India Online (IOL) Netcom, which provides IPTV and many interactive media services such as education-on-demand and video-on-demand, is building a Data Centre (DC) spanning an area of 25,000 sq ft at Andheri, a suburban Mumbai region. This DC is envisaged as a part of the company’s plans to make its presence felt in the IT infrastructure management sector.

This proposed DC will not cater to the company's IT service requirements; rather it will 'let out' space to corporate clients. The project is currently in the pilot stage covering about 5000 sq ft area. "We have pending enquiries with us and further there are some clients who have already committed space in advance", says Anil Pandya, VP – Projects, IOL Netcom. The clients, who have already bought space, will start shipping their servers once the pilot stage is complete.

The Mumbai DC is one among a series of Data Centres that IOL Netcom is planning to build across the country ranging from Noida to Bangalore. The company will soon be earmarking a location for a DC site in Navi Mumbai. Conventionally, organisations prefer to host Data Centres in Navi Mumbai (on the outskirts of Mumbai). However, IOL Netcom favoured the suburban Mumbai location due to its proximity to the airport.

Data Centre Imperatives

As servers form an integral part of the DC ecosystem, there are certain parameters in place to aid their segmentation. Pandya explains, "The first parameter is the criticality of applications running on the server. In case, there are mission critical applications running on certain servers, they will be placed together." Redundancy and back up are also factors considered for server segmentation. Similar types of services also help to place servers together. For example, mail servers with spam controls and firewalls are grouped together. IOL Netcom also provides some exclusive services such as bandwidth allocation and network management. The pricing model changes, in case the client wishes to avail of these services.

Other than servers, multiple tape drives also form an integral part of the hardware in a DC. Care should also be taken to see that vertical air-conditioning is practised. A multi-operator approach should be adopted for sourcing the bandwidth. "The strategy adopted for power supply should be two-pronged combining the use of UPS batteries and a generator as a back up" says Pandya.

Citing reasons for venturing into the Data Centre space, Pandya says, "IOL Netcom is an ISP and provides infrastructure management services. Domain registration, server hosting, website development and broadband connectivity are some of the services that are covered under the existing business model of the company. These services overlap the services required for operating a DC. Additionally, IOL Netcom can leverage its existing clients for its DC services. The company thus used its existing business capabilities as internal strengths for pushing off a commercially viable business proposal".

IT Support for the IPTV business line

Though IPTV business is the core strength of IOL Netcom, it also provides other value-added services like video-on-demand, education-on-demand, tourism guides and cab-on-demand. These services run on the IPTV platform and the company has tied up with MTNL and BSNL for the same.

How does IT provide the right environment for running these services? Pandya informs, "We have an in-house team that develops applications and software to facilitate the back-end." Take an example of a service, say, restaurant-on-demand, if an IPTV subscriber requests for a certain number of seats at a certain restaurant, the following will be the path of the request: 'Set-top Box – Middleware – Application Server – SMS to the person designated from the restaurant's side'. Now this concerned person will reply with a 'yes' or a 'no' indicating the availability of seats. If the seats are available, the subscriber's account in the billing application will be appropriately charged. The middleware is developed in a way that it consumes optimal bandwidth".

Some other IT initiatives undertaken by the company include developing an application on the Open Source platform for the Digital Signage business that gives a single window view of video, services offered by the company and news tickers on the TV screen. The digital business has a huge potential to be used at malls, companies, high-end shops etc. The company is working towards centralising billing solutions for all its services offered. Centralised web reporting is another application being developed to enable sales personnel to report while on the move. The IT team is also working on an MIS application to bring the bandwidth, IPTV and digital signage business on a single platform through an XML gateway that communicates with all applications.