Global digital infrastructure enterprise Equinix is set to open its first Chennai data centre in SIPCOT, Siruseri in the fourth quarter of this year. 

With an initial investment of $65 million, the data centre called CN1 spreads over nearly 6 acres of land and will provide a total site capacity of 4,950 cabinets or power of around 25 megawatt when fully built. The first phase of CN1 will provide 850 cabinets.

“Chennai is a natural progression for us. CN1 will be connected to Equinix’s three existing data centres in Mumbai and is designed to support the needs of both enterprise customers and hyperscalers including AI deployments,” Manoj Paul, Managing Director, Equinix India, told businessline.

“Our data center campus in Mumbai has the largest concentration of cloud on-ramps, telecom service providers, over-the-top (OTT) media service providers, internet exchanges and financial ecosystem. The addition of the Chennai data center will further extend this ecosystem to customers in Chennai,” he added.

AI deployments

With India witnessing rising AI workloads that take up high intensity computing infrastructure, Equinix is also in the process of expanding its existing liquid cooling technology used in some DCs globally to India. “Many of our customers in India are in planning stage for AI deployments and we are in the process of ascertaining their liquid cooling needs,” Paul said. 

The company claims it is on track to achieve climate neutrality by 2030 with a focus on incorporating clean and renewable energy coverage throughout its global operations. “Equinix’s facilities in India, including the upcoming facilities in Chennai and Mumbai, CN1 and MB3, are expected to be 100 per cent covered by renewables as the capacity scales up,” Paul said.

Globally, Equinix operates 260 data centers across 71 metros in 33 countries, providing digital infrastructure for more than 10,000 businesses. In Asia-Pacific, Equinix currently has 56 data centres in key metros across Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Singapore. Along with data centre co-location services, Equinix also provides interconnection services for its clients to connect to multiple cloud providers or telecom providers.