In 2021, St. Anthony’s Group and Dialog Axiata PLC launched OrionStellar, Sri Lanka’s first, carrier-neutral, and most power-efficient high-density data centre with impressive capabilities to support the digital journeys of enterprises large and small. OrionStellar’s Chief Executive Jeevan Gnanam and Chief Operations Officer Nalaka Bandara explain how OrionStellar is positioned to simplify digital infrastructure challenges for local and regional enterprises, helping them to adopt newage technologies for faster growth.

What is the significance of launching this data centre?

OrionStellar is a data centre facility, a joint venture between Dialog and St. Anthony’s Property Developers, launched in November 2021 to service the needs of large enterprises, SMEs and startups within Colombo city. We are a provider of digital infrastructure solutions where customers can run a server room or outsource everything to us using space and facilities available at the data centre.

Unlike simple server rooms, an enterprise data centre must fulfil several requirements, from robust designs to stringent building standards and high-level certifications that ensure anyone hosting IT in our data centre will not experience any downtime. At OrionStellar, we define our availability technically as 99.92%, meaning that the total possible downtime is less than 90 minutes a year. OrionStellar is the only Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) Tier III-rated facility in Colombo.

We built this facility to be futuristic, efficient, environmentally friendly and sustainable. We can power large, high-powered racks of up to 15kW, and OrionStellar is the only carrier-neutral centre currently in the country. Because we are a carrier-neutral data centre, connectivity becomes cost-effective. Customers will have many choices when using our data centre, enabling them to pick any service provider that gives them the best value for their connectivity.

How are you helping your customers reimagine their businesses?

We are fulfilling a need in the country. I would call OrionStellar a national asset that would drive digital transformation and solve the IT infrastructure challenges of large-scale businesses, both local and multinational, and SMEs. Located at Orion ICT Park, Colombo, OrionStellar has a capacity for 200 racks, a rack density of up to 15kW per rack and a design PUE of 1.4 achieved through in-row cooling systems, which enables higher levels of power efficiency. Businesses could save up to 40% of their energy costs by collocating their IT infrastructure at OrionStellar.

The problem we are solving is IT infrastructure outsourcing. Enterprises, rather than running their own IT infrastructure, their AC systems, generators and other equipment not part of their core business, can outsource that part to us. IT infrastructure is a challenge for any business because technology is evolving rapidly, and the underlying market needs of IT are constantly changing. Businesses struggle to keep up and make decent ROIs on their tech investments in the face of rapid upheavals. However, a state-of-theart data centre like OrionStellar can help enterprises avoid those problems and keep capex costs to a minimum.

Another great benefit is uninterrupted power, a significant part of our offering. We provide a very reliable power supply at the data centre through generators, and as required by the certification, we have in storage fuel for additional power.

Many enterprises are yearning to unlock the power of digital technology. They need more of everything, from automation, IT systems, data analytics and infrastructure. If companies had to build their own data centre, it would be a daunting exercise in this environment, leading to inhibitive capital costs, spending valuable resources and time, and confronting logistical challenges. Instead, by renting a few racks at OrionStellar, they can expand their IT needs and accelerate their road to digitalization. We can empower them to run new technologies like AI, machine learning, data analytics and whatever else they want because IT infrastructure is no longer a challenge. After all, OrionStellar is here.

Our customer portfolio includes banks, diversified businesses, insurance companies and tech companies, and our portfolio is expanding with companies based overseas showing interest. We developed a customized offering for SMEs and startups. OrionStellar will not only host their data but will provide the complete infrastructure suite including state-of-the-art server hardware, superior connectivity, and technical support so that entrepreneurs can focus on evolving their businesses to the next stage of growth. Our SME and startup solutions are gaining traction, and I believe this segment will see strong growth.

At present, there’s interest coming from companies in Singapore, because Singapore is having issues in expanding their IT data centres due to strict regulations

What are your plans for the future?

With the continuously increasing demand for IT infrastructure, we envisage growing this business into a regional service provider where multinationals and overseas companies will consider Sri Lanka as a location for data hosting, for which there has already been some interest. Given that our capacity may not be sufficient to host customers from the region and overseas, we will continue to expand our portfolio, adding more managed services where customers can rely on us to provide and manage their IT infrastructure. We would also like to go up in the value chain to provide cloud services.

At present, there’s interest coming from companies in Singapore, because Singapore is having issues in expanding their IT data centres due to strict regulations. They also need to maintain extreme efficiencies in terms of power, which is a growing global concern. Apart from our stellar energy self-sufficiency, we intend to introduce solar power to bolster our energy security.