Rajasthan bets big on digital again; launches India’s biggest data centre in Jaipur

After launching RajMegh - free cloud services for businesses - and subsequently Bhamashah Techno Hub, which is the country's biggest incubation centre, earlier this year, the State Government of Rajasthan is outdoing itself with the launch of India’s largest data centre – Bhamashah State Data Centre (BSDC).

Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje inaugurated the Bhamashah State Data Centre on October 6, 2018, in the presence of a host of government officials, including Akhil Arora, Principal Secretary, Information Technology and Communication, Department of Rajasthan (DoIT&C).

With a 25,000 sq ft server farm area, the eight-storied Bhamashah State Data Centre has 600 rack space capacity and will provide common IT infrastructure to host new e-Governance initiatives and facilitate web-enabled 24x7 access. The Bhamashah State Data Centre project was completed in a record time of six months after the Chief Minister laid the foundation stone on Rajasthan IT Day in March 2018.

Conceptualised and developed by the Department of Information Technology & Communication, Government of Rajasthan, the Bhamashah State Data Centre is India’s biggest and most advanced government owned, operated, controlled and managed data centre.

To top it all, it is said to be the most secure data centre in the country, and the only Tier 4 Data Centre in the government space in India that is Uptime certified. It has been integrated with automatic asset management using RF code technology, fire hazard automation systems, and high-tech physical security. Another interesting feature is that Bhamashah State Data Centre a completely green data centre, certified by Green Building Rating Systems.

Built with globally certified IT infrastructure, Bhamashah State Data Centre will play a key role in boosting the digital development of Rajasthan and the country. Through the data centre, the state government will offer numerous IT services and infrastructure to other state governments, union departments, PSUs, corporations and private organisations. In addition, startups part of the iStart programme will be eligible to avail the facilities free of cost.

E-governance pioneer

The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) has identified multiple mission mode projects along with various e-Governance initiatives at the state level to provide better digital services, and State Data Centres have been identified as one of the three infrastructure pillars to facilitate web-enabled anytime, anywhere access. State Data Centres have been conceptualised to provide a common enabling infrastructure to the state’s e-governance numerous e-governance initiatives.

While Rajasthan established a Data Centre way back in 2004-05 following the guidelines of DeitY and NeGP, another Data Centre was established in the year 2011 to scale up the capacity of the existing Data Centre.

With the Government of Rajasthan going big on driving digital services, there was a need for a dedicated and world-class infrastructure and the BSDC was conceptualised to meet this very objective while also enabling ease of integration and efficient management of the increasing line up of G2G, G2C and G2B e-services.

BSDC will be the third government-owned-and-managed data centre in Rajasthan, and the three data centres will together contribute to Rajasthan’s digital journey.