| | December 20198 IN MY OPINIONBy Jai Daga, Harry Harji, Associate Vice President, Management Consulting, Asia, Black and Veatchndia is Asia's second fastest growing data center market. Investment in Indian data centers is projected to reach $7bn in the next three years, with the country's data center market forecast to see a compound annual growth rate of 11.4 per cent till 2022. The growth is driven by high current levels of demand, coupled to significant growth forecast for the short and medium terms ­ driven by growth in data and digital intelligent devices and digitalization.Another driver is localization, or data sovereignty laws. Many Asian countries mandate that government data should reside in data centers within their borders. Where this is not currently the case, localization is likely in the short to medium term. It has been suggested that to reach the demand required to meet India's localization laws data center capacity will need to grow by at least 15 times its current levels during the next 7 to 8 years. This growth will be primarily for local cloud data centers. For developing markets like India, Indonesia - and to a lesser extent China - government initiatives to ensure digitally-enabled populations will also have a significant effect. As well as the needs of commercial customers and the telecoms companies, government programmes such as the Smart Cities Mission and Digital India are driving domestic demand. In developing markets electrification programmes will also be a stimulus as the use of digital devices becomes more common. Uninterrupted service is at the heart of successful data center services. To provide uninterrupted, reliable services data centers require uninterrupted, reliable sources of power. Data centers consume significant amounts of electricity, which accounts for circa 40 percent of their operating costs. Anders Andrae, Senior Expert - Life Cycle Assessment at Huawei, predicts that by 2025 data centers will account for 4.5 percent of the world's energy consumption.Renewable energy can make a significant contribution to data center operators' energy needs. Google, one of the largest data center operators, has achieved its goal of ensuring the company's total purchase of energy from renewable sources exceeded the amount of electricity used. To achieve this Google buys renewable energy IPower and Water Nexus Central to Data Center Sustainability Harry Harji, Associate Vice President
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