Boom time for data centres
Sharif Ahmed, Dhaka
With increasing economic and technological transformation in recent times, data has become the foremost essential in developing any business. Cashing on the growing need to store data, Bangladesh is witnessing a boom in data centre business in order to boost the countrys data storage capacity.
As of now, two data centres named Bangladesh Army Data Centre (Tier 3) and National Data Centre (Tier 4) have been certified by the Uptime Institute, an organisation best known for its Tier standard and the associated certification of data centre compliance with standards, say officials related with the project.
The National Data Centre (Tier 4), which is one of the biggest, in the world has been built at the Kaliakoir Hi-Tech Park in Gazipur.
A Bangladeshi IT company fiber@homes Ltd is building two data centres. One has already been built at the Jessore Software Technology Park and is at the final stages of getting the Uptime certificate. Another one is being built at the Kaliakoir Hi-Tech Park in Gazipur, the officials say.
According to them, a data centre built by another Bangladeshi company, bKash, has already got an approval from Uptime.
A test run of the Tier 4 National Data Centre, which is one of the biggest in the world, is currently on and commercial operations to boost the countrys data storage capacity would start soon, said one of the officials of Bangladesh Computer Council, requesting anonymity.
Functions involved
About data centre business, Masud Parvaj, chief executive officer of DCicon, told The Independent that a data centre included a wide range of activities, starting from the maintenance of equipment and systems, housekeeping, training, and capacity management for space, power and cooling.
Trained personnel are needed for these functions. So, challenge lies in our country to build up trained human resources such as operation managers, he said.
Moreover, he said, We need to understand that a server room is not a data centre.
He also said that in Bangladesh, the market for data centres will witness exponential growth.
Regarding costing, he said, small data centres were less costly compared to the big ones. There are about 500 small data centre available in the country worth about Tk 1 crore each.
Masud said that companies are becoming increasingly aware of disaster recovery and approaching data centres. There is an accelerating shift of IT services from traditional enterprise data centre to the co-location, managed services and consuming IT as a service.
Certification is costly. So, all the companies cannot afford to apply for certification. Meanwhile, auditing and proper monitoring should require ensuring quality training in data centre business, Masud added.
Uptime Institute Tier Standard classification system starts with the data centre design, implementation, and sustained operation. Additional factors and exposures must also be considered by the owner and project team, say industry people.
Experts at the Data Centre Technologies Summit 2018, held recently in the capital, said a data centre was a facility that centralized an organizations IT operations and equipment, and where it stores, manages, and disseminates its data. Data centres house a networks most critical systems and are vital for the continuity of daily operations.
Green data centre is basically a concept of optimal level of power loss, electrical carbon emission; minimum energy use that are not harmful to the environment, added experts.
Some of the corporate firms of the telecom and banking sectors in Bangladesh have already developed their data centre to preserve their digital information, said Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of DCIcon Masud Parvaj.
During the summit, Masud Parvaj lamented that the Textile and Readymade Garments (RMG) sectors were still unaware of the perks of a data centre and its significance.
Solutions offered
Exhibitors also told to this correspondent that three Data centre solution providers were currently offering facilities to operators by sharing infrastructure. These are Colocation Asia, NRB telecom and Colocation widy. Companies can rent space, rack and other solution from them at affordable prices.
The ongoing two-day data centre summit, which has just ended focused mainly on branding the digital Bangladesh through data a centre hub with the message bringing everyone together and be globalised.
The international data centre summit ended yesterday with much expectation on the part of of 2,000 tech-savvy people, 50-plus data centre solution providers and 20-plus local and foreign booths. With over 200 leading industry players, the summit sought to bring buyers in contact with an assortment of companies that can provide the solutions they need.
Seven countriesUK, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Singapore, the Netherlands, India and participated in this summit, held for the first time in Bangladesh. Thirty local and foreign technology firms were present.
The second day of the summit had exhibition/product demonstration, knowledge-based technical presentation; product based technical presentation, networking sessions and local and international exhibitors and speakers from around the world participated.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of DC Icon Masud Parvaj said DC Icon would provide a definitive platform for key industry buyers to meet, learn and do business with the most innovative and exciting data centre solution providers in the world.
Masud Parvaj also informed this correspondent that a data centre was the heart of any technology firm and the storage of any organisation. It could also be described as the backbone of data stored by a firm.
The CEO of DCicon added it brought buyers to the fastest developing data centre market on the planet together with companies that provide the solutions they need.
Xtralis is a company that manufactures and provides solution Vesda, an aspirating smoke detector for critical areas like data centre of telecom, banking and defence facilities.
Technical Manager of Xtralis H.S. Yadav said a data centre was a massive server that needed to be maintained. A tiny amount of smoke, which may be invisible can be detected by this device, which is pivotal for the safety of any data centre.
The incipient stage of fire is the pre-stage of visible smoke and that can easily be detected by this device. bkash data centre and CPTU data centre have already adopted this solution. H.S. Yadav informed.
Vesda works by continuously drawing air into a distributed pipe network via a high-efficiency aspirator. The air sample then passes through a dual-stage filter. The first stage removes dust and dirt from the air sample, explained H.S. Yadav.
Shark, an entire solution provider for data centres also opened a booth at the summit.
Executive engineering of Shark Monica Sarker said, We provide all infrastructure solutions of data centres like such as Intelligent Power Distribution Unit (IPDU), Auto Fire Suppression System (AFSS) and Environmental Monitoring System (EMS).
Talking about the client references, Monica Sarker said, In the telecom sector, we provide solutions to Grameenphone and in textile, Beximco and Square are our top clients and in banking and financial sectors. We have provided solutions to Bangladesh Bank, Sonali Bank and Agrani Bank.
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