Soon many more government to citizen and government business services will be delivered via the internet. Department of information technology (DeitY) is planning to set up a national cloud based network that will connects all state data centres which would make that the backbone of national e-Governance plan.
In effect, each of the 28 states and 7 union territories will now have a private cloud of their own. DeitY has invited proposals from IT companies like HP, IBM, Cisco and Dell to set up and maintain private clouds in each state. The move may cost the Centre less than Rs 100 crore, and will help the exchequer prevent wastage of money on duplication of resources.
State Data Centres built at a cost of Rs 4-5 crore each, are operational in about 16 states, with the rest lagging behind. UP, Punjab, Assam, Mizoram, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh are laggards, even as all states in the South have fully functional data centres, provisioning many public services online.
The move will save taxpayer’s money and time, as IT resources like servers and storage will be shared amongst departments, and also provide elasticity and on demand services. A draft tender put out by the DeitY last month said, “SDC will now be operated as a Private Cloud for each State and will be managed by a third party.”
