To match data surge, NIC rolls out first data centre in East India

Set up at a cost of Rs 200 crore; IT services backbone to add 800 people to its current staff of 4,500 over the next year.

Server racks at the Bhubaneswar data centre. (Photo: Pranav Mukul)

Expecting a significant growth in data capacity required to offer various government services, the National Informatics Centre (NIC) Monday launched its fourth National Data Centre in Bhubaneswar — its first one in the eastern region — in addition to the ones in Delhi, Pune and Hyderabad. The Bhubaneswar centre has been set up at a cost of Rs 200 crore.

On a query by The Indian Express about the need for a fourth data centre, Neeta Verma, director general, NIC said: “Our existing data centres are running at 70-80 per cent capacity whereas new services are continuously being added. Therefore demand for compute storage has grown manifold. This is a national data centre but will also cater to the demand of state and district department projects.” She added that with a capacity of 275 server racks, the Bhubaneswar unit will be NIC’s second largest data centre after Delhi with 500 racks and ahead of Hyderabad and Pune with 200 and 144, respectively. A data center rack is physical cabinet designed to house servers and other components such as networking components, cooling systems, etc.

Giving an example of how the new data centre would help mitigate event-based capacity constraints that are faced by NIC, Verma said that the organisation expects lower instances of down time during events such as exam results. She added that various time-sensitive services such as e-way bill generation — which sees maximum load during 4-9 PM — and e-hospitals will be improved with the additional capacity.

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When asked the reason behind NIC’s decision to open the Bhubaneswar data centre, Verma pointed out that the organisation already has a large real estate presence in the Odisha capital city, where it operates services for the state government, and that setting up a data centre here would limit the expenses required.

Further, the Bhubaneswar data centre will be NIC’s first with cloud computing capabilities allowing central, state and district government departments to access computing storage remotely without having to set up co-location facilities that requires investments as need for storage rises. It will not only allow the departments to access the server facilities on-demand but also in a shorter time than it would need for physically setting up server infrastructure at their facilities.

Verma said that to meet the human resource requirements to deal with the growing need for data hosting and computing services provided by NIC, the government’s IT services backbone will hire 800 people over the next one year adding to its current staff strength of 4,500. Of the 800 people set to be hired by NIC, 355 will be employed particularly in various cybersecurity functions. NIC, which manages 90 per cent of the government’s web presence, is in discussions with major global cybersecurity companies to train these professionals.

While the NIC-operated data centres are only meant for captive use by the government and its departments, India is witnessing a growth in data centre requirements even from the private sector.According to a report by technology research firm Gartner earlier this month, India’s data centre infrastructure enterprise spending is expected to reach $2.7 billion in 2018, 2.6 per cent higher from 2017. Further, enterprise spending on data centre infrastructure software is seen rising to $3.6 billion in 2018, a year-on-year growth of 10 per cent.