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This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on October 19, 2020 - October 25, 2020

With a proven track record in managing IT infrastructure like Data Centres for largely international Financial Institutions, Basis Bay is helping enterprises move forward in a fast-changing world. 

The dawn of the internet has drastically changed the landscape of trade and business across the globe. From making communication faster to increasing processing speeds, the digital era has brought us into a highly connected world. The internet has exponentially expanded over the years and, in doing so, it has elevated the importance of data centres as well as cloud computing.

Today, data is used in business as well as in our daily lives. The online marketplace, e-commerce, the use of smartphones, the popularity of social media and the rise of the digital economy have led to a significant growth in — as well as the importance of — data usage and storage.

With this increasing reliance, data centres and cloud computing have become vital components in the global economy. They are also critical for modern enterprises to function and remain competitive. Basis Bay, a leading provider of sustainable cloud and IT infrastructure services, has been the regional leader in providing customers with game-changing data centre solutions.

Strong digital infrastructure

Established in 1995, Basis Bay is a leader in the premium enterprise IT space, servicing more than 300 clients in the global financial services space as well as multinationals. In the last 25 years, the company has expanded its presence in more than 50 locations across 22 countries throughout Asia-Pacific and Europe.

The growth of Basis Bay is not only a direct result of the growth of the internet and the digital expansion across industries — including finance, education, telecommunications and consulting — but also its well-placed infrastructure.

With data centres now increasingly critical for enterprise businesses, the company has established itself as a market leader in this important segment with its range of high-quality hosting solutions and services, including data centre services and cloud-based solutions.

Building blocks of success

With governments around the world pushing for cloud adoption by championing “Go Digital” campaigns (such as smart-city projects and data exchange hubs) and businesses across the globe accelerating their digital transformation programmes, the need for data centre services will undoubtedly rise.

Basis Bay recognises this demand as well as the insatiable need for data centre capacity, especially in today’s environment, as institutions and companies look to move from their own server rooms to data centres with sufficient redundancies. Fuelled by data sovereignty concerns, availability and reliability, there has been an increase in requirements for data centres to be “in country”, which has seen the need for home-grown data centres, such as the ones Basis Bay operates.

According to the CBRE 2020 Asia Pacific Investor Intentions Survey, 30% of investors in the region said they were prepared to purchase data centres this year. Demand for Asia-Pacific data centres is expected to increase, no doubt boosted by the current health crisis.

Dato’ Praba Thiagarajah, Group CEO and Founder, Basis Bay

Fortuitously, Basis Bay has built a strong IT infrastructure for customers to leverage, and it is backed by strong hosting capabilities, robust security and a suite of managed digital services. 

“Where do we see the biggest advancement in the data centre business? There is a critical need for all enterprise businesses, especially large entities who rely on quality tech infrastructure, to focus on their core business while ensuring high availability and agility of their offerings. There are a number of advancements including developments in machine learning, big data, data analytics, server virtualization and more. But I believe the next generation of data centres will emphasise cloud migration and services, customised co-location and managed services”, said Dato Praba Thiagarajah, Group CEO and founder of the Basis Bay Group. 

Secure and flexible

The digital shift has also resulted, however, in increased regulation and higher compliance standards among companies, and especially among financial institutions such as central banks and regulatory bodies. Security is always a critical concern for enterprises everywhere and Basis Bay takes this very seriously. Due to the fact that data centres hold sensitive or proprietary information, it is critical that sites are both digitally and physically secured. 

For this reason, Basis Bay has a wide range of security solutions in place including Data Loss Prevention (DLP) to secure data at rest and in motion. They also continue to build capabilities internally and in partnership to address these issues.

Physical access to these facilities is limited to authorised personnel, with multi-point authentication requirements such as biometric readers and personal passcodes. Each data centre is subject to real-time monitoring to further protect the data centre from external threats or attacks.

In addition, Basis Bay’s co-location data centres have become an enticing hosting option for many businesses of different sizes. This is especially attractive for small but mission-critical businesses because they can obtain the much-needed features of a large IT department but without any capital investment. Fintech and mid-sized businesses can expand their infrastructure without having to build or lease a premium data centre.

Co-location essentially allows you to store your equipment in a secure data centre, with the rest of the infrastructure supplied by the service provider. This access allows businesses better connectivity with fully redundant network connections, round-the-clock support, improved network security, redundant power supply as well as the ability to grow. It also provides a smooth transition to moving to the cloud in the future.

Ahead of the curve

As the digital era continues to evolve, Basis Bay remains at the forefront of the data solutions and IT infrastructure services segment in the region. The advancements of digitalisation such as machine learning, big data, data analytics, artificial intelligence, server virtualisation and cloud services have propelled the company to embark on its next transformative journey, which it calls Basis Bay 2.0.

While sustainability continues to remain a core focus of all their solution offerings, Basis Bay’s next evolutionary step will see their transformation initiative drive even more agility to assist enterprise customers and renewed investment in the critical talent needed to keep the company moving forward.

In 2009, the company celebrated the twin launch of their green data centres in Cyberjaya (Asia’s first green data centre) and Glenmarie. (Note that building and operating green data centres definitely have reduced OPEX and do not necessarily have higher CAPEX). In 2011, Basis Bay launched its sustainability efforts in Malaysia, Singapore and the Netherlands. Its continued sustainability push will see the opening of a new green data centre in Cyberjaya scheduled for 2021, with plans for similar facilities to be opened in the Northern Corridor and Iskandar Malaysia within the next few years.  

Basis Bay has made sustainability and efficiency the core principles of green data centre design. Taking a practical and holistic approach to balance the social, economic and environmental considerations, the company has ensured maximum and efficient use of mechanical and electrical power with minimal impact on the environment.

Basis Bay continues to reduce its carbon footprint with its sustainable cloud solutions. It provides a comprehensive set of cloud services such as metal-as-a-service (MaaS), infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), backup as a service (BaaS) and disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) solutions.

As a result of the multi-platform capabilities, the company is able to provide comprehensive private and hybrid cloud solutions. They include multi-platforms ranging from x86 all the way to proprietary platforms such as IBM Power Systems, Oracle/Sun, HPE and EMC including the iSeries and zSeries.

From a technological perspective, this allows for speedy adaptability and scalability critical for a dynamic business. From an economical perspective, customers can focus on their core business, achieve a shorter time to market for their products and enjoy savings from the technologies applied.

While the company has been supporting multinationals and the financial services industry for a very long time, there has been growing interest in data centre services from government agencies as well as from multinationals across industries.  These initiatives above will not only enable Basis Bay to meet increased demand for such services but ensure they remain a regional leader in data centre and IT infrastructure and cloud solutions.

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