MEDIA ARTICLE

Journey of STT GDC India: how it became a leading data centre service provider for large enterprises

Jul 21, 2021
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ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) is one of the fastest-growing data centre providers globally, headquartered in Singapore. STT GDC India is a majority-owned subsidiary of ST Telemedia Global Data Centres. The company has been designing, building, and managing data centres in India since 2005. An innovator and leader in the Indian data centre industry, STT GDC India has the largest pan India presence offering over 140 MW of critical IT load across 18 operational facilities in 8 major cities with more in the works. Its mission-critical data centre hosting and colocation solutions comprise best-in-class offerings delivering industry-leading uptime, scale, and reliability to customers.

 

With its purpose-built, scalable, secure, highly connected carrier-neutral facilities, STT GDC India is a pioneering innovator that offers global quality data centre services. It solves infrastructural challenges at the core as well as the edge of the digital value chain. Today, it is the only operator that offers customers an option of selecting sites matching their strategic locations while lowering the total cost of ownership.

 

Customers can operate at their desired scale and level of privacy, in the location of their choice, with high flexibility, ranging from shared racks to multi-megawatt bespoke solutions that can include caged areas, customized suites, and build to Suite dedicated buildings and other innovative offerings.

 

The company has a well-diversified customer base that spans multiple segments, including large Indian and global enterprises government, BFSI companies, the Internet economy players like the e-commerce, content, OTT and gaming players, cloud service providers, and even SMEs. Besides leading cloud services players, they also host many SaaS players, systems integrators, and Managed services players who have built their services on their colocation platforms. Overall, the company serves more than 1000 customers across these segments.

 

At STT GDC India, we encourage employees to lead specific tasks outside of their day job and collaborate with a virtual team to complete them. Ideas are sought from across the board and recognized and rewarded adequately. Further, we enable up-skilling and right-skilling and clocked 32-plus hours of learning per employee last year. Learning opportunities consist of a blend of technical and behavioural learning needs.

Sumit Mukhija, CEO, STT GDC India

 

About the CEO

 

Sumit Mukhija, CEO of ST Telemedia Global Data Centres India (STT GDC India) is a veteran in the ICT space. Under his supervision, STT GDC India has not only emerged as an industry leader and an innovator in the Indian data centre space. Over the last three decades, he has held a host of leadership positions across companies such as Cisco, Microsoft, Brocade, and Tata Communications. He is a member of the CII's National Committee for skills development and employment and Co-Chair of the CII Western region task force for data centres.

 

Challenges, Opportunities & Culture

 

The data centre industry is faced with challenges of staying ahead of ever-changing technological advancement. It is a complex business requiring 24x7 monitoring and real-time decisions in mission-critical environments. "For us, the biggest challenge was to create a sustainable and reliable ecosystem that is aligned to the safety, quality, and stringent uptime SLA requirements. The ecosystem itself is very diverse and consists of our customers, partners, suppliers, contractors, shareholders, and our own employees. Bringing this ecosystem on the same page and aligning them is what I consider our biggest achievement. All of this was put to the litmus test in 2020, which I consider as one of the most challenging times in my professional career. Digital emerged as the backbone of everything during the pandemic. Our company played a pivotal role by providing the underlying infrastructure on which the cloud and apps ride. It helped many companies, governments, and people alike during this period," says Sumit.

 

STT GDC India's business is built on a strong foundation riding on the strengths of their people, processes, technology, and innovation. With accountability, frugality, ethics, and customer-centricity at heart, the company's DNA presents a fitting blend of aggression and agility typical of start-ups, the maturity of an established industry leader, and the responsibility and commitment to sustainability of a thought leader. Sometimes real-time decisions are made to ensure business continuity and safety.

 

Speaking about the culture, Sumit says, "At STT GDC India, we encourage employees to lead specific tasks outside of their day job and collaborate with a virtual team to complete them. Ideas are sought from across the board and recognized and rewarded adequately. Further, we enable up-skilling and right-skilling and clocked 32- plus hours of learning per employee last year. Learning opportunities consist of a blend of technical and behavioral learning needs. All of this enables the much-needed ability to think laterally and solve problems."

 

Future Endeavors

 

The data centre colocation market in India is poised to grow rapidly and reach more than 1000MW in operational capacity by 2025. The Digital wave will continue to be the main driver for this growth. As a leading infrastructure player in the digital value chain, the company will continue to invest and expand its capacity in India. By 2030, the company plans to become carbon neutral. Apart from this, the company is associated with different initiatives that help people across the country. Its initiative with Tata Trusts has resulted in a significant increase in income for hundreds of farmers.

 

Source : https://www.forbesindia.com/media/supplement_pdf/Book_Company%20in%20Focus-II_Final%20for%20WEB.pdf