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Together with Ministry of Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructure (T&DI) and Sri Lanka’s leading, world class enterprise solutions provider and the licensed national backbone network operator, Sri Lanka Telecom PLC (SLT) launched its newly built, state-of-the-art, Tier 3 (Tier III) Data Centre in Pitipana – Homagama recently. It is the country’s first ‘Purpose built, tier 3 Data Centre’ recognised as the “National Data Centre” in operation and will enhance the provision of a secure and reliable data hosting facility and Cloud computing services in Sri Lanka.
The Ministry and Sri Lanka Telecom aims to equip local businesses with a full range of ICT solutions to enable them to succeed in the global arena. Speed, connectivity and security of hosted data are among the key demands made by businesses when looking at ICT Solutions. SLT’s wide portfolio of services, which now includes the state of the art tier 3 data centre services, is perfectly poised to not only meet but to exceed these expectations.
This new establishment of “National Data Centre” is yet another milestone in Sri Lanka and the official opening ceremony held at the Pitipana-Homagama venue itself on Tuesday, 16 January 2018. Ravi Shankar Prasad Minister, Law and Justice, Electronics and Information Technology, Republic of India and Harin Fernando, the Cabinet Minister of Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructure of Sri Lanka was the chief guests together with many VVIPs, the Board of Directors of SLT group as well as Senior SLT officers were also present at the event.
This purpose built, energy efficient Data Centre is the first data centre of its kind in Sri Lanka, to be awarded with an Uptime Tier III design certification by the Uptime Institute LLC, the Global leader in data centre certification. The Strategic inclusion of a Gold Rated Green building certification which has been obtained from the Green Building Council of Sri Lanka, will further contribute towards reducing the carbon footprint of the Company.
Commenting on this new state-of-the-art ICT infrastructure development, Harin Fernando, the Cabinet Minister of Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructure of the Government of Sri Lanka said, “Country’s digital transformation and its related many activities were right on track as you can see today. I believe, the country is getting ready to face the data explosion taking in place. GoSL is very keen on implementing the National Cloud and Data Centre infrastructure to accelerate the digital transformation. Already established Local Government Network or LGN which integrates all the government establishments in the country for effective communications is another clear example of the way forward.
“Today all the Public and Private enterprises are beginning to embrace Hosted managed services and Cloud services because it promises increased agility in addition to making a saving in OPEX and CAPEX. It provides them the benefit of leveraging this infrastructure and the expertise of SLT without having to incur the substantial costs associated with deploying such solutions themselves.”
SLT’s Data Centres and Cloud platform is a scalable and cost effective alternative to dedicated computing resources deployed in-house by companies and includes managed virtual data centres, virtual private servers, and virtual LANs to assure customers of high availability. It will also provide enterprise customers with a range of flexible hosting solutions integrated into corporate networks which an IP/MPLS (Internet Protocol/Multi-Protocol Label Switching) networks. Adding thoughts on the initiative SLT’s Group Chairman P.G. Kumarasingha said, “The functions of SLT are based solely aligning to the GoSL development and Digital roadmap and also on the needs of the consumer and as a vital player in the backbone of Sri Lanka’s ICT industry, SLT is dedicated to developing the country’s ICT infrastructure in every way possible. The capability of providing high speed connectivity is essential to our business, so it makes perfect sense that the data centre is meshed into our national Backbone network and MPLS network for seamless delivery of hosted applications.”
SLT laid the foundation stone to this new Data Centre in Sri Lanka on 1 February 2016. The investment for this venture has been more than Rs. 2.4 billion.
The new data Centre of SLT located in newly proposed Tech city area will have a capacity of – 500 racks. Customers will be able to hire racks as and when they are required to manage their CAPEX and OPEX effectively. With this move enterprise customers and government organisations will get the freedom to minimise their investments and operational expenditure by eliminating the need for maintaining their own data centres. The rental payment expected from the customers will be far less in comparison to the amount they would need to invest and spend continuously in order to have their own data centres. SLT intends to provide expert knowledge and bear all costs associated with space, protection, disaster management etc. All data entrusted to the data centre will be stored lawfully following all necessary regulations and is thus secure against any vulnerability.
Speaking on the subject, Chief Commercial Officer/Group Chief Enterprise and Wholesale Officer Kiththi Perera said, “SLT has already set up the nation-wide fibre optic network and connected most important government establishments in to a single unified network under the LGN project and now we are confident that we will be able to provide high quality hosted data products and cloud services. This is South Asia’s First Data Centre possessing the capability of supporting Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) environments, which is a futuristic approach.
“In the global markets, SDN and NFV are set to achieve unprecedented growth in years to come. According to ITU, rapid adoption of new technologies, such as SDN, NFV and new wireless network technologies and solutions are helping change how we use ICTs. Therefore SDN enables instant re-configurations of networks, even without the involvement of technical experts. NFV replaces specialised network devices (such as routers, firewalls, switches) with software analogues, reducing the number of physical components in the network.
“Over the recent years, SLT Group’s IDC infrastructure developments through major investments have powered the country’s enterprise and SME business segments. With the commissioning of its new Tier 3 DC to the Multiple DCs, SLT has now further strengthened its rich portfolio of Enterprise Data Centre Services.”
The new Data Centre in Pitipana is constructed as a 3 storied building spanning an area of 2 Acres and located 24 km away from the SLT HQ Data Centre, Colombo. The Data Centre (DC) is 8.4 km from the nearest expressway exit. Arriving directly from the Bandaranaike International Airport, investors or business travellers can reach the DC via the expressway in as little as 45 minutes. Business establishments will therefore, benefit from cost effective measures that would also enable them to outsource ICT functions with SLT’s Data Centre and avoid in-house data management. The new DC will also provide competent infrastructure for the requirements of Enterprise Customers Disaster Recovery (DR).
