COO
Digital Connexion
India’s data economy is growing rapidly, driven by a mobile-first population and a steadily increasing number of internet users. With over 950 million active users and average monthly data consumption crossing 20.27 GB in 2024, the country is on track to become a global leader in data consumption. At the core of this transformation are data centers, the essential infrastructure supporting everything from e-commerce and cloud services to AI workloads—quietly powering the country’s digital economy.
A major development in this space is the Indian government’s ₹10,732 crore investment in AI infrastructure. With plans to add 500 MW of data center capacity over the next four years—much of it focused on AI, India is strengthening the foundations of its digital future. AI-ready data centers aren’t just a vision for the future, they’re a current necessity. Meeting AI’s demands calls for infrastructure that’s intelligent, flexible, and built for energy efficiency.
The essential building blocks for creating future-ready data centers purpose-built for an AI-driven world are:
High-Density Colocation for Scalable AI Performance
As businesses invest more in AI, the amount and complexity of data they handle is growing quickly. Training large language models, running deep learning algorithms, and processing massive datasets in real time require high-performance computing resources that go far beyond the capabilities of traditional infrastructure.
To meet these escalating demands for power, speed, and precision, colocation solutions have emerged as a practical, high-impact solution—bridging the gap between cloud scalability and on-premises control. Today’s high-density deployments are purpose-built for AI, enabling significantly more computing equipment to be packed into the same physical footprint—measured in “racks,” standardized frames that house servers and other hardware. These AI-driven operations rely on GPUs and specialized accelerators that consume far more power per rack than legacy systems, often stretching the capabilities of conventional data centers. In just two years, average power densities have jumped from 8 kilowatts (kW) per rack to 17 kW, with projections hitting 30 kW by 2027.
What sets these environments apart is their modularity. This allows businesses to grow their computing power as their AI needs increase, without overbuilding or incurring unnecessary costs. Advanced cooling technologies, including liquid and air-assisted systems, keep high-density setups efficient and reliable. With pre-engineered configurations and faster time to market, colocation providers help businesses stay agile in a fast-moving AI landscape.
Hybrid IT as the Backbone of AI Infrastructure
As AI adoption grows, enterprises need infrastructure that offers flexibility across cloud, on-premises, and edge environments. Whether it’s agility in the cloud, control on-prem, or low latency at the edge—AI workloads must run where they perform best. Hybrid IT enables this by blending on-premise systems with private and public clouds, offering the right mix of scalability, security, and cost-efficiency. But managing such distributed environments can be complex. Each setup comes with its own configurations, compliance requirements, and performance needs.
To reduce this complexity, modern infrastructure is moving toward modular, repeatable deployment models. These allow businesses to scale efficiently while keeping IT operations manageable. Unified orchestration layers now help standardize deployments, from a single cabinet to multi-megawatt hyperscale builds, ensuring consistency across environments.
The key imperative is to focus on building infrastructure that’s cloud-smart from the ground up—with automation, interoperability, and real-time adaptability built in. As AI use cases from large language models to real-time edge inference continue to grow, hybrid IT will be central to keeping pace. The future isn’t cloud-only it’s cloud-first, hybrid-always, and the infrastructure must be ready to deliver on that promise.
Seamless Interconnection as a Strategic Differentiator
In an AI-first world, data is only useful if it can move freely. When systems are siloed or slow to connect, insights are delayed and innovation stalls. To stay agile, enterprises need their data, applications, and users connected securely and in real time. According to the Global Data Insights Survey, 47% of Indian enterprises identify data integration and movement across environments as a key challenge in scaling AI initiatives.
Interconnection is becoming a foundational layer of digital infrastructure. As AI workloads become more distributed and rely on diverse data sources, enterprises need low-latency, high-throughput connectivity across hybrid environments.
Modern data center ecosystems now offer built-in interconnection services that enable seamless connections across on-prem, cloud, and edge locations. These integrated pathways bypass the public internet, improving performance, reducing risk, and enabling real-time collaboration between systems.
Unlike traditional models, next-gen interconnection is software-defined, providing policy-driven controls, embedded security, and the flexibility to scale across geographies. It supports AI use cases such as multi-cloud orchestration, distributed model training, and real-time analytics.
In this context, interconnection acts like the nervous system of the AI enterprise, keeping everything responsive, secure, and ready to adapt. For businesses embracing AI, seamless connectivity isn’t just infrastructure. It’s an operational edge.
Scaling with purpose
India’s digital journey is no longer about just providing access, it’s about building momentum. As AI, cloud services, and connectivity come together, India is in a strong position to lead in developing smart, reliable, and sustainable digital infrastructure. But this progress requires active effort. It will take focused investment, skilled professionals, and a long-term commitment to innovation. The question isn’t whether India’s data centers can be future-ready—it’s how quickly, wisely, and responsibly they can evolve to support the country’s digital ambitions in an AI-powered world.
Authored By: Anbu Shanmugam, COO, Digital Connexion