Govt says India’s cloud data centre capacity may grow 4–5 fold by 2030

New Delhi, Dec 12:  Cloud data centre capacity in India has reached approximately 1,280 MW, largely serving critical sectors such as banking, power and other critical public infrastructure and according to industry estimates, it will grow by 4-5 times by 2030, the Parliament was informed on Friday.

The expansion of data centres in the country is being propelled by the growing digitalisation and rapid adoption of AI across both government and private sectors, accompanied by the increasing adoption of cloud services, said Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT, Jitin Prasada, in Rajya Sabha.

Global technology companies are already investing significantly in India’s AI and data centre ecosystem.

Google has announced a $15 billion AI Hub in Visakhapatnam, its largest investment in India, while Amazon Web Services (AWS) is setting up a $8.3 billion data centre in Maharashtra.

The minister also stated that India is building a secure, scalable and AI-ready cloud infrastructure to support digital governance, private sector collaboration and citizen empowerment.

“The growing demand for cloud services across Government, private and social sectors is driven by the country’s digital transformation and increasing use of AI-enabled applications,” he mentioned.

To meet the cloud requirements of the government, a national cloud infrastructure has been established under the Digital India initiative.

The “GI Cloud”, known as MeghRaj, provides secure, scalable and elastic cloud facilities for delivery of e-Governance services.

The salient features of the “GI Cloud-MeghRaj” include elasticity, scalability, pay per use metering, self service provisioning, rapid deployment of applications, on demand service provisioning, etc, said the minister.

National Informatics Centre (NIC) offers the cloud services to various Ministries/Departments. As on date, 2,170 Ministries/Departments have hosted their cloud-based applications on ‘MeghRaj’.

The minister further stated that the National Data Centres deliver cloud services to government departments and are designed to safeguard the cloud services from potential threats by implementing a layered security framework comprising established practices, and procedures.

--IANS