Netmagic started in the pre-Internet bubble era. How has been
the journey?
Netmagic started its operations in 1998 after commercial Internet was allowed in
India. We started providing managed hosting services, going beyond basic
connectivity. We found a niche in the corporate space and started providing
value added services. The original plan was to set up multiple data centers,
provide hosting and managed services and other services like VPN, content
distribution, and content delivery. We took a conscious decision to provide
services only to the corporate and not retail. We felt a need for leveraging
Exodus founders expertise and managed to rope them in to invest in our
company. Our first customer went live in Mumbai in November 2000. We were doing
good but the entire sector collapsed and we suffered, and Exodus also went bust.
We went through a bad phase, but things started getting back during 2005. Eying
an opportunity, we also got into the remote infrastructure management business
during that time.
What are your plans for expanding your data center business?
We started with Mumbai where we have set up another data center which has
gone live. Our Bangalore center will also go live very soon. We have plans to
set up one in Chennai for which we have already identified the space. It will be
live before the end of 2007. Delhi is also on our radar. We also have a virtual
data-center in San Francisco, the US.
What differentiates you from other data-center service
providers?
Managed services is our USP. Most of the providers have good data center
facilities and where we differentiate ourselves is in the depth and the
customized managed services we provide. Managed services offerings include
managed security, firewall, DS, load balancing, back-up and storage. The other
thing that differentiates us from others is our carrier neutrality and it is up
to the customers to choose the type of connectivity. Customers now do not have
to send their engineers to data centers, they can just outsource and focus on
their core business. Secondly, it increases the revenue per rack. We have seen a
big shift in the industry towards outsourcing. In fact, three of our customers
have outsourced their entire SAP to us.
What are some of the best practices that your data center has in
place?
We had the first data center that was complete ISO 27000 Type-II certified.
It is not just the data center, but the whole organization which has been
certified. We are also SAS 70 certified, targeted primarily at the US customers.
We follow the entire ITIL methodologies. We are also looking at ISO 20000 which
has to do with the managed services.
Sudesh Prasad
sudeshp@cybermedia.co.in