ITI expands data centre business as local storage norms kick in

ITI Ltd, a state-owned maker of telecommunications equipment, said it is adding a new data centre of 200 racks in Naini (near Allahabad) and expanding its Bengaluru data centre by 1,000 racks. A data centre rack is a steel and electronic framework that houses servers, networking devices, cables and other computing equipment.

The announcement comes after government entities were asked to set up IT infrastructure, especially cloud, and were asked to store data within the country. Others who have been asked to store data within the country are: App makers dealing with information related to Indian users, banks, digital wallets, and prepaid payment instruments such as ItzCash Card.

The new infrastructure will enable public sector banks, central and state government undertakings, multinational companies, and large enterprises to store their data within the country, said S Gopu, chairman and managing director of ITI.   

The expansion will give enterprises in the government and corporate sectors an opportunity to serve their customers and end-users better and enable government firms to compete well with private players, ITI said.

ITI’s ramp-up will help cut down latency and improve performance, resulting in increased customer satisfaction and lower cost of infrastructure ownership, Gopu said.

Further, the site at Naini has been designed to provide a wide range of offerings that includes managed co-location services as well as managed dedicated services and cloud services, Gopu added.

In a managed co-location service, the company will offer physical infrastructure including power, necessary cooling as well as state-of-the-art fire detection and suppression systems, Gopu said.

Under the managed dedicated service, the chairman and managing director said the company would provide the server with hardware and software resources on a leased model, along with a suite of value-added services to take care of complex computational requirements. Cloud services will provide scalable storage and related services, he added.

There are several layers of security built up for the data centre, like physical security, biometric authentication, caging and logical security, all of which meet international standards like ISO 9001, 20000 and 27001,” said K Alagesan, director of production and human resources.