IBM’s Intelligent Energy Campaign, launched in 2007, aims to establish that major innovations are at hand which will radically increase the ability of consumers and enterprises to discover, produce, manage, and use energy in a more cost-effective, efficient, and environmentally-sustainable way.

Since SMBs are getting stronger in India, many IT companies are coming with new packages for the segment. How will the SMDC help the SMBs in India, especially from the ROI perspective?

India has a known power shortage problem and SMB’s are equally affected by this energy deficit. The past few years have seen rapid maturing of the IT landscape in SMB organizations. With increasing server sprawl IT managers have increasingly become aware that servers can be power hogs – and be it technology refresh or fresh server installations, we’re increasingly seeing the adoption of energy efficient servers.

In a recent study conducted by IBM across eight regions including India, small and medium businesses cited energy costs as one of the biggest cost increase over the past two years and are looking at Green Technologies as an alternative. There is definitely a highlighted interest and awareness among the Indian enterprises today on Green Technology.

IBM’s SMDCs have a strong Green component and are primarily targeted at mid-sized enterprises whose business needs demand resiliency but in a cost-effective manner. SMDCs allow these enterprises to have small-sized data centers starting from as low as 300 sq ft.

On an average how long will it take to install the system?

SMDCs are very effective in terms of the time they require to be put up. It takes less than three weeks for an SMDC to be up and running, against conventional DCs which can take 10-12 weeks.

And will it be possible to use the existing data centre infrastructure and upgrade it to SMDC?

An existing data center could potentially be upgraded to SMDC, but it is based on several pre-existing factors in the data center and also the cost factor involved. There is no thumb rule and a proper recommendation can only be given after studying the existing infrastructure in the data center.

Could you please tell who are the major clients for the SMDC in India?

IBM last year deployed Scalable Modular Data Centers for over a dozen of its clients. Some of these clients are: Fiat India Automobiles, Bharat Bijlee, Atlas Copco, Apollo Sindhoori, APL, FINO and Religare.

And what are the key differentiators of SMDC?

Clients can scale up their data centers as their business grows and use the 'pay-as-you-grow' model. IBM’s deep global expertise with local presence and dedicated team of experts across the globe offers a broad range of complementary services. IBM has built over 250,000 sq ft of data centers for over 55 clients in India. Leveraging its well-established relationships with industry-leading vendors; IBM can tailor a data center solution to meet the business requirements.