Last week, top server manufacturers rolled out new solutions based on Intel?s Xeon E5 processors, aiming to expand cloud computing and analytics across enterprises. The upgrade comes in the backdrop of predictions that there?ll be at least 15 billion connected devices and over three billion users by 2015, each generating more than 4GB of data traffic every day.
The gadget explosion that?s taking place globally coupled with increased cloud computing is set to triple the volume of data centre traffic by 2015, a growth rate that?s expected to see a similar scaling-up of the worldwide number of cloud servers. The picture is no different in India, poised to see an explosion in data with large e-governance projects going onstream and small businesses taking first steps into the world of technology.
?We are seeing virtualisation and cloud being asked for by customers across industries. The second thing asked is virtual desktop solutions,? says Satyen Vyas, executive – System X, System and Technology Group at IBM India. He said the company was expanding its analytics and cloud capabilities across the product line. ?Data has just exploded because of internet and social networking and there is a lot of richness in there that we can harness. That?s why analytics is mainstream now.?
India?s enterprise server market in terms of customer spending grew 4.4% in 2011, much slower than the 14.4% growth it recorded in 2010, a year that saw business bounce back after a global economic slowdown. Still, manufacturers are betting on steady growth coming from a potentially large appetite for computing infrastructure considering the low ratio of computers per person in the country.
According to research firm IDC, the total enterprise server market in India was pegged at $727 million in 2011, with the x86 servers, which are based on Intel microprocessors, accounting for $508 million. The x86 server market saw a growth of 11.7% in customer spending in 2011, against 35% in the previous year. The slower rate of growth in the server market was mainly because of high dollar conversion rates and a cautious approach taken by Indian enterprises in postponing non-critical purchases, says Madhan Dhandayutham, research manager at Bangalore-based IDC Centre for Consultancy and Research.
?India will be a big growth story in the server market. We see biggest consumption from the government side,? says Som Satsangi, vice-president, enterprise server storage and networking, HP India. Apart from large e-governance projects like Aadhaar, land records and tele-medicine, the small and medium business (SMB) segment, which constitutes 65-70% of the market, is also among the biggest spenders, he said.
According to a recent study by consulting firm Zinnov, India?s domestic IT spend is projected to reach $36 billion by 2015, growing at a CAGR of 12%. IT adoption in the SMB space is growing at 15% and is expected to touch $15 billion by 2015.
?We see immense potential in the SMB market as more companies move to cloud,? said Satsangi, adding that the healthcare and education verticals will be among the larger verticals for that market. ?Most organisations are already using cloud computing to deliver anytime-anywhere access to information and applications.?
According to the Cisco Cloud Index, more than 50% of computing workloads in data centres will be cloud-based by 2014, and global cloud traffic will grow more than 12 times by 2015, to 1.6 zetabytes per year.
The explosion in data volume across industry sectors does not necessarily translate into server purchases, said IDC?s Madhan, adding that enterprises are investing on technologies such as server virtualisation to improve utilisation as well as on storage hardware and other storage technologies.
Typically, infrastructure refresh cycle at enterprises is between three and six years, and the promise of more power-efficient systems that can cut costs is seen to drive business. Intel, for instance, claims its new processor family, with 2.3 billion transistors built in, can improve performance by 80% over its previous generation. As enterprises are increasingly allowing employees to bring their own devices to workplace, the distinction between consumers and business is getting blurred, said R Ravichandran, business development director, APAC, Intel. ?We need to look at infrastructure in a totally different way,? he said.
Similarly, social media?s popularity as a consumer tool is now being leveraged as a business enabler. Gartner says that by 2014, social networking services will replace email as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20% of business users.
?The market dynamics is changing because of the smart devices getting connected. It is estimated that by 2015, 35-40% of the enterprise workload will move from traditional devices like laptops and computers to smart devices,? said HP?s Satsangi.
At Cisco, for instance, while most employees use a computer and a smartphone to access company IT services, over 20% of the staff use more than two devices, noted a senior Cisco official.
A key area of growth includes the high-performance computing segment for complex tasks, such as weather modelling systems and fluid dynamics, with several organisations and research institutes investing in large systems. Faced with a critical shortage in the number of high-performance systems in the country available for scientific research, the ministry of science and technology is proposing to build an ecosystem of supercomputers at an outlay of R6,000 crore during the 12th Five Year Plan spanning 2012-2017. Besides adding to the number of high-capacity supercomputers, the plan also involves building a large network of smaller systems at the regional level.
