Equinix, Inc. is a global leader in Internet connection and data centres, with its headquarters in California. The company helps businesses to accelerate their digital transformation by providing them with secure and reliable access to the cloud, networks, and partners. As the world becomes more dependent on technology for almost all business activities, interconnectivity becomes a crucial factor for success. ET Edge Insights recently spoke to Manoj Paul, Managing Director of Equinix India, to gain insights into the company’s growth and its endeavours in the Indian market, including its recent announcement of a fourth data centre in India, representing an investment of approximately $86 million.
Excerpts below:
How are you helping companies in their digital transformation?
Equinix plays a role in developing the underlying infrastructure, which enables all the digital transformation that is happening. So, when an enterprise is moving the digital way, they need to deploy their infrastructure, servers, and storage at the location, which provides reliable power, reliable cooling and we have been able to maintain a 99.99969 uptime, ensuring the customers that their operations are available to their customers 24×7, 365 days. We have around 248 data centres in 71 metros in 32 countries, globally. So, we are 10 milliseconds away from 80% of the world’s population. That is the benefit that we bring to the table for businesses.
Can you share your sustainability journey?
Our sustainability journey follows a top-down policy – a very prominent and stressed about aspect, as far as data centers are concerned. In 2018, we announced our plan of being 100% Climate Neutral by 2030. As we speak today, 96% of our energy, all the power that we consume across the globe is backed up with renewable energy. We have our science-based targets to ensure that we do this journey in a very well-planned way. We are spending a lot of CapEx to improve efficiency to reduce consumption also, because being renewable and sustainable is not only about moving into green power, but also trying to reduce the consumption of power. We are deploying new technologies, so that our power consumption reduces even for existing data centres and old data centres. We are investing in improving that efficiency and that has helped us in reducing PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness).
Different metros, and different countries have their own challenges. So, we look at it in a holistic way that if it is Europe, maybe we will be generating more solar power in some countries. Hence, you can generate green power in one country and then explore trying to go green in another zone. We are looking for various measures to ensure that power is made available, and we contribute to and support growth in green power.
Can you talk about the deployment of AI amongst your customers and its impact on the network?
We are seeing a huge amount of interest among our customers in deploying their AI platforms and expanding them. The most interesting part of it is that the AI requirements are no more a little different from normal, in terms of the amount of power that they need, so we are working very closely with customers who deploy AI strategies. There are some public AI platforms like the Chat GPT, used by companies, and now a lot of enterprises are deploying their own AI tools too. We are working with both and seeing how we can support them both in terms of power cooling, and in terms of interconnection that they need to connect with their customers. This is going to be a challenge and an opportunity. AI is highly powerful and space-hungry, and it might grow very big. We are looking at catering to that requirement without compromising on the deployment of the normal day-to-day business of other businesses. Many of these AI requirements might need things like liquid cooling, immersion cooling, and alternate technologies. Equinix is already deploying all these technologies to ensure that if there is a requirement coming up, we can cater to that requirement.
