Plenary Session
You qualify for a free enterprise pass if:
1) Your company is an enterprise with data-center needs or energy network TSO/DSO driving smart energy infrastructure
2) You, as an individual, are directly engaged, as a management or technical professional in planning, strategy, systems design, sourcing, purchasing, procurement, adoption, implementation, integration and operations of an IT organization, data center or cloud services. Individuals with business development/marketing/sales titles or job responsibilities representing vendors and industry supplier/service provider firms do not qualify for an enterprise pass, and should apply for a VENDOR pass.
Individuals with business development/marketing/sales titles or job responsibilities representing vendors and industry supplier/service provider firms do not qualify for an enterprise pass, and should apply for a VENDOR pass.
Welcome to W.Media’s Chennai Cloud & Data Center Convention 2025!
Chennai continues to grow as a hub city for data centres in the Asia Pacific and to consolidate its position as one of India’s three largest data centre locations. It shares a number of driving factors with other key markets in India – the numbers of organisations and individuals embarking on their digital journey, the roll-out of new cloud regions and the emerging requirements associated with AI and ML. The local ecosystem – data centre and cloud providers, manufacturers and vendors, consultants and educators – is evolving to supply and enable that journey. The ongoing Digital India programme continues to create a broad level of support and awareness on a national basis and continuing State Government support and initiatives will keep Tamil Nadu at the forefront of these trends.
Chennai and Tamil Nadu will represent a key focus for digital interests. Major providers continue to invest in the region, and investments are being made (and considered) into larger campus-style data centre developments which offer the necessary capacity for future growth. Tamil Nadu’s economic success is based on a heritage of commerce, manufacturing and industry and this means that different variants of digital infrastructure will play a role in meeting future local requirements. The growing relationship with nations in South East Asia will also consolidate Chennai’s role as a key landing point for cables to and from those nations.
The W.Media Convention will look closely at how data centres and cloud in Chennai are moving forward, at their role in the State’s growth and also at the resources required to build and operate the necessary infrastructure moving forward.
Chennai is India’s second largest data center market. With the AI boom, there is a nearly insatiable demand for AI-ready data centers. How is this impacting investment decisions? Large investments have been announced, but what are these intended to achieve? What are we building, where are we building it and will it be enough to keep up with accelerating demand? Are we looking beyond technology hubs like Ambattur and Siruseri? What role can the TN government play in enabling AI-ready datacentres to thrive in the state? How does this shape Chennai’s future as a datacentre hub market?
India’s Data Center capacity today stands at around 1 GW, but that is hardly enough to satisfy the nation’s ever growing demands, especially given increased AI adoption, automation and wide digital transformation. Indian DC entrepreneurs understand this and have announced ambitious plans to build gigawatt scale data center campuses across the country. But what would this require? How will we source power, and how much of it realistically can come from renewable sources? How will we tackle water requirements in an age when Extreme Weather Events (EWE) such as successive heat waves threaten us with water shortages every year? This panel will discuss the challenges to scaling up and offer innovative solutions.
Even though some states have clear policies in regard to data centers and are trying to become more business friendly, companies often have to jump over a number of bureaucratic hurdles before they are able to reach even the initial stages in obtaining the permissions they need. How can these processes be simplified? What kind of policy changes can make the regulatory environment more conducive to the growth of the data center market? How is Tamil Nadu leading the way in making this happen?
What are the advantages of designing and delivering data centers using a modular approach? How does a modular data center perform in terms of ease and cost of design and build and what differences does this make to operation, maintenance and upkeep, longevity, overall return on investment? In which situations are other forms of design and build more suitable?
AI is rapidly rewriting the requirements for data centers in order to meet a new era of demand. In particular, the profile of an AI-ready data centre requires far higher server densities than have usually been required so far. This in turn requires a new generation of infrastructure to enable AI racks – more efficient power generation and distribution systems, cooling for higher densities, networking to enable the transmission of data instantaneously – in short, a seismic shift from legacy datacentre designs to a next-gen system focused on fully populated system efficiency in which every component performs optimally. Since AI is likely to require hybrid infrastructure systems, the coordination between data centres, cloud and other infrastructure deployed need to reflect these operating requirements. So, do you have to build a new datacentre or can you adapt an existing datacentre for AI workloads?
Each enterprise seems to have made its own unique journey in terms of cloud adoption. Some took tentative steps towards migrating to private cloud, others chose a hybrid approach and moved some non-critical applications to public cloud, even as they continue to use their own private cloud. But in the age of AI, what are the decision drivers behind the decisions that enterprise organisations need to make today about cloud, and what trends will emerge in future? Some enterprises are choosing repatriation out of cloud; will this become more common? Also, what are the impact of data sovereignty laws and cybersecurity concerns on cloud adoption in the era of AI?
Liquid cooling technologies may represent significant advantages over air cooling in certain situations. What are the key advantages liquid coolong represents and in which usage situations is it most appropriate? How do the different forms of liquid cooling vary in this – immersion, cold plate indirect etc.? How can an effective cooling and heat removal strategy be drawn up for different workloads?
Sustainability covers a wide range of E.S.G. activities and as pressures continue to mount on companies and on their digital infrastructure to deliver more sustainable outcomes, so the processes of planning, build and operation become more complex. How is it possible to draw up a realistic, achievable and acceptable sustainability strategy? How also is it possible to monitor progress? How adequate are the metrics and standards for doing this? And how accurately are the wider impacts of digital infrastructure factored in?
As India accelerates towards an AI-driven future, the demands on its data center and interconnectivity supply chain are evolving beyond traditional cloud infrastructure. AI hyperscale workloads, blockchain-based compute nodes, and quantum computing advancements are set to redefine the ecosystem’s networks, hardware logistics, and energy consumption. Is India prepared to handle the supply chain complexities of high-density AI clusters, decentralized Web3 infrastructure, and quantum networking—or will it face bottlenecks that stall innovation?
