Cloud services, data centres see 650-700% increased demand

With the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, earlier lockdowns and unlock process, the demand for cloud services have risen significantly.

To put things in perspective leading global data companies during the time period of March-May have registered a staggering 650-700 per cent increase in their data businesses. The quality of network and infrastructure too has seen a tremendous overhaul with the multi-cloud, hybrid-cloud and 5G spectrum coming into play.

Dr Rajeev Papneja, Chief Growth Officer, ESDS, a Nashik-based multi-cloud data centre reiterates the fact that this is a good opportunity for India data companies to add value in the current economic scenario.

“The Covid-19 situation caught the world by surprise, however, we have already stepped out from the shadows of the worst. The cloud data industry in the past 6 months has witnessed a steep rise in the demand, especially for Cloud services. Work from Home culture, online education, and increase in OTT platform subscriptions together have equated to high demand for quality data centres,” he said.

An expert in the field of cloud computing, Dr Papneja said that the world has changed immeasurably since the Covid-19 outbreak, prompting several industries such as travel, hospitality, manufacturing, logistics to take shelter and brace for a hard impact. While the pandemic has hit the economy hard, few sectors have been able to come out from the shackles of de-growth and show signs of stabilisation. Information technology, telecom, healthcare and FMCG sectors have shown great promise.

“Two sectors particularly which have seen huge growth since the lockdown is the edu-tech space (online-learning platforms) such as UnAcademy, Byju’s, Udemy, Toppr, SimpliLearn, Coursera etc. Companies such as Coursera registered a staggering 650% increase in usage of their platforms globally and over 1400% increase in India during the period March- June 2020,” said Dr Papneja.

Another sector which is booming due to the lockdown is the video on demand and OTT platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hotstar among others.

“Today most of the meetings are held on Cloud using apps like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, JioMeet. While having a multi-national webinar, events, product launches etc, the seamless flow of data is ensured by the tireless functioning of Cloud data servers. While this has created a severe shortage of Data centres and the need for Cloud has risen multi-fold, it has also given an opportunity for several Indian infrastructure companies to invest in the Cloud space. We see this trend continuing through the coming year and who knows we might witness “working from home office” becoming the new normal. With everything getting conducted virtually, be it events, studies, examinations, product launches, training, and not to forget sales, we will only witness an increase in the demand of data centres globally in coming times,” he added.