Kathmandu, May 20: At a time when the digital infrastructure is gradually taking a central stage as a prerequisite for development, both the government and private sectors are positive towards setting up data centres in Nepal.
The private sector has been encouraged with government’s positive initiatives, arguing that Nepal could even be a regional hub of data centres once it amplified its schemes accordingly. Although there is no specific law on establishment of data centres, the introduction of the Data Centre and Cloud Services (Operation and Management) Directives, 2081 BS two years back came in response to the investor’s demands.
Recently, Finance Minister Dr Swarnim Wagle met with investors of Bechuten Data Vault and assured of necessary support from government side for the construction of data centres.
Likewise, Minister for Information and Communications, Dr Bikram Timilsina, also informed that feasibility study would be conducted on bringing in foreign direct investment in the construction of data centres in Nepal. Government is developing a plan to study the interest of multinational companies in data centres in Nepal.
The early stage of data centre can be nurtured and thriven by giving a boost to interest shown by private sectors and even foreign companies, according to the investors. The foreign companies seem lured also because of temperate climate and increasing production of electricity in Nepal.
Some Nepali businesspersons had announced on April 24 that they would build a Tier-4 hyper-scale data centre in Kathmandu and Birgunj. The company already announced an investment of about Rs 5 billion in both locations.
In this regard, Managing Director at Bichuten Data Vault, Navin Agrawal, shared that his company had decided to make investment in this sector after conducting a research for one and half year. “From all sections, I am helpful that Nepal can be developed as a data hub,” he said, crediting increasing use of technology in Nepal, in the region and across the globe.
Huawei Nepal’s Data Centre Leader, Rohit Chandra Sah, who has been working at Huawei Nepal for a decade, said as data has a high value in digital world, Nepal cannot stay aloof. There is an increasing investment in data, said Shah, who is Nepal’s first Accredited Tire Specialist (ATS).
Rapid use of digital technologies can been seen in Nepal with most banking transactions gone mobile; government services turned online, and users’ digital hours on significant rise. Even the number of people using artificial intelligence (AI) is growing. For all these to thrive, data is fundamental. It is therefore gaining a centre stage of the economy, trade, security and government services. And, it is the data centre that stores and processes the data.
Nepal’s Favourable Climate
Cooling centres are essential to run data centres and as Nepal has a cold climate, such centres can be run with less energy unlike the places of hot atmosphere. “Once the operating costs are low compared to other parts of the world, the companies can also provide services at a low cost,” said Sah, seeing full prospect of Nepal becoming a regional data hub.
Across the globe, the data centre industry is transitioning to new cooling systems like ‘GPU servers’, especially in the wake of AI spurt that consumes much heat. Power management and thermal control are vital to run AI data centres.
Huawei is currently augmenting investment in cloud computing, AI infrastructure, smart energy systems and data centre solutions in different parts of the world. It claims developing a ‘one-stop solution’ for AI data centres. The company has also focused on the concept of ‘modular data centres’, which means such facilities can be expanded as per need and operated at low cost. It argues such model can be useful for the developing countries.
Nepal’s Data Centres
Nepal government is also running data centres. However, the ones Nepal has are of up to tier-3, requiring the establishment of hyper-scale data centre to meet growing demands as the experts suggest.
The government has been running an Integrated Data Management Centre within Singha Durbar, the central administrative complex of the country. It was built in 2009 with the support of Korean government. The Centre has been looking after entire government agencies’ domain registration to website hosting, providing IT infrastructure required for electronic services of government agencies, handling Singha Durbar’s network infrastructure and the government data backup.
Even Nepal Telecom has its data centre at Jawalakhel and Bhairahawa, while the telecommunications and internet service providers such as Ncell and WorldLink are expanding their data infrastructures. Ncell’s data centre at Nakkhu, Laliltpur and the Nepal Electricity Authority’s data centre at Syuchatar, Kathmandu and the WorldLink’s data centre are among the largest ones in Nepal.
Global Standards
The data centres’ quality, efficiency and safety are measured by the global tech companies. The data centres are categorized from tier -1 to tier-4. The Uptime Institute, globally headquartered in New York, the USA is the body measuring standard of data centre. It also assesses and certifies reliability and continuous operation capability (uptime) of the data centre.
As per classification, tier-1 is the most basic level, where there is limited infrastructure and a low backup system, due to which the service may be interrupted even in case of minor glitches. Once the tier layer increases, the quality too improves.
In Nepal, Ncell’s Nakkhu Data Centre and the Nepal Electricity Authority’s Syuchatar Data Centre are of the Tier-3 facilities. Tier-4 is the highest level which is uninterrupted and has almost 100 percent uptime.
Another in the list measuring standard of the data centre are the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the Building Industry Consulting Services International (BICSI). Even the trainings are provided by these tech institutes for ICT and standard for technical infrastructures.
Irrespective of the government’s encouragement, the problems still persist in Nepal to build high quality data centres. High-capacity electricity, cooling systems, cyber security, networks and skilled tech workforces are some of the challenges. Nepal needs to address these challenges before realizing the dream of establishing cutting-edge data centres, with foreign direct investments. #nepal #rss
