Just a few decades ago, the thought of wired boxes stored in air-conditioned rooms generating billions of dollars for companies was found only in the pages of sci-fi novels.
With data become the most valuable commodity across the world, that thought has become more real than ever. Data centres housing those wired boxes and storing bits and bytes-have become the driving force behind a company’s success.
Now for every large company, when it comes to IT infrastructure requirements, data centres are a top priority. Data centres are now seen as a key business parameter, and not as an external facility for storage of information and business operation models.
However, as the amount of data has increased by manifold in the last one decade, many companies find it increasingly difficult to house and manage their own data centres. Cashing on the thriving need for storing data, emerged specialized companies dedicated solely to establish and manage large data centres
The global specialized data centre business is now a trillion dollar one. Though late, Bangladesh has joined the bandwagon of third-party data centre business.
The Data centre business in Bangladesh
As of now, there is only one private data centre named Colocity of Ispahani group , functioning in the market. However, at least five more data centres are going to be established within the next one year.
Large corporate groups like Summit Communications, Square informatix, Mir Telecom, fiber@homes, Kazi IT are investing to build data centres as they data business to be the next big business idea.
About the functionality of data centre, Atiqullah Sayed, Manager of the lone private sector Data centre Colocity said that they had established the entity back in 2007 to meet up the demand of the growing need of data storage market.
“We have over 40 clients including commercial banks, multinational companies (MNC), insurance companies, telcos and others.”
He said that their data centre is located over a 10,000 square feet space and has around 160 racks. Explaining about the racks, he said that a data centre rack is a type of physical steel and electronic framework that is designed to house servers, networking devices, cables and other data centre computing equipment.
This physical structure provides equipment placement and orchestration within a data centre facility, he added.
Sayed said that Colocity is the lone commercial data centre service provider now. “There are others data centre owned by some of the large commercial banks and telecommunication companies but those are not being used for commercial purposes.”
About the advent of new players in the market, he said, “This market will grow in geometric manner in near future. There is business for all.”
The government joins in
Beside the private sector, the government is also going to establish the largest tier-4 data centre for the commercial and industrial data business in Gazipur Kaliakair Park. The government is going to rent out that centre to the industry and earn money for the national exchequer.
Tareq Barkatullah, director of National Data Centre said that the current storage capacity of the national data centre in Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) at Agargaon is two Petabyte.
“When the National Data Centre was inaugurated back in 2010, its storage capacity was 30 terabyte. It took nearly four years to expand that capacity up to 750 terbytes another two years to increase that up to two Petabytes.”
“This capacity of two Petabytes is being used to meet up the demand of the government entities. The increase of data flow from different government entities had been increased by manifold, in the past couple of years. Starting from the taxpayer information to files from different ministries, regulatory bodies- the volume of data being stored in the data centre is huge.
Besides, financial data of Bangladesh Bank and the commercial banks are stored in the data centre which raises the demand for increasing the capacity of the data centre, he added.
The security for the data centre
Barkatullah said that to ensure that important data is not lost during natural calamities or any such emergencies; a National Disaster Data Recovery centre (NDDRC) is being set up in Jessore to keep a backup of the National Data Centre.
The Recovery Centre will be housed in the Software Technology Park (STP) which is under construction in the south-western city of Bangladesh. Following preliminary assessment, the Jessore site has been declared low risk for natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires etc- factors that are very crucial for setting up recovery data centres, he said.
Investment Corporation of Bangladesh (ICB) along with state-owned commercial banks- Sonali Bank, Janata Bank, Agrani Bank, Rupali Bank, Bangladesh Development Bank and Sadharan Bima Corporation provided funding to establish the NDDRC, he added.
“Now, the new tier-4 data centre which will be constructed in Kaliakoir national park, will be rent out to commercial entities,” he said adding that the tier-4 data centre will be the will be the fifth of its kind. Tier-4 data centres are the largest of other three types of data centres.
He said that the centre will be established at a cost of Tk1,199.35 crore. It will be established at a 1,75,000 square feet space with around 8,000-9,000 racks. This centre will be rent out to Banks, research centres and different business organizations,’ he added.
End
Thursday, April 25, 2024
