India is one of the hottest growing economies in the world today, and its cloud storage industry is thriving as well. Almost every major cloud provider has a presence in India due to its robust economy and a burgeoning middle class.
In the light of such a scenario, the mandates released by the government of India is important to understand for all service providers and the companies that depend on it for their storage and computing needs.
One of the most important mandate was that all government data should be stored only within the territorial region of India, but other private and public data can be stored across one or more discrete sites in foreign countries. This mandate is in tune with what other countries have been doing and in many ways, it’s also a sensible move.
The current political environment of India and its relationship with surrounding countries also have a bearing in this decisions. For example, India and its neighbor Pakistan have been in a state of pseudo-war for the last six decades and there have been instances of terrorist attacks and infiltration bids that have made it necessary for India to protect itself.
On the other hand, it has been having a territorial dispute with China for the last few decades and recently, the visit of Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader to the disputed areas have increased tensions with China. In a nutshell, India is surrounded by issues from both its neighbors and this is becoming a cause of worry.
When government data is stored outside its borders, there’s always a possibility for it to fall in the hands of other countries, who can use it to their advantage. To prevent that from happening, the government of India has released this mandate.
Currently, many government departments rely on cloud service providers for a variety of services. This includes both foreign and homegrown companies. There are eleven companies that provide cloud services and they are Microsoft, Hewlett Packard (HP), IBM India, Tata Communication Services (TCS), Sify Technologies, CrtlS Data Centers, Barat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and Net Magic IT Services.
These companies handle some of the most complex and high traffic sites in the world such as the Indian Railways, tax submissions, form filings and more. Such high volumes of traffic Surprisingly, top names such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud are missing from this list of companies that service the government departments.
In many ways, these details released by the government throws light on many aspects. Firstly, there’s still a ton of opportunities as cloud adoption is still only in the nascent stages at the government level. Many of the state governments and local corporations have not embraced the benefits of cloud computing. Secondly, this means there’s opportunity for both big and small players in this sphere to have a bigger role in providing services. Thirdly, all this augurs well for the Indian economy as a whole.
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