Zoho unveils India-designed Nathu La server, deepens push to own AI and cloud infrastructure stack

Zoho Corporation, known for its subsidiaries ManageEngine and Zoho, has introduced Nathu La, a server platform designed entirely in India. This move signifies the company's ambition to take control over its entire technological ecosystem, which encompasses hardware, data centers, software applications, and artificial intelligence models. Developed over five years by Zoho's engineering team based in Nagpur, the Nathu La server achieves performance levels comparable to existing solutions while consuming 12-18% less energy and cutting total cost of ownership (TCO) by 20-30%. Utilizing Intel Xeon 6 processors, this groundbreaking platform was created in conjunction with Intel and is currently being integrated into Zoho's own infrastructure. As India rapidly expands its digital infrastructure, much of the foundational server technology remains reliant on imports from global vendors. Ramprakash Ramamoorthy, Director of AI Research at Zoho and ManageEngine, stated that the launch of Nathu La represents a step toward technological sovereignty. He emphasized the importance of owning the design, firmware, and systems engineering aspects of their infrastructure, despite continuing to import key components like the Intel Xeon 6 platform. The company has made significant strides in developing server architecture, firmware, systems management software, and power delivery systems in-house. "The base chip may be imported, but our extensive design expertise adds considerable value," remarked Ramamoorthy. Shailesh Davey, CEO of Zoho Corp, expressed pride in creating a server system genuinely developed in India, highlighting the initiative as a way to foster technology driven by talent from smaller towns and villages. Nathu La's design is tailored for various workloads, including virtualization, high-performance computing, AI inference, and storage applications. All modular components, from the Data Centre Secure Control Module (DC-SCM) to the Network Interface Card (NIC), have been engineered internally and assembled with the help of Indian EMS partners. Zoho has filed over five patents related to thermal management and cost-effective server architecture. Unlike traditional server manufacturers, Zoho does not aim to sell Nathu La as a commercial product. Instead, the company is using the platform internally, with around 1,000 servers already deployed across its Indian data centers. With 20 data centers globally, Zoho intends to gradually extend the deployment of Nathu La to accommodate more workloads, while still maintaining global OEM servers alongside its own. Ramamoorthy noted, "We specifically designed this server for our unique use cases, allowing us to fine-tune its capabilities." The server initiative is intricately linked to Zoho's AI strategy, as the company plans to host its applications and AI workloads on Nathu La. This integration aims to enhance the synergy between hardware, software, and data centers while significantly reducing inference costs. As AI technology progresses, inference costs are surging. By employing contextual and appropriately sized models on its proprietary platform, Zoho is maximizing the benefits derived from owning and operating its complete technology stack. Additionally, Zoho’s in-house large language model, ZLLM, is now fully integrated across its product offerings, with ongoing development of both 32-billion and 100-billion parameter models. Over 85% of Zoho's customers prefer utilizing the company’s bundled AI features rather than relying on external models. The Nathu La project emerged from Zoho's Nagpur facility and was supported by SETU, a program focused on Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) that has trained over 300 engineering students in Central India, some of whom contributed to the server's development. Looking forward, Zoho envisions potential opportunities beyond internal use. Ramamoorthy mentioned that a sensible next step could involve offering servers preloaded with Zoho software to enterprise and government clients, although no specific timeline has been set for such plans.