AWS, MS Azure May Redirect W Asia Data Centre Workload to India, Singapore: Report
According to a report, data centers in Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Koch may witness increased workloads, particularly from banking clients.
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Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services are considering redirecting data center workloads from Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Oman to safer locations like India and Singapore in response to the ongoing conflict in West Asia.
People involved in the discussions told The Economic Times that workload rerouting may be a temporary phenomenon, but it could lead to increased investment in India, as global enterprise clients are likely to consider building long-term backup options.
The report quoted Piyush Somani, managing director of data centre company ESDS Software Solutions, who said that, with a strong subsea cable network in India supporting eastward IT workloads, India remains promising even when Europe provides connectivity in the West. However, Somani added that, due to ongoing geopolitical tensions in West Asia, India is a safer choice. Highlighting India’s advantages, he mentioned that the surplus supply has led large enterprises to increase data centre capacity over the last 12-15 months.
Another cloud analyst told ET that, besides India, Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia are safer options, but since they are limited by land and power issues, India offers a more promising outlook.
Global hyperscalers and Indian groups, including Reliance, Adani, Tata, and Larsen & Toubro, have committed $270 billion in investment, which is likely to increase India’s cumulative data centre capacity to 10 gigawatts from 1.4 GW over the next seven years.
Data centers in Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Kochi are expected to handle increased workloads, particularly from banking clients, a senior executive at an infrastructure company told the newspaper. The executive mentioned that these locations are the best options to minimize latency.
On 2 March, drones attacked three Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centres—two in the UAE and one in Bahrain—disrupting local banking apps and airport operations in Dubai. As a result, Kuwait and UAE stock markets were forced to close due to technological outages.
According to AWS updates, 25 services remain disrupted in the AWS Middle East (UAE) Region (ME-Central-1), and 34 services are “degraded.” Two of AWS’s availability zones in Bahrain (mec1-az2 and mec1-a3) also remain impaired.
Reports suggest that a Microsoft Azure facility in Tehran may have been targeted. However, Microsoft has not yet shared any official information regarding this.
Data Centre operators build redundancy and backups at multiple geographies near their core sites, but since the entire Gulf region is volatile, cloud companies are considering locations in Europe, the US and the Asia-Pacific.
In a recent AWS update, the company is urging customers with workloads running in the Middle East to migrate them to alternative AWS regions. AWS urged its clients to activate their disaster recovery plans, restore from remote backups in other regions, and update their applications to reroute traffic away from the affected regions.
