The youth of the nation has its finger on the mouse of computers and is changing the world. India has made tremendous strides in its evolution from being called a land of snake charmers to now being called the land of mouse charmers!  This is what the Prime Minister Narendra Modi had to say in one of the numerous foreign trips he has undertaken since becoming the prime minister of the country. The speech emphasises the growing power of the country in IT services as well as the need for the people to embrace digital revolution whole heartedly. 

India has over three hundred million internet users (third largest in the world), and is aspiring for more. The availability of cheap but efficient internet enabled hand-held devices like tablets and smart phones along with accessibility to fast speed data is going to lend further momentum to Internet growth in India.  The digital infrastructure development will have to keep pace with the growing number of internet users to cater efficiently to their needs. A large chunk of population is going online and the Government too is interested in digitalization trying to take as many services as possible online.  This is a step in the right direction, but strong emphasis on embracing digital technology is placing a lot of additional burden on sectors like telecom, banking, law, transport, railways and other Government agencies. This warrants the need for Government run bodies to upgrade their data centres so that it can efficiently cope up with the huge demand and workload being placed on it.

The Challenges of Catering to a Billion Needs

While private players have a functioning structure that enables them to quickly respond to market situation, the Government machinery is structured in a different way. This is the reason we see the private players quickly acquire and deploy sophisticated technologies; the Government bodies are slow to respond to the change owing to their style of functioning.  Also, unlike private players the Government has to cater to the demands of a huge population that makes scaling quickly a rather cumbersome task. Also, the Government’s monopoly in sectors like law, railways, land reforms, etc ensures that it has to shoulder the entire load.

We just need to go back a couple of years in history when the limitation of Government IT infrastructure was severely tasted and exposed.  Air India announced a plan to offer tickets for as low as Rs 100 for a limited period. The server crashed due to the huge number of people who visited the website to book their ticket. In June 2014, Delhi University’s website crashed unable to take the heavy load of admission seekers leading to widespread chaos and protests.  Scaling up the infrastructure to meet additional demand does not make much business sense as they will be lying unutilised for the major part of the year. Also, server maintenance is expensive and the hardware tends to become obsolete quickly in a dynamic technological environment. It is a Catch-22 situation as not scaling up also causes a lot of disorder and criticism during peak usage time.

Outsourcing Could be the Real Panacea

As data centres grow in complexity and scale, managing and maintaining them is increasingly becoming an expensive proposition. Also, Government agencies are somewhat less equipped than private bodies to carry out the rigorous tasks of space, power, cooling, security, storage, etc. that a typical data centre needs.  Under these circumstances, it makes acute business sense for organizations to store their server and related hardware in third party data centres.  It allows firms to run their IT infrastructure without any hassles and interruptions in well-maintained and sophisticated  data centre of third party vendors. This enhances performance and reliability without enabling the organizations to save big on their capital expenditures (CAPEX).

This process of hiring space in third party data centres to store your servers and other hardware equipment is known as colocation or colo.  Colocation is fast gaining acceptance with both small and large firms as it gives them the opportunity to run their servers with greater efficiency in a sophisticated and secure environment at fairly competitive prices.

Some of the Ways in Which Government Organizations Can Benefit From Colocation Services are as Following:

Better Reliability

Colocation offers Government bodies reliable power, bandwidth, network reliability and security among other things they might find difficult to achieve in their own data centres.

Better Efficiency

Third party data centres have expert professionals who can take good care of Government’s IT assets.

Improved Scalability

Colocation offers quick and cost efficient scalability capacities to organizations as additional IT assets can be quickly added and deployed to meet the additional demand.

Comprehensive Security

Colocation providers of repute offer Government servers enterprise grade security.  CCTVs, biometric sensors, well-trained guards, restricted access, wired fences, etc. are some of the measures employed to protect your sensitive data from falling into wrong hands.