B.S. Rao
Vice President, Marketing -  CtrlS Datacenters Ltd

PROMISING 2020
As an organization, CtrlS is expanding its global footprint from the current 26 countries to 80 countries worldwide. Within India, it has initiated constructing its 5 million square feet Rated-4 Hyperscale data center facilities. Two million square feet is planned in Mumbai and Hyderabad each, while one million is planned in Chennai. With that, CtrlS will be enjoying a total footprint of 6 million square feet of rated-4 hyperscale datacenter space in the country.

In the early part of April 2020, CtrlS launched affordable pandemic ready solutions for enterprises including virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), data loss prevention (DLP), managed security services, unique IT modernization and cloud migration services.

From a datacenter services perspective, it commissioned its Mumbai Hyperscale DC2, which is the world’s first solar covered datacenter. The Mumbai Hyperscale DC3 is almost operational, while the Mumbai Hyperscale DC4 is under construction and will be ready for occupancy by December 2020.

SET AS A DIFFERENTIATOR
CtrlS practices ‘Customer First’ philosophy which is part of its organizational DNA. Every employee, every process and technology deployed is aimed at providing pro-active services to its customers, which is why its Net Promoter Score (NPS) stands at 68. This is testified by the fact that 80% of its customers have been with CtrlS for close to a decade displaying enviable loyalty.

COVID-19 accelerated the digital marketing journey of CtrlS. Today, it engages its prospective customers completely through the digital platforms and engages them to address their pain points through innovative digital marketing strategies. 

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AGENDA
Customer expectations have undergone a sea change in 2020 versus 2019 due to COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses that have been severely affected by the pandemic have a totally different approach, while there are some who have witnessed rapid growth arising out of the opportunities during the pandemic. Both the aviation and hospitality sectors have witnessed major drop in revenues, in some cases they have had to lay-off people as well. The auto manufacturing sector witnessed near zero sales. While OTT players, online meeting platforms, online grocers, digital classrooms have witnessed rapid growth.

CtrlS is helping distressed customers with compassion and extending all support to ensure their needs are met to satisfaction, while to those experiencing growth, CtrlS has provided innovative solutions across its datacenter, cloud, managed services and security services portfolios.

CYBER SECURITY A PRIORITY
Cybersecurity threats will also be a constant. Security threats will continue to plague the businesses. Of course, one can re-install an application and re-configure a server or a network device. However, data cannot be recovered if it’s erased or corrupted beyond recovery. Hence protection of data should be the key focus of every business. If a security attack can erase all the copies of the database including their DR data of a 30 year data of all the bank transactions beyond recovery, the bank in all likelihood will be out of business immediately. Hence, security is paramount. Every CISO should contain internal threats, threats from ex-employees and other external attacks to secure the critical data.

DIGITAL INDIA MAKING STRIDES 
Today datacenters are the nerve centres of an economy. If one wishes to watch a movie on demand through an OTT player, or wishes to pay a vendor through a mobile wallet, or book an air ticket, or order online groceries, or attend an online classroom they will eventually be utilizing an application which in all probability is hosted in a datacenter. Today, CtrlS powers 70% of India’s total financial transactions, 50% of India’s e-commerce buy transactions and 72% of all cloud transactions. It is therefore playing a key role in enabling 627 million internet users, 200 million online shoppers, 500 million smartphone users and 100+ million OTT subscribers. 

Lastly, CtrlS is deploying 500 edge data centers across the country in two phases, while in the third phase it will cross 1,000 edge datacenters. This will further its objective of taking data closer to the customers in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities and will continue to be an integral part of the Digital India initiative.