Cloud is making rapid inroads

Cloud architectures can benefit government to reduce duplicate efforts and increase effective utilization of resources, says Mr. Piyush Somani, MD & CEO, ESDS. In conversation with Nikita Apraj, ENN

Piyush Somani
MD & CEO, ESDS

Please brief us about the milestones in the journey of ESDS so far.
ESDS is a leading group of fastest growing IT companies based in UK, USA & India. We have indigenously developed the concept of a high-specification, carrier-neutral, and fullymanaged datacenter in Maharashtra, and has successfully turned it into reality. ESDS is focused on offering managed hosting services, managed turnkey, disaster recovery and core banking solutions. ESDS has marked its forefront on the innovation ladder through its unique offerings like eNlight Cloud Computing platform, eMagic – DC monitoring application and Cross-platform DR solution.
ESDS has also completed various e-Governance projects for turnkey datacenter solutions, commissioning networking and computing infrastructure and software solutions in different states across India. ESDS has also developed e-governance applications like ePDS software, eLokshahi – Public grievance redressal software, GIS implementation, student Academic and Profiling software for the Sarva shiksha Abhiyan and others.
The in-house Research and Development department of ESDS has successfully built its own Cloud Computing Platform which is the first intelligent cloud computing platform in the world. ESDS is ‘SAP Certified’ for its Hosting and Cloud services. ESDS got appraised as a ‘CMMI Level 3 Organisation’ for its quality standards and customer service recently.

How ESDS is helping governments to perform better?
At ESDS, we have designed end-to-end solutions to help government departments and agencies achieve efficiency, cost savings, environmental sustainability and cyber security through a suite of ICT services including application development, cloud computing, datacenter infrastructure setup and operations, business continuity and disaster recovery, data storage and computing.
We have worked closely with State Governments in areas of power, electricity, municipal corporations, and education departments and provided total turnkey solutions. Our best-in-class solutions are driving the growth of the economy and government productivity in these departments.
We offer a highly reliable and secure environment to State Government departments by employing the best and the latest technologies in our datacenter and cloud infrastructure. We offer a range of products and services to improve datacenter performance, and ensure business continuity.

What trends have you observed in data centers worldwide?
Public cloud computing has become an increasingly popular choice for IT services and is also gaining popularity among Smart Phone and Pad users. Cloud computing provides a new service consumption and delivery model inspired by Consumer Internet Services. It drives down trend will continue in 2013. IT-as-a-service (ITaaS) providers run their cloud infrastructures in datacenters, and demand for high uptime datacenter floor space increases as more service providers enter the market. 2013 will see richer ITaaS offerings at more competitive pricing levels.

ESDS Headoffice, NashikWhat new trends do you expect in this segment?
Cloud computing will ultimately be an enabler of ITaaS. Datacenters would no longer be limited to infrastructure and space providers. Customers would be inclined towards getting a one-stop solution which would comprise of all managed IT services.
Another trend would be seen in the big data analytics. 2014 will be the first year when the majority of workloads would shift to the cloud; 52 percent of all workloads will be processed in the cloud versus 48 percent in the traditional IT space.
Prevention of data from any kind of loss will become of utmost importance. Irrespective of the size of business, includ ing disaster recovery services within system will become an indispensable insurance policy of every IT system.

How cloud computing will improve functioning of government?
e-Governance with cloud computing offers integration management with automated problem resolution, manages security end-to end, and helps budget based on actual usage of data. At a global level, cloud architectures can benefit government to reduce duplicate efforts and increase effective utilization of resources. This in turn helps the government going green, reducing pollution and effective waste management.
As government requires a massive infrastructure it is important for government to use cloud computing on long term basis. Government will use the power of cloud to interconnect all state and corporate datacenters for a more effective use of available capacity in a cost effective way.


“A policy needs to be designed in order to track and measure the progress of any e-Governance initiative”


Please share with us features of some of the notable projects done by ESDS in Maharashtra government.
ePDS solution can be used for online monitoring of commodities in real-time, detection and elimination of bogus ration cards, and providing flexibility to citizens to get ration from any shop in Nashik city.
The Maharashtra State Election Commission’s website is hosted on eNlight Cloud. The 2012 Municipal Corporation Elections in Maharashtra were hit by huge amount of traffic with over 1200 connections at a given point in time. On the day of result declaration, eNlight Cloud intelligently scaled the resources up to 16 CPUs and more than 8 GB of RAM with 13 GB of Bandwidth to support 9.8 lakh hits and thus ensured 100% uptime.
SDS has built a datacenter for Maharashtra State Power Generation Company for hosting their SAP application. Hardware sizing and system architecture was designed so that each server delivers the desired SAPS at 65% server utilization.
ESDS has provided platform consulting for capacity planning & sizing of the server hardware, storage, network devices & bandwidth to various Government departments and has also implemented Datacenter infrastructure for PMC, PCMC and MSEDCL.

How do you see progress of e-governance in Maharashtra?
Multiple state departments have enhanced their online presence. e-Services applications are helping in effective interaction between the citizens and government departments. Information collected and stored needs to be processed and analyzed in order to help the government in decision-making. A policy needs to be designed in order to track and measure the progress of any e-Governance initiative. The push from the central government to give software development and hosting work to national IT companies needs to be re-thought if we want to be on par with other developing nations. Redundant corporate data centers must be needed in order to have all the system more high reliable, always available, and at least 99% survival. e-Governance must also focus on mobile apps since that is the future of ICT.

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