In order to speed up data processing in its biggest market, Meta plans to run four to five nodes throughout the nation.
Meta Platforms, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, will establish its first data center in India at the Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL) site in Chennai, according to media reports.
Following talks at Anant Ambani’s pre-wedding celebrations in Jamnagar in early March, the youngest son of Reliance CEO Mukesh Ambani and Nita Ambani struck an agreement between Meta chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and RIL, according to media reports citing unidentified sources. The transaction’s worth is not known.
How is a local data center going to help Meta?
A joint venture between Brookfield Asset Management, Reliance Industries, and Digital Realty, the 10-acre MAA10 campus is located in Chennai’s Ambattur Industrial Estate and can accommodate up to 100 megawatts (MW) of IT traffic.
In order to speed up data processing in its biggest market, Meta plans to run four to five nodes throughout the nation. Currently, the social media behemoth has 22 data centers across the globe. The only hub for the corporation in the Asia-Pacific area is Singapore, where data on Indian consumers of Meta goods is maintained.
According to reports, an Indian data center will manage content and aid in boosting local advertising, improving user experience, and lowering transmission costs from international data hubs.
Facebook has 314.6 million users in India, Instagram has 350 million, and WhatsApp has 480 million users—nearly twice as many as in its home country of the United States. The reports also stated that Meta Platforms reported a doubling of advertisement revenue from click-to-message ads in India during the September 2023 quarter.
When the MAA10 data center campus was first inaugurated in January, Digital Connexion showcased its ability to support language models for artificial intelligence.
Despite now owning only a 3% worldwide share and producing 20% of the world’s data, CareEdge Ratings projects that India’s data center industry will treble its capacity within three years.
However, as big digital companies like Google and Meta look to localize data storage in India, this scenario is probably going to change.
The data center plan for Meta
Media reports from earlier in February of this year stated that Meta Platforms intended to invest between Rs 500 and Rs 1,200 crore to establish a 20-megawatt (MW) capacity center.
An exponential rise in data consumption and an improving regulatory environment are likely to drive $10 billion in investment into India’s data center business over the next three years, according to a CII-Colliers analysis from October 2023.
Given the popularity of Instagram, particularly for short videos (reels), Meta would benefit from having a data center in India to enhance the user experience.
Also read: Nurturing Responsible Online Behavior in Students by Building a Culture of Digital Citizenship
Do Follow: CIO News LinkedIn Account | CIO News Facebook | CIO News Youtube | CIO News Twitter
About us:
CIO News, a proprietary of Mercadeo, produces award-winning content and resources for IT leaders across any industry through print articles and recorded video interviews on topics in the technology sector such as Digital Transformation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Cloud, Robotics, Cyber-security, Data, Analytics, SOC, SASE, among other technology topics.
