Monetization plan for Datacenter and Cloud services in an International Financial Tech City for different business scenarios

Market Discussion

Customer Segment- Financial Services and IT/ITES Companies

Services Offered:- Colocation-Rack, U, Cage

•        ‘Big data’ is making its presence felt in the banking domain in India with regulatory authorities like RBI, IRDA and SEBI releasing regular mandates necessitating data storage and analysis on a real time basis. With customers demanding more personalised services, the data generated by them through their transactions and on social media have to be captured continuosly. Government mandate of inclusive growth in rural areas and expansion of banks globally is further adding to the volume of data
•       IT/ITES/BPO companies are moving up the value chain and penetrating global markets but are saddled with increasing competition leading to cost pressures
•        The energy requirement of datacenters is rapidly growing among users with a large datacenter presence such as banks and IT industry. With increased adoption of high-density IT equipment, power consumption of racks have clearly crossed the standard power requirement of 4 to 6 KW, and the cooling requirement has also shot up further calling for higher power capacities. These challenges are forcing datacenters to create fresh sites with more energy-efficient designs. Captive datacenters tend to have a distinctly higher requirement for high-density racks than hosted data centers with a heterogeneous user environment
•    According to Gartner, large banks and IT companies that have traditionally used captive datacenters are considering the colocation option as a means to meet short-term urgent requirements such as new site and local market requirements. Encouraged by the growing maturity of Indian colocation providers, Gartner expects this trend to be further strengthened throughout till 2016  

Services Offered:- Hosting services- Dedicated Exchange Services, Dedicated Server, Hosted Compute

• As Indian banks and IT/ITES organizations embark on their datacenter expansion plans, they are increasingly inclined to leverage the datacenter hosting services
• Enterprises with large captive data center presence may not necessarily exercise this in a big way, but the midmarket banks and IT/ITES are increasingly investing in hosting or managed services, primarily to ensure that they can focus on their core business and get a highly skilled datacenter partner fulfilling their infrastructure growth plans
• From a supply-side perspective, as more 3rd party datacenter providers are entering this market, there is a continued price correction, which is further attracting the customer interest. 

Services Offered:-Managed services- Basic L1, OS Management L2, DBMS Management L3, Fully Managed L4, OS Backup, Database Backup, Exchange Backup, Data Backup

• The managed services business is increasingly becoming a key focus of service providers since it commands a significantly higher tariff, typically more than double, potentially leading to a higher margin business model
• Gartner assumes that it will continue growing at a healthier growth rate than the collocation business as it evolves further to meet the user requirements for a more optimized and agile datacenter
• From the user perspective, specialized skills shortage, along with increasing focus on their core business, will be the key factors driving greater adoption of managed services such as DR, on-site support and hosted servers/storage
• Managed services are also one of the reasons why there has been a moderate slow down in the captive datacenter market for the raised floor. Managed services coupled with virtualization in the data center have enabled users with efficient capacity planning.

Services Offered:-Cloud Services- Exchange, SQL Backup Services (Automatic & Manual), Active Directory backup or Outlook repository backup(Automatic and Manual), Microsoft Lync, Desktop as a Service (Windows), Desktop as a Service (Linux/Xen), Managed SAP Dedicated Servers, Storage on NetApp, Secure Email filtering services, Secure Web filtering services

•     Banks can ensure that all locations use the correct application software version so that the format of the information being recorded and conveyed is accurate.
•    The model helps reduce management burden for corporate applications and increases their availability to locations.

                               - It provides improved efficiency, lower risk and relevant return on investment

•     According to Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) Thirty-seven per cent of banks expect to deliver 10 to 25% of IT services over a cloud 
•     According to Zinnov, IT/ITES is the largest spender in IT/ITES domain and has the maximum penetration in terms of spend on cloud as a % of total IT expenditure among all the industry verticals. IT/ITES spends 22% of total IT expenditure on cloud , which includes captive and 3^rd party cloud
•    Cloud Computing is no longer considered “hype” by most CIOs. Almost 80% of CIOs believe that it will be an important constituent of their IT strategy within the next one year.

Customer Segment- Financial Tech City

Services:- Infrastructure as a service, Desktop as a Service, Platform as a service,        Security as a service, Managed applications for field force automation, workflows, risk management, Web Learning modules in partnership with content providers, OSS/BSS services, Unified communications including PA systems (VIOP and PSTN),  Data connectivity,  Video analytics for traffic management, Common Operation Picture 

•       Being internal to Financial Tech City occupancy, the services consumption by internal teams would be high as per design of the city
•     Going by the smart city technologies and internal consumption pattern in other similar cities globally (Dubai Internet City, London, Hong kong etc), services to internal utility customers have been seen as having highest adoption from year 1 itself
•      As per the terms , all services would have state of the art and innovative technology components in line with global best practices, internal customers would find it competitive and convenient to subscribe from Financial Tech City SPV
•      In services like voice and data connectivity, leased line etc, it is proposed to have multiple service providers thereby increasing competition and ensuring that internal customers receive the best bargain in terms of value for money offerings 

    Customer Segment- Residents at Financial Tech City

Services for Residents:- Triple play services (voice, data, multimedia), Building management Services (BMS) for intelligent buildings – management of security, energy and utilities, waste management etc., Wi-fi hot spots for connectivity in public places, Voice and data connectivity through all major service providers

•       Triple play services and building management services would be part of the overall infrastructure bundle; thereby ensuring high adoption from initial period itself.

•     services like voice and data connectivity, leased line etc, it is proposed to have multiple service providers thereby increasing competition and ensuring that internal customers receive the best bargain in terms of value for money offerings

Explanation of Scenarios

High internal consumption of services in Financial Tech City: In line with global adoption trends

Deloitte estimated that the adoption of cloud computing environments and applications accelerated over 2012-15,dominated by large enterprises. Cloud computing has become a subject of interest for a few years now, but user adoption in India is yet nascent.

This is expected to change over the next 2-3 years, driven by increasing uptake across a broad base of large enterprise, Small and Medium Businesses (SMB) as well as individual (non-corporate) technology users.

In a study undertaken with NASSCOM in 2011, Deloitte estimates that cloud computing in India could become a INR 82,500-99,000croremarket by 2020 – more than 30 times its current size

BFSI is the savviest of the industries when it comes to adoption of technology in India and with the security concerns being dispelled and cost consideration becoming paramount, cloud take-off will be substantial. With the majority of the tenants expected to be BFSI, it can be fairly estimated that in the best case scenario, the near to complete capacity of the datacenter that we are proposing will be utilized within 2-3 years when they become available.

Let us understand why it was feasible to monetize the full capacity of the datacenter that would be available by 2014.

There are studies that showed that the cloud share in IT expenditure of the total IT budget was 8% (includes both captive and 3^rd party) by 2015. In the US, cloud share in IT expenditure of the total IT budget for banking was 3.25%, securities and investment services 3.75% and insurance 4.5% in 2011. Another report says that cloud adoption in all the industries taken together is growing by 40%. If we take these and also the fact that the generic datacenter services is twice the size of cloud services in India, we can safely assume that in normal scenario, to start with in 2013, around 8% of total IT budget will be spent on datacenter and cloud services in India.  

Considering the growth rate given by Deloitte and discounting for captive datacenter and cloud services growth, we can safely assume that tech-savvy BFSI companies coming to Financial Tech city will be spending 20% of their IT budgets on 3^rd party Datacenter and cloud services. 

We also have the estimate that Financial Tech city plans to have 6-8% of total BFSI segment in India to be in the Financial Tech city. Further, BFSI is expected to spend INR 19,250 crore on IT by 2014. We are also assuming that BFSI will be the dominant segment of the two segments consuming datacenter and cloud services. We will have an average of 300 racks in FY 2013. Further, we will also sell the datacenter and cloud services externally. If we take all these arguments, we can safely say that we will be able to generate around INR 72 crores of revenue in FY 2013, increasing to INR 905 crores in 2019.

Adoption trend more aggressive than global trends due to high availability and cost factors

This is the best case scenario and we assume that in this case % Share of Cloud computing and data center of total IT budget will be higher. We also expect faster occupancy of the Financial Tech city and better adoption rate by the tenants for our services. In this case we assume our sales to be INR 77 crores in FY 2013 and INR 1319 crores in 2019.  

Low adoption trend than global averages; external selling of services to USA and Europe to compensate low demand from internal customers

This is the worst scenario that we are contemplating. Due to various reasons such as lower occupancy of the Financial Tech city, lower than expected adoption of our services and lower % of datacenter and cloud as a share of total IT budget, we will have lower sales. . In this case we assume our sales to be INR 59 crores in FY 2013 and INR 887 crores in 2019.  

Scenario Analysis