The facility is being developed together with Mapletree Industrial Fund
By AMIT ROY CHOUDHURY
 | Email this article |
 | Print article |
 | Feedback |
(SINGAPORE) Tata Communications, the telco arm of the US$62.5-billion Tata Group, announced yesterday that it was setting up a state-of-the-art data centre in Singapore at a cost of US$180 million.
The company also announced the completion of the main segment of the US$250 million, 3.8 terabit capacity, undersea cable which directly links Singapore to Japan.
This has been laid far away from the earthquake-prone zone in Taiwan where cables were damaged some years back.
Speaking to BT, Vinod Kumar, president and chief operating officer of Tata Communications, said these investments were part of the US$2 billion expansion plan that the company would put in place over the next three years.
Mr Kumar said the data centre, a 165,000 sq ft facility being built in Paya Lebar, will be green-certified, meaning it will be environmentally friendly.
To be built and operational in 15 months, the data centre is being developed in partnership with Mapletree Industrial Fund.
It will deliver co-location, managed hosting, managed storage and value-added services, Mr Kumar said.
  |
He noted that Tata Communications, in order to meet increasing outsourcing demands from global multinationals as well as Singaporean companies, is expanding its capacity with the construction of the flagship data centre in Singapore, to be named Tata Communications Exchange.
Mr Kumar added that one reason why Singapore was chosen for the centre was because of its key gateway location into the Asia- Pacific region.
When asked if he thought the current economic crisis could hamper business for the data centre, Mr Kumar noted that companies are quite nervous about building captive data centres.
'They are looking at the possibility of using a world class facility like ours which is connected to a world class network and managed by someone like us with experience of running data centres around the world.'
He added that there has been positive feedback from the financial sector and media companies who are interested in using shared services at the data centre.
Globally, the company has almost one million square feet of data centre space.
While 550,000 sq ft is in India, the rest is spread across the US, Europe and Asia.
Talking about the TGN-Intra Asia cable system, Mr Kumar said the network spans 6,700km and connects Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines.
The connection between Singapore and Japan is direct without any landfall, while the other countries have feeder systems which connect to the main network, he said.
Interestingly, this is the first direct Singapore-Japan cable system which does not touch any other country.
Another interesting point, Mr Kumar said, was that the cable has been laid several hundred kilometres away from the earthquake prone zone near Taiwan where an earthquake a few years ago damaged all the cables connecting Singapore and Japan.
'The cable increases data and voice reliability by providing new route diversity for traffic generated throughout and into Asia- Pacific,' Mr Kumar said.
As part of its focus on expanding communications services to and from emerging markets, Tata Communications is partnering with Globe Telecom and EVN Telecom to expand the TGN-Intra Asia Cable System into the Philippines and Vietnam respectively.
No comments:
Post a Comment