Zoho Corporation Unveils Nathu La, a Designed-in-House Server, in a Move Towards Technological Sovereignty and Inference Cost Reduction

The server reduces the total cost of ownership by 20-30% and power consumption by 12-18% AUSTIN, Texas–(BUSINESS WIRE)–#AI —Zoho Corporation , a global technology company and parent company of Zoho and ManageEngine , today announced the launch of Nathu La, a designed in-house server and a pivotal step in the company’s journey toward building its full technology stack, from the hardware layer to the software applications. With Nathu La, Zoho has achieved equivalent performance with 12-18% lower power consumption and 20-30% lower total cost of ownership (TCO), and in turn, bringing down inference cost. The Nathu La server, comprising Intel® Xeon® 6 processors, was developed collaboratively with Intel, leveraging their enablement capabilities and technical expertise. “Zoho Corporation has invested in building its own technology stack from the ground up over the last three decades. The Nathu La server launch is in line with that goal,” said Shailesh Davey, CEO of Zoho Corporation. “With Zoho’s strategy of using contextual, right-sized models, running on our own platform, now on our own servers, accelerated by our own GPU database, we are compounding the benefits accrued from owning and operating our entire technology stack. These long-term R&D investments we are making at every layer of the stack are aimed at delivering customer value and ensuring that our solutions are more sustainable and accessible for businesses than the competition.” Building the full technology stack The design philosophy behind Nathu La is rooted in the Open Compute Project (OCP), emphasizing modularity, thermal efficiency, and ease of maintenance, and enabling Zoho’s data centers to significantly reduce total cost of ownership and power consumption. Zoho plans to host its applications on the Nathu La server platform, enabling the company to optimize the full software-hardware stack for its specific workloads, reduce cost, improve performance, and strengthen data governance for its global customers. This will also help in bringing down inference cost for Zoho’s AI usage. Developed with homegrown hardware engineering talent India’s digital infrastructure is expanding at an unprecedented pace. Yet, the server technology underpinning that infrastructure has historically been sourced from abroad, with Indian enterprises paying royalties and licensing fees to foreign entities. Zoho Corp. is one of the few technology companies to have designed a homegrown server platform—with all intellectual property owned in India. In 2020, Zoho had set up a small team in Nagpur to work on R&D projects such as designing a server. Members of the Nathu La R&D team include new hires from SETU —short for Student’s Engagement for Transformative Upskilling—an initiative designed to build a pipeline of industry-ready engineers from colleges across Central India, with a focus on advanced learning in Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM). The initiative directly confronts a growing concern in technical education: the erosion of foundational skills in an era of AI-assisted learning. By placing hands-on innovation and first-principles problem solving at the center of the curriculum, SETU is designed to rebuild the research depth, critical thinking, creativity and applied engineering knowledge that surface-level AI usage tends to weaken. So far, over 300 students have been trained through this program, some of whom have been placed with Zoho. “The development of the Nathu La server reflects our commitment to creating complex technology powered by talent from smaller towns and villages,” added Davey. Through focused investments in R&D and skill development, this foray into hardware enables us not only to build and own the technology, but also to cultivate the expertise and talent behind it.” What’s Inside The Nathu La server motherboard and chassis platform is the result of five years of R&D across hardware, firmware, and systems management. Based on Intel® Xeon® 6 Processors, the server is designed to optimize performance for virtualization (VM), High Performance Computing (HPC), AI inference, and storage applications. This results in improved performance of Zoho apps for end users. The server has customized power delivery subsystems, an in-house DC-SCM (Data Centre Secure Control Module) design, and modular chassis options compatible with diverse end-user environments, offering flexibility across deployment types. All modular components—including the DC-SCM and NIC (Network Interface Card) — designed in-house by Zoho’s hardware engineering team and assembled by Indian Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS) partners, ensuring end-to-end domestic value addition. Over five patents have been filed covering cutting-edge thermal management and cost-optimised server architecture designs. Moving Towards Technological Sovereignty Nathu La is engineered with hardware-rooted security at every layer of the stack. The platform’s entirely indigenous IP means there is no dependency on foreign entities for security audits, firmware updates, or licensing continuity. The solution is also fully aligned with the Open Source Software (OSS) policy and the highest Local Content Policy (total values that is sourced in India), ensuring maximum value addition within the country for government procurement. The solution further supports government initiatives such as Make in India, Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyaan, and NSM (National Supercomputing Mission), strengthening India’s capability in high-performance computing and sovereign digital infrastructure. Disclaimer All trademarks, product names, and company names cited herein are the property of their respective owners. Zoho Privacy Pledge Zoho respects user privacy and does not have an ad-revenue model in any part of its business, including its free products. The company owns and operates its data centers, ensuring complete oversight of customer data, privacy, and security. More than 130 million users around the world, across hundreds of thousands of companies, rely on Zoho everyday to run their businesses, including Zoho itself. For more information, visit https://www.zoho.com/privacy-commitment.html . About Zoho Corporation With 55+ apps in nearly every major business category, Zoho Corporation is one of the world’s most prolific technology companies. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, with international headquarters in Chennai, India, Zoho is privately held and profitable with 90+ offices worldwide. For more information, please visit: www.zoho.com . Contacts Media Contact Sam Wunderl sam.wunderl@zohocorp.com Der Beitrag Zoho Corporation Unveils Nathu La, a Designed-in-House Server, in a Move Towards Technological Sovereignty and Inference Cost Reduction erschien zuerst auf subcablenews.com .