OrionStellar is Sri Lanka’s first carrier-neutral, high-density data center, elevating the island nation’s IT infrastructure. Pushing the limits of data center excellence in the country, the data center is also Colombo’s only TIA Rated 3 data center, while being unmatched in power efficiency resulting in power saving of approximately 40% and an overall Power Usage Efficiency (PUE) of 1.4. The TIA 942 certification means that OrionStellar guarantees an uptime of 99.982% while also being one of the greenest and most cost-effective solutions for IT infrastructure needs in Sri Lanka. In conversation with Arteculate, CEO of OrionStellar, Jeevan Gnanam shared how the company is laying the necessary IT infrastructure to enable startups and enterprises alike to build innovative products and services that will enable Sri Lanka to transition to a knowledge-based economy.
The Birth of an Industry 4.0 Data Center
The OrionStellar data center was launched in Q4 2021 to address the need for a world-class IT Infrastructure and professional IT managed services within the island’s biggest IT park – Orion City. “Once we established this state-of-the-art facility for Orion City’s tenants, we realized the potential in extending our data center management capabilities to the rest of Sri Lanka’s IT industry,” said Jeevan.
Together with this, he shares that the unavailability of adequate IT infrastructure has always hindered the development of technology startups in the country. OrionStellar was built with a key focus on bridging this gap through high-end cost-effective data center solutions for startups and SMEs that would foster their growth from a local perspective.
Providing Reliable and Cost-Effective IT Infrastructure
In choosing OrionStellar for their IT infrastructure, enterprises have a broad spectrum of advantages. Conventional data centers run via a traditional cooling system, passing cooled air towards the racks. However, this system caps the performance of the data center due to overheating and large power consumption of the racks. At OrionStellar, each of its 200 racks possesses in-row cooling that allows them to go up to 15-20 kW per rack. “This allows us to bring cooling right to each rack unit, which has helped us improve efficiency and cut down our energy costs by a considerable margin,” Jeevan highlights.
Furthermore, through its ‘carrier neutral’ approach to data center management, OrionStellar has partnered with multiple telco carriers to minimize the risk of lack of diversity and offer its clients multiple connectivity options to choose from. As data infrastructure management and storage is its core business, the team at OrionStellar has worked closely with service providers like SLT, Dialog, LankaBell, and Tata Communications to bring the best from each to create a more customer-centric experience for OrionStellar’s clients.
“Moreover, it is evident that being at the heart of Orion City gives OrionStellar a natural competitive advantage to be able to ensure continuous power despite any external factors,” shares Jeevan. The data center has been ISO 27001:2013 certified for Information Security Management ensuring information security over the resilient infrastructure, which already adheres to TIA 942 standard to ensure the highest level of uptime and service availability. The data center also outperforms the competition with an optimized rack space per footprint of 50U (50 rack units compared to 42 rack units of other centers). This factor has created 20% more rack space and better performance for servers housed within the facility.
OrionStellar’s Tailor-made solutions for Startups and Enterprises
A key differentiator between OrionStellar and other data centers in the country is its focused approach to providing affordable, accessible, and tailormade solutions to SMEs and startups in particular. Through its co-location services, the data center provides companies with the expertise in hosting and maintaining servers at U, Rack, Cabinet, or Cage Level.
Jeevan elaborated, “Unlike large corporates, the small-scale enterprises often do not have the need or capital investment to utilize an entire rack in a data management facility.” Therefore, with energy metering fine granularity implemented by OrionStellar, the center can meter actual power usage even at the U-Level for a more personalized solution for clients of any scale. Along with this, OrionStellar’s startup bundle also offers Software Defined Wide Area Network (SDWAN) services for high-speed access, improved network performance, and a boost in security.
Clients’ existing server environment can be migrated to the data center with the help of OrionStellar’s data center migration services on a Pay as You Go model. Together with this, OrionStellar is also equipped with the following value-added services that would greatly benefit any enterprise looking to outsource its IT needs:
- Storage as a service (STaaS)
- Backup as a service (BaaS)
- Disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS)
- Data center migration
- Managed hosting solutions
The Future of Digital Transformation Envisioned by OrionStellar
Jeevan shares OrionStellar’s vision of creating a center of excellence over the next 5 years with a powerful team of quick and responsive individuals. According to him, this would be critical for meeting new requirements; as customers and workloads change with emerging technology like AI, edge computing, green data, and sustainability. “With the rising prices of equipment, partnering with OrionStellar would eliminate barriers to building the necessary infrastructure to cater to these new technologies for large corporates and small businesses alike.” This would, in turn, reduce the strain on the individual telco service providers engaged in data center hosting.
Past Chairman of ICTA and Director General of the TRCSL, Oshada Senanayake, reported, “In the context of unprecedented volatility, technology has been a key enabler in Sri Lanka’s ambitious transformation towards a US$3 billion digital economy.” With industry pioneers like OrionStellar spearheading investments required for digital transformation, Sri Lanka is being put on the map with strong global connectivity. He also believes that in supporting IT startups and creating a hyper-scalable high-density data center, OrionStellar could be the first of many facilities that would be a leading source of foreign investment to the country in the near future.