Colocation data center company Equinix has started scouting for space to open its Global Center of Excellence (GCoE) in Bengaluru. The company plans to hire approximately 500 IT professionals in Bengaluru by the end of 2024.

“We have got the investment committed now. Soon, we will announce the location and leadership of this CoE. We have already started the hiring process for the center. Bengaluru, a key hub in India's digital economy, is going to play a significant role in creating world-class products,” Milind Wagle, Chief Information Officer, Equinix said.

The GCoE will contribute to the development of innovative, automated and scalable digital technologies to improve the digital infrastructure resilience of Equinix’s customers and employees.

Equinix made its official India foray in September through the acquisition of the India operations of GPX Global Systems in September for $161 million. The deal included the acquisition of two Mumbai-based data center buildings of GPX.

“The opportunity ahead in India is significant. We saw a lot of pent up demand in India from our existing customers and given some of the new regulations around data residency in India, we see a lot of growth opportunity here,” Wagle said.

India has turned into a popular destination for some of the largest data center companies across the world. The move towards digitization, a booming startup ecosystem and several e-governance initiatives are all playing a big role in boosting demand for data center space in the country. According to Frost & Sullivan, India is anticipated to become a $2 trillion digital economy by 2030, growing at a 21% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). It also forecasts that 40% to 50% of Indian businesses will be taking a containerized hybrid multicloud approach for deploying applications by 2025.

The U.S. headquartered data center company has IT talent hubs in Dallas, Silicon Valley, Singapore and Warsaw.

An external company has already been hired by Equinix to do a location analysis. The company assessed its talent and skillset needs, accessibility to other Equinix locations, and ease of doing business. Through that process, Bengaluru emerged as a preferred location.

As Equinix grows its business globally, it will be critical to modernise its own business technology infrastructure, deploy more cloud technologies, develop more data & analytics programs to provide insights to the stakeholders. All those capabilities will require IT to scale as well for the rest of the company.

The company is making this investment to build that capability to support its long-term growth strategy.

The GCoE will enable business strategy for Equinix and work on all critical business priorities for the company. “We are looking at all the leading emerging technologies deploying cloud infrastructure platforms like AWS, GCP, Business technology platforms like Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Oracle ERP Cloud,” Wagle said.

Equinix now operates 49 IBX data centers in Asia- Pacific across 13 metros in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea and Singapore.

Earlier this year, Equinix committed to becoming climate-neutral by setting science-based targets for emissions reduction across its global operations and supply chains by 2030.