Mumbai: The Development Plan 2034 has placed special emphasis on shifting government data to public cloud storage, given it churns out 1.25 lakh documents per day. Most of this is being stored at at 75 centralised data centres, leading to high maintenance costs.
Nitin Kareer, Principal Secretary, Urban Development Department (UDD), said, “The maximum height for dataware houses and data centres of large and big box retailers has been fixed at six metres. This is line with the stated objective of state’s cloud policy, we want to promote these centres.”
Over the next few months, five leading cloud service providers will be empanelled, officials said, adding the policy will create a $2-billion opportunity for the industry sector. An Urban Development Department official said, “We have also worked out how much development area will be generated for data centres by increasing height. Even small centres will benefit.”
Under the Public Cloud Policy, government departments will have to shift data to a public cloud storage to make them easily accessible to the public, for a nominal fee. Departments using data storage have been asked to buy boxes. Officials said data centres will accelerate e-governance, and create an area for private investment. “It’ll bring new technology to all departments, as the government is the biggest data creator and consumer,” an official said.
