Sri Lanka’s premier connectivity provider, Dialog Axiata Group, announced a joint venture partnership with Orion City to build and manage the island’s first ever High-Density Data Centre at the Orion City IT Park in Colombo.

The proposed Data Centre will be established through Digital Realty (Pvt) Ltd, a company jointly held by Dialog Broadband Network (Pvt) Limited, a fully owned subsidiary of Dialog Axiata Plc and St. Anthony’s Property Developers (Private) Limited (SAPD), a subsidiary of Orion City. The 200 rack High Density Data Centre is designed to offer world-class services to support the rapidly escalating demand for computing power in an increasingly digital Sri Lankan economy.

Promising the highest energy efficiency, and robust capacity to support up to 8 kilowatts per rack, Digital Realty’s impressive capabilities are anticipated to drastically improve connectivity and accessibility to enhanced computing power according to Orion City CEO and Digital Realty Managing Director, Jeevan Gnanam.

“The launch of Digital Realty and the impending establishment of our nation’s first, largest, and most efficient High-Density Data Centre is guaranteed to unleash a new wave of tech-enabled opportunities across the entire spectrum of local enterprises – from SMEs and tech-startups to large corporates, and especially for the banking and finance sector,” Gnanam explained.

Powered by its own team of employees and a dedicated management team, Digital Realty will offer co-location services – enabling an enterprise’s complete IT infrastructure to be hosted in the new state of the art facility, in addition to offering  dedicated servers and cloud solutions.

The joint venture is the most recent consolidation of a strong relationship between Orion City and Dialog Axiata Group.

“Today marks a true milestone for the Sri Lankan digital economy as we join together to introduce a new paradigm in technological connectivity. All around us, we see the beginnings of advanced technology creeping into every aspect of the Sri Lankan economy. With the launch of Digital Realty, Dialog is pleased to help accelerate these invaluable developments, by providing enterprises with tools and infrastructure necessary to compete in an increasingly technologically sophisticated global market place,” Dialog Axiata Group CEO, Supun Weerasinghe stated.

Digital Realty’s entire High Density Data Center will be centrally located at the Orion City IT Park in Colombo, providing a particularly valuable option for Sri Lankan enterprises seeking a convenient, cost-effective site for their primary data centers. Notably, each data rack will be individually monitored for power delivery and consumption in order to ensure that clients only pay for what they use, enabling unmatched returns on their digital investments.

Similarly, existing tenants at Orion City will also benefit tremendously from the enhanced processing capabilities present on site including the addition of plug and play cloud services for the facility. The proposed High Density Data Centre will be completed over the next 6-9 months.

About Orion: Already housing clients such as Virtusa, SriLankan Airlines, HNB, NTB, HSBC and Pearsons, Orion City is fast achieving its objective of being the most sought-after location for an IT/ITES company setting up in the South Asian region. Offering far more than basic workplace infrastructure, Orion City also handles all voice and data cabling, security and datacenter services as well as campus wide maintenance of common areas and all logistic necessities.

About Dialog Axiata Group: Dialog Axiata Group, a subsidiary of Axiata Group Berhad (Axiata), operates Sri Lanka’s Leading Quad-Play Connectivity Provider. Dialog Axiata PLC, listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange, supplements its market leading position in the Mobile Telecommunications sector with a robust footprint and market presence in Sri Lanka’s Fixed Telecommunications and Digital Television markets through its fully owned subsidiaries Dialog Broadband Networks (Private) Ltd (DBN) and Dialog Television (Private) Ltd., (DTV). Dialog Axiata Group is Sri Lanka's largest Foreign Direct Investor (FDI) with investments totaling USD 2.3 Billion.

The winner of six Global Mobile Awards, Dialog has the distinction of being voted by Sri Lankan Consumers as the Telecom Service Provider of the Year for seven years in succession at the SLIM-Nielsen People's Choice Awards. Dialog was also voted by Sri Lankan consumers as the Internet Service Provider of the Year for six years consecutively, and has topped Sri Lanka’s Corporate Accountability rankings for the past eight years in succession, and is an ISO 9001 certified company. The Company has received numerous local and international awards including the National Quality Award and Sri Lanka Business Excellence Award.

Dialog has been at the forefront of innovation in the mobile industry in Sri Lanka since the late 90’s, propelling the nation’s mobile telephony infrastructure to a level of advancement on par with the developed world. The company delivers advanced mobile telephony and high speed mobile broadband services to a subscriber base in excess of 11.8 Million Sri Lankans, via 2.5G and 3G/3.5G and 4G/4.5G networks.

Photo captions: (Above - from left) Jeevan Gnanam - CEO, Orion City & Managing Director, Digital Realty A. S. G. Gnanam - Chairman, Orion City, Supun Weerasinghe - Director / Group Chief Executive, Dialog Axiata Group, and Jeremy Huxtable - Group Chief Officer, Dialog Enterprise and (below) representatives from both Dialog Axiata Group and Orion City