Infotech Lead Asia: CtrlS Datacenters CEO Sridhar Reddy says the company’s India growth will continue as it offers differentiated services to enterprises.
CtrlS Datacenters posted 108 percent growth in 2011-12 revenue to Rs 48 crore. CtrlS Datacenters CEO says the company is looking at 100 percent growth in both revenue and manpower in 2013. The manpower growth will aid in expanding geographical reach in India and abroad.
In 2013, the main focus will be industry verticals such as BFSI, telecom, e-commerce, gaming, mobile VAS, payment gateway, hospitality, etc. “In 2012, telecom sector did not do well. But it will come back this year. Also, BFSI is still growing. Our strategies will assist us to grow better,” Reddy told InfotechLead.com.
Most enterprise CIOs say they are expanding their IT infrastructure and may increase their data center floor space over the next three years. The server market is forecast to grow by a 13 percent CAGR from 2010 through 2015 (the external controller-based storage disk market by 23 percent CAGR and the enterprise network equipment market by 9 percent CAGR over the same period).
According to an August 2012 report from Gartner, most IaaS and utility hosting providers in India have evolved from data co-location services, managed services and hosting, and are forging their identity as true IaaS providers.
The distinctions among data center outsourcing, hosting and cloud IaaS continue to blur, as do the boundaries between customer needs, delivery models, providers and markets. The markets are distinct, but their services exist on a spectrum.
CtrlS Datacenters’ 44 percent of revenue comes from CtrlS Colocation Solutions and 56 percent comes from CtrlS Managed Services. In the last 3 quarters, the revenue for CtrlS Colocation Solutions has increased 75 percent, and the revenue for CtrlS Managed Services has increased 125 percent.
Gartner says prices and offerings are likely to decline, with many more players expected to enter this market, especially in utility hosting. Providers should consider the value differentiators in their offerings as part of their strategy to sustain current pricing, or increase it.
Gartner suggests that providers (utility hosting and cloud IaaS) must invest in developing or buying integration tools that allow them to integrate management tools to manage client infrastructures — monitoring and capacity management are basic management needs, and present challenges to scale.
There is a strong pricing pressure in the rapidly growing hosting market.
Last year, Rackspace reduced its prices by 33 percent in international markets. Indian service providers will soon cut prices. In fact, some of the vendors have followed Rackspace.
CtrlS Datacenters CEO says there are challenges in the IT solutions market. “Mindset towards outsourcing has to change. We are talking to several CIOs and change is happening.”
For a data center company, cost of power is a major challenge. CtrlS Datacenters has deployed several green solutions to become more energy efficient.
CtrlS, which owns and operates two facilities in Hyderabad and Mumbai, is also looking at overseas expansion. Its CEO says there will be an announcement soon.
Baburajan K
editor@infotechlead.com
