Sify to set up new State Data Centre

Arjun Raghunath

First Published : 09 Jul 2010 05:06:53 AM IST

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Sify, the Chennai-based IT giant, has bagged the contract for setting up the new State Data Centre (SDC) at Technopark.
The State Cabinet on Wednesday granted nod for a recommendation of the tender evaluation committee in this regard. It would be the second data centre of the State Government after the one set up at Co-Bank Towers here.
Sify has bagged the project for Rs 22.49 crore by sweeping aside competition from five other leading IT firms.
Reliance and HCL Infosys, which quoted Rs 24.26 crore and Rs 24.5 crore respectively, were the other front runners for the project. Other companies which competed in the bid were L&T Infotech, HCL Comnet and Prithvi Infosolutions, highly placed government sources told `Express.’
Nearly 4,000 sq ft space has been earmarked in the Thejaswini building of the Technopark for the project. Sify would be responsible for setting up the hardware and managing it for three years.
IT Principal Secretary Ajaykumar said the new SDC is expected to become functional within a year. ``As the e-governance applications of government departments keep on increasing, there is an urgent need for more data space. The existing data centre is finding it difficult to accommodate the increasing demand from various departments and hence the new one is a major leap in the state’s IT development, especially e-governance,’’ Ajaykumar said.
Kerala has the distinction of being the first state to have a data centre exclusively for the State Government’s e-governance applications. The existing data centre of the State Government started operations here in 2005. The data centres would be the backbone of the e-governance applications of the State Government. The existing data centre is currently hosting more than 100 government websites and Web Application Software.
Sources in the IT Department said that though there had been strict instructions of the Centre that all government websites should be hosted only in government-owned data centres for security reasons, it could not be implemented in the state in toto owing to unavailability of space in the existing data centre. This issue could be sorted out once the new data centre becomes operational.
Moreover, many of the critical applications of the State Government are still running without any back-up data, which is also due to the lack of space.
Once the new data centre comes up, there would be sufficient space for backing-up data. The State IT Department had even recently introduced a back-up policy to ensure proper backing-up of government data.
Meanwhile, the decision to grant the contract for the new data centre is likely to spark a fresh controversy over enabling a private firm to get access to vital information of the State Government. The recent decision to hand over the management of the existing data centre to Reliance had created a similar controversy.