Sify launches fourth data centre in Mumbai

Chennai: Sify Technologies, which offers consumer Internet and enterprise data services, said that it would invest about $100 million in data centres over the next two years.

Announcing this at the launch of its data centre in Mumbai, its fourth after a centre each in Chennai, Bangalore and another in Mumbai itself, Mr M.P.
Vijay Kumar, Chief Financial Officer of Sify, said that the new data centre, when complete, would have taken in $36 million of investment.

“We have been investing for growth in the capacity of our backbone infrastructure, expansion of the network to over 500 points of presence, and adoption of new technologies and standards to move towards being a Next Generation Network for converged services.”

A statement from the company said that over the past eight years, it has serviced over 250 clients with services including infrastructure services, core services, managed services, consultancy services, enterprise risk management services and hosted applications.

Its offerings would be in areas such as e-commerce, online banking, ERP and other applications. Sify plans to launch at least two more data centres, one each in New Delhi and Bangalore, over the next two years.

On the consumer side of the business, Sify said that it had reached an agreement with Google Inc to bring the Google Apps suite, including email, chat and online documents, to Indian Internet users.
Google Apps will now power Sifymail and chat, among other applications using the Google Apps platform.

A spokesperson for the company clarified that the company is very clear as to how it would use the power of Google Apps for the new version of Sify’s mail but could not disclose details, citing a formal launch which is around the corner. After the e-mail launch, Sify would also work with Google to offer collaboration tools such as online chat.

Answering a question as to whether Sify’s new e-mail service would be better than Gmail, Google’s e-mail offering, he said, “We bring in value with our understanding of the Indian market. The target of this combined offering would be the average Internet user, not a sophisticated user. The ability to Indianise the offering would be key.”

Google’s search engine currently powers search at Sify’s Web site. The revenue sharing agreement that the two have on this front would extend to other services that Sify would offer using the Google Apps platform.