Indian data centre market to hit $2 billion in 2016: Gartner

Mumbai: The Indian data centre infrastructure market is expected to reach USD 2 billion in 2016, a 5.2 percent increase over this year, according to research firm Gartner.

Within the Indian IT infrastructure market, server revenue is forecast to reach USD 698 million in 2016, an increase of 5.3 percent over 2015. Enterprise networking will continue to be the biggest segment with revenue expected to touch USD 963 million in 2016, it said.

"This segment will also be the fastest growing market, as spending is forecast to increase 5.9 percent in 2016. With increased focus on mobility and big data activities in India, software-defined networking has the highest adoption rate amongst Indian enterprises," Gartner Research Director Aman Munglani said.

The storage market is projected to reach USD 307 million in 2016, a 3 percent increase from 2015.

Storage modernisation and consolidation, backup and recovery, and disaster recovery are some of the key drivers to this market, and they are likely to remain relevant drivers over the forecast period through 2019, Gartner said.

"The strong push towards cloud-based infrastructure, as a service from within the SMB segment, will negate the increase in storage spend within the enterprise space," it added.

The firm also expects the emerging hyper-converged integrated systems and storage technologies based on software-defined storage to encroach on the traditional ECB storage market.

"In 2016, data center modernisation will continue to be a key driver for infrastructure spend in India. Automation and orchestration are becoming high priorities for Indian leaders as well. Software-defined infrastructures, and an increased focus on disaster recovery and business continuity, will also lead to an increased spend on infrastructure," Munglani said.