Maldives — Paradise or Data Hub — Choices for the country
New Data Economy Presents Opportunities for Maldives to become the next Singapore of the Data Age. But a different approach will be required.
“Data is the new Oil”. The quote goes back to 2006, and is credited to Mathematician Clive Humby, but has recently picked up more steam after the Economist published a 2017 report titled “The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data”
Alarming new research suggests that failure to source renewable energy could make data centres one of the biggest polluters in just seven years. The rapid adoption of data-hungry machines and services is driving the need for more power to keep the lights on in the data centres of the world. As analysts estimate as many as 50 billion devices to be connected by 2020, with some statistics pointing to more than 100 billion a further five years down the line, new alarming research suggests that data centres will be one of the biggest energy consumers on the planet, beating many countries’ energy consumption levels.
According to a paper to be published by US researchers before the end of the year, the ICT industry is posed to be responsible for up to 3.5% of global emissions by 2020, with this value potentially escalating to 14% by 2040, according to Climate Change News.
Researchers say this will be directly related to the fact that the data centre sector could be using 20% of all available electricity in the world by 2025 on the back of the large amounts of data being created at a faster speed than seen ever before. The figures meet those published by Swedish researcher and Senior Expert Life Cycle Assessment at Huawei, Anders Andrae in 2016 in his “Total Consumer Power Consumption Forecast”.
Andrae predicts that by 2025, data centres will amount to ICT’s largest share of global electricity production at 33%, followed by smartphones (15%) networks (10%) and TV (9%).
What does this mean for the future? While Data will be the next oil the real estate that is required to hold the data requirements which is growing at an alarming rate could be the next climate change issue apart from Cars. Truly the industrial era problem of brick and mortar industry and automotives creating power consumption has shifted to technology and data hungry machines creating more power consumption and therefore issues for climate change.
One the countries that is very keen on controlling limate change is the Maldives. The archipelago has reasons for this as it has the risk of going under water if climate change is not controlled soon.
I would like to describe an opportunity for the Maldives to not only contribute to this problem but also to become an integral central part of the new Data Economy and therefore prosper as a Data Hub for the future and become the next Singapore in the new economy.
There is extensive research done by Microsoft now to produce “undersea” Data Centers. This gives huge benefits considering the above scenario explained which could potentially be a game changer in an increasingly Data Centric world.
Check out project Natick ( https://natick.research.microsoft.com/) from Microsoft Research where the ambition is to create Under Sea Data Centers f which provide two main benefits. Low Latency as more than 50% of the world’s population lives within 200 KM of Sea coast and Green energy to maintain the data centers with lower power consumption due to inherent cooling provided by the sea and better generation of power via Tidal and Wind energies for the data center.
Consider now the case of how actually Data Flows globally especially into Asia. Considering the peninsular nature of lower Asia most of the submarine cables take a route that is well connected to the Maldives thanks to the efforts of the local Telco Dhiraagu which invested long time back in connecting the world to the Maldives and all the islands of the Maldives via undersea cable. See picture extract from https://www.submarinecablemap.com/#/
This provides Maldives with the real estate and the HUB characteristic of becoming the center where most of these under sea Data Centers can be set up. The unique characteristics of the Atoll structure with many lagoons around the islands, most of them being uninhabited and available for this purpose also makes Maldives the ideal location for this. Considering that more than 60% of the world’s population lives closer to this “junction of world data” Maldives has the unique characteristic that is providing this unique opportunity to become the WORLDs Data Hub.
If we step back and learn from other times when such an advantage was exploited, Singapore comes as a great example. While Singapore’s geographical location at the crossroads of important trade lines has been favorable, its pre-eminence as a global hub port has not been by chance. Strategic vision and leadership, with the courage to make bold decisions, have been vital in enabling Singapore to stay ready for the future, be a pacesetter, reap first-mover advantages, and thrive in a dynamic global industry.
This is where this article also calls out to the Maldives populace to build the same bold vision forge partnerships with the research from Microsoft, provide and promote Maldives as a strong Global Data Hub considering the above arguments and characteristics.
This has the potential of changing the fortunes of the countries young highly talented young population into the right future. I have been in the Maldives and worked there. I have interacted with the young population there and the unique characteristic that I observed was as below. The high tech talent of these young men and women is unparalleled. I have met and worked with the CEO of Dhiraagu Ismail Rasheed who was toweringly inspirational with his strong motivation of nation building and how he was instrumental in creating the first submarine cables that Maldives. I also met the young people not just from Dhiraagu but in general whose technical capability is world class. I have worked with many geographies in Asia, North America, Middle East but I found the Maldivian technocrats to be one among the best in the world. Their uniquely creative ability combined with keen no-nonsense approach to technology can be a very potent force for the nation especially in the Digital age. I also observed the strong feeling for HOME and the NATION and people do want to stay and work in the Maldives even if they could potentially become global citizens with their extreme talent.
The Governance of the country can utilize this strong talent and create a large scale new economic wave using the above direction of Making Maldives a Data Hub for the world. This will create enough scale, employment and innovation to put Maldives on the High Tech Roadmap of the world very quickly and in a measured way, in my humble opinion.
Being a strong supporter of the country due to the strong bonds I formed with dear friends when I lived and worked there, I wanted to express my ideas with all humility, and if this indeed becomes a reality I will be the person with most satisfaction. I express my sincere thanks to the MOSS for giving me the opportunity to express my thoughts here.
Pavan Kumar Malladi
Former Director of IT Dhiraagu
Present Vice President — Region Head CE at Tech Mahindra
