Nxtra by Airtel will set up its biggest data centre (DC) in Hyderabad for which it has acquired 40 acres of land. The 200 MW data centre will be part of the company’s plan to double the capacity across the country to over 400 MW in the next two years.
“The Hyderabad DC should be ready in two years, and reach full capacity in about five years,” Ashish Arora, CEO, Nxtra by Airtel, told newspersons on Wednesday. The company had earlier announced an investment of $600 million to double the capacity.
Arora said the company has 12 larger DCs; 120 Edge DCs; 200 MW of power and over 500 customers.
He was talking to the media while announcing that Nxtra has become the first DC in the country to deploy Artificial Intelligence for enhanced operational excellence.
AI-powered SmartSense platform
The deployment leverages the AI-powered SmartSense platform of a leading AI expert in the infrastructure industry, Ecolibrium. Nxtra implemented the AI technology in its Chennai DC first and will now deploy the capabilities across all its core data centres, he said.
With the deployment, Nxtra aims to achieve efficiency milestones like 10 per cent increase in asset life through real time performance analytics to identify early signs of deterioration and provide corrective recommendations and 10 per cent reduction in non-IT power consumption through early identification of deviations and energy loss in each piece of equipment.
It will help in 15 per cent increase in equipment performance through AI-driven Fault Detection and Diagnostics (FDD) algorithms and preventative maintenance and 25 per cent improvement in productivity with intelligent and proactive insights across all DC operations
With the use of AI-powered SmartSense platform, Nxtra by Airtel has become the first data centre in India to leverage AI to build new-age digitised facilities engineered to drive smart capabilities like predictive maintenance, enhanced operational and energy efficiency, streamlined automation of operations and optimised capex utilisation, he said.