As India's data centre capacity races toward 6.5 GW by 2030, Hitachi Vantara is shifting focus from raw infrastructure expansion to intelligent, efficient data management. Darsshan Somaiya, Head - Strategic Partners & Alliances, India and SAARC at Hitachi Vantara, outlines how AI-ready data infrastructure, sustainability and cyber resilience are becoming central to India's digital growth story.
Moving from Capacity-Led Growth to Intelligence-Led Efficiency
India's data centre market is moving from a capacity-led phase to an intelligence and efficiency-led phase. With data centre capacity projected to rise from around 1.5 GW in 2025 to more than 6.5 GW by 2030, the bigger question is no longer simply how much infrastructure India can build, but how efficiently and resiliently it can operate it. AI is accelerating this transition, as workloads require higher performance, faster access to data and infrastructure that can scale without creating additional complexity.
At Hitachi Vantara, we see the data layer becoming increasingly strategic to AI adoption. AI infrastructure cannot be treated as compute alone. The ability to move, protect, manage and access data at the right performance and cost will determine how effectively enterprises translate AI investments into business outcomes. Our strategy is therefore focused on AI-ready data infrastructure that can support mission-critical workloads across on-premises, hybrid and distributed environments, while simplifying the management of increasingly diverse data estates. VSP One, for example, brings block, file, object and mainframe environments under a unified data platform, helping enterprises build an infrastructure foundation that can evolve as workloads change.
Making Sustainability and Resilience Part of the Data Stack
Sustainability in data centres needs to move beyond facility-level considerations and become an attribute of the entire technology stack. As AI workloads increase power and cooling requirements, improving the efficiency of storage and data infrastructure can have a direct impact on the overall environmental footprint. This makes metrics such as performance per watt, infrastructure utilisation, lifecycle efficiency and the ability to extend technology investments increasingly important.
Hitachi Vantara has been investing in energy-efficient infrastructure, lifecycle sustainability and cyber resilience as part of this approach. Our FY2025 Sustainability Report highlights continued development of energy-efficient infrastructure for AI workloads, lifecycle assessments and greater visibility into environmental impact. VSP One also incorporates energy monitoring and sustainability reporting capabilities, alongside architecture designed to reduce power and cooling requirements.
Resilience is equally important. As enterprises become more dependent on always-on digital infrastructure, cybersecurity and recovery cannot remain separate from infrastructure design. VSP One incorporates capabilities around cyber resilience, ransomware detection, immutable snapshots and recovery, alongside a 100% data availability guarantee. For India, where data sovereignty and regulatory requirements are gaining importance, the ability to maintain greater control and visibility over critical data across hybrid environments will become an increasingly important part of infrastructure strategy.
Designing Infrastructure That Stays Adaptable as Workloads Evolve
India has an opportunity to become one of the world's most important AI and digital infrastructure markets. The scale of investment already underway demonstrates the strength of that opportunity. However, the next phase of growth will be defined by how effectively the industry balances compute expansion with constraints around electricity, water, cooling, cybersecurity, skills and resilience. Current industry projections indicate that India's data centre expansion could place significant additional pressure on both electricity and water resources, making efficiency an economic necessity as much as an environmental one.
We believe the industry needs to move from a mindset of simply adding infrastructure to one of building infrastructure that is adaptable by design. AI workloads will continue to evolve, and infrastructure deployed today needs to accommodate changing performance requirements without repeated disruptive upgrades. This makes scalability, automation, cyber resilience, energy efficiency and lifecycle value critical design considerations.
For Hitachi Vantara, the opportunity lies in helping enterprises build this foundation around their data. Our focus is on infrastructure that combines performance, resilience, sustainability and simplified management, allowing organisations to modernise without having to continually rebuild their underlying data environments. Ultimately, India's AI ambitions will depend not just on how much compute capacity is deployed, but on whether the underlying data infrastructure can make that compute productive, sustainable and resilient at scale.
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