Q&A

EMS takes complexity out of the data center puzzle

Don Kennedy, Senior Vice President—International Sales, EMS discussed the focus of Micro-Modular Data Centers in India and its their core area of operations with Rajendra Chaudhary

Tell us about EMS operations and purpose of your India visit?

Elliptical Mobile Solutions (EMS) is a company which was established in 2005. Our core competencies are in the area of Micro-Modular Data Centers (MMDC) and we have spent the past five years developing the industry’s most advanced mobile, self-contained, energy efficient and high-density data centers. We currently hold five patents for our three flagship offerings viz. RASER (Relocatable, Adaptive, Suspension, Equipment Rack), SPEAR (Self-Propelled, Electronic, Armoured Rack) and the smaller version of SPEAR known as the C3-SPEAR (Climate-Controlled Campus, Self-Propelled, Electronic, Adaptable Rack). These technologies allow organizations to set up new data centers or relocate an existing data centre without any hassles and save them huge savings in capital, operational and energy expenditures. Our MMDCs reduces the costs to plan, build and implement a new facility by up to 80% vis-à-vis a traditional data centre. It has one fourth the footprint of traditional data center and reduces cooling and power consumption costs by over 50%. It is perfect green alternative for power hungry traditional data centers.

Given the tremendous business opportunities, we are launching these solutions in the India and that’s why I’m here.

Are these MMDCs intended for a certain class of organizations, such as the SMBs?

In terms of applicability, all the three versions that we are making available here can be utilized by organizations of all sizes. Larger companies can look at these solutions as a means of addressing their current space and power constraints in their existing data center set-ups.

Then you’ve got smaller organizations wanting their own captive data centers. However, traditionally building a data center from scratch is an expensive, resource hungry and time consuming affair, making it nearly impossible for SMB to own a data center. But with EMS MMDC all these issues seem to go away and it becomes possible even for a smaller organization to have it very own data center.

Are SMB looking to build their own data centers?

Yes. The numbers from Gartner suggest that the data centre industry in India will double its capacity in the next two years and captive and hosted data center capacities will grow at comparable rates. It is also estimated that 20-25% of businesses (mostly smaller organizations) rely on leasing space in third-party data centre. Now given the rising security concerns both of data security as well as physical security, these companies would actually prefer to operate their own data centers. Our market research tells us that Indian SMBs are indeed contemplating building captive data center facilities and our MMDCs fit their needs perfectly.

Which verticals you are targeting with MMDCs?

Some of the verticals that we are targeting includes BFSI, media entertainment, telecom and education. However, the applicability of these MMDCs is not restricted to any one industry vertical or any one class of organization and therefore we are hoping that it would appeal to all kinds of users.

Can you single out one key element that is defining or will define data centers in the future?

I would say complexity. The traditional way of building and operating a data center is highly complex and there are lot of moving parts and resources that have to be at work for it to function. But increasingly we will see a shift from this complex process to a simpler way of doing things. I think the positive response that we have received for our MMDCs both in the global markets and now here in India bear testimony to this fact. So it all comes down to complexity versus simplicity. I think that our simple, modular approach to data center is a paradigm shift in how people will view data centers in the future.