For some it would seem that the data centre space is already fully occupied they need to ponder over the following. The data centres set up so far are the early entrants into the concept, and if the field seem already saturated, there are reasons.

These centres are catering to the applications and usage conceived by industry and business as of today. If they do not see more business coming in it is because the data centre concept is in the early stages of product growth cycle. It would take a while for industry and trade to make more and more demand for service from these centres. Right now, the industry and trade does not see the need to spending more as they start evaluating the return on investment. An impression that the technology cycle is slowing down could also be holding back investments.

But as companies sell their wares in the same global and domestic markets, competition is bound to intensify. Soon the need to concentrate on core strengths will emerge. At that point of time, firms will start investigating how much more they could extract from the data centres. What needs to be done, and how it will be done the business processes-will be looked upon up more closely. When this happens the product growth curve will start moving up the slope once again. According to one estimate only one third of the potential applications that can be put through the data centre has so far been taken up. Much of the future growth is expected to come through ASPs and data centres. In the short run, it is true that the data centres are finding it difficult to achieve full utilisation as there are not enough customers. But then this is part of the pains of growing up.

But that is no cause for worry. The concept of switching over commerce and trade to the e-commerce route has just begun. The pace of growth is slow here for very valid reasons. The e-commerce concept, techniques and technology have all to be accepted and adopted both by the customer as well as the seller, whether it be B2B or B2C. In this process the technology itself has the potential to turn out to be a better driver for the industry.

As technology makes available more and more user-friendly tools for e-commerce, activities at several layers of management and operation will embrace the new technology. Adoption to the new techniques are then bound to snowball. The IT support departments would have to spearhead this process, which will result in lowering barriers to switching over to newer ways of running operations.

During this process of maturation, those centres who have already built their business around clients with large business volumes will find it easy to wait for the maturity process to catch on. They would also be in a position to adopt marginal costing techniques to acquire more business in the meanwhile.

Also one should not be surprised then to see foreign firms which have the expertise in data centre operations setting up bases in India. They would tie in their technology expertise with local partners, who would provide them with the needed ground knowledge about local conditions and practices.