Internet Exchanges will support multiple Tier 2 Internet markets in India: Harsha Ram, Head – Network Business, Sify

Recently, AMS-IX, one of the world’s leading Internet Exchanges, and Sify  announced the expansion of their footprint of Internet exchanges in India. The new interconnection hubs are going to be situated in Kolkata, Noida, Hyderabad and Chennai. With close to half the population that is Internet savy, India is one of the largest and fastest-growing markets for digital consumers and businesses in the world.

Harsha Ram, Head – Network Business, Sify, shares with us the significance of this partnership for a country like India

Some edited excerpts from the interview:

What is the significance of the announcement of four new Internet Exchanges to a country like India? 

The AMS-IX and Sify partnership created the first open exchange in Mumbai.By expanding to the digital hotspots of Kolkata, Noida, Hyderabad and Chennai we seek to enhance the quality of network interconnections in these regions as well. These internet exchanges are key to optimize latency, improve user experience and lower the costs of delivery. A well-developed ecosystem of interconnection is critical for the growth of data center operators, service providers and content/application providers. An open and well- developed ecosystem helps drive innovation across the entire value chain with overall growth in the digital infrastructure landscape

How would Indian enterprises benefit? 

The digital transformation space around Fintech, EdTech or Healthcare will all be supported by three underlying technologies – highly scalable cloud, affordable internet and security. All these mega trends can only be supported by the overall growth of multiple market participants such as network providers, data center providers and application and content providers. This partnership will enable enterprises with wider options to interconnect with each other across the metros of the India thereby optimizing latency and cost and significantly improving user experience.

Compared to global countries, how does India rank in terms of public peering and connectivity? How will this announcement help in closing this gap, if any? 

With close to half the population that is internet savvy, India is one of the largest and fastest-growing markets for digital consumers and businesses in the world. Over the last three years, India has made a significant headway in the availability of exchanges and seen an increase in peering traffic. This has been accelerated by the growth in local hosting and peering availability in India. However, it still holds great potential in terms of scale and reliability when compared to other large Internet economies. The gap can be significantly reduced in the next 4-5 years and is a function of both data center capacity build up and the development of a peering ecosystem.

What is the future roadmap? 

Today, the Internet exchanges are very crucial to every region. We ultimately see the exchanges supporting multiple Tier 2 Internet markets in India such as Patna, Lucknow, Ahmedabad etc. The timing of the launch is subject to the overall readiness of the ecosystem in these locations.

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