CW: Does BYOD change the power and cooling approach in the datacenters? How do you address this scenario?

It definitely does. Even a single click of a BlackBerry button, for instance, results in energy consumption, as the request travels across multiple networks, the Internet, and pulls out the required data from the source. People, now, want information at their fingertips, and handheld devices have become a part of our lives. As a result, companies are looking at different ways of delivering content. We have more and more data coming into the datacenter. That leads to high density storage and networking because the volume of data is now increasing. It also resulted in high density servers and virtualization. These datacenters are becoming very dynamic, and they need to scale up and scale down as and when required. Also, with virtualization, we are seeing the data moving around inside the datacenter. At Schneider, we have been quite conscious about this dynamic nature. We now have datacenter infrastructure management tools to improve the availability of power and cooling in virtualized environments. As a result, the power and cooling infrastructure also becomes dynamic. This actually results in reduced energy consumption and cost savings.

CW: Attaining energy efficiency is a big concern for the numerous legacy datacenters in India. Do you have a different approach towards such customers, compared to your greenfield projects?

India is a little bit conservative on adopting high density technologies. The datacenters here still have traditional designs. But I sense the shift happening now. A lot of companies in India now have virtualized environments. Besides, these companies are looking at a technology refresh at this point, as a result of which we see an uptake for high density services and cooling.

We have different offerings that make this transition possible. A high density zone, for instance. This can be built within their existing datacenters, and the customer can slowly grow that to cover the entire facility. But the fact is that not many people need a 100 percent high density requirement. They will have legacy systems that are still going to be of low density. Therefore, we see a mixed environment, especially in markets like India. At the same time, there are customers who are more forward-looking. So, some of the greenfield projects now are on high density technologies.