Maharashtra Government Approves Relocation of State Data Centre to BSNL's Mumbai Facility

The Maharashtra government has taken a significant step towards improving the state's IT infrastructure by granting administrative approval to relocate the Maharashtra State Data Centre (MH-SDC) to Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited's (BSNL) Fort Data Centre in Mumbai. This decision was made in line with the approval accorded at a meeting of the Information Technology High Power Committee held on January 9, chaired by the Chief Secretary.

A Government Resolution (GR) issued by the General Administration Department highlighted the necessity of this move. The existing data centre, which has been operational for over 12 years, lacks an independent Disaster Recovery centre, increasing the vulnerability of critical government systems. Key IT, network, security, power supply, and cooling infrastructure at the current facility have reached their End-of-Life and End-of-Support stages, posing significant operational, security, and business continuity risks.

The MH-SDC hosts mission-critical applications, portals, databases, and services for various state government departments. Rajesh Aggarwal, the chief secretary of the state, informed PTI that a similar data centre will commence operations in Nagpur within the next three to four months. This new data centre will boost the state's data hosting capacity by at least 30 per cent and increase the speed of government websites.

Aggarwal explained that the current government websites sometimes run slow due to heavy traffic and relatively slow servers. With the enhanced capacity of the new data centres, these sites will run faster, especially for data feeding from departments like revenue. Enhanced capacity also benefits the state administration in running analytics for policy purposes.

During his tenure as the principal secretary of the IT department, Aggarwal was instrumental in setting up the state's data centre in Mumbai. According to the GR, the one-time set-up cost for the new facility will be ₹36 lakh, while the annual recurring rent has been fixed at ₹5.8 crore per year for a minimum contract period of five years.

BSNL will provide secure cage co-location space along with power supply, cooling, and related physical infrastructure at its Fort Data Centre. The procurement, installation, operation, and management of servers, storage, network equipment, software, and licences will remain the responsibility of the Directorate of Information Technology, Mumbai.

The government has also approved an expenditure of up to ₹3 crore for interim hosting if required during the relocation process. The interim hosting will be undertaken through an empanelled service provider, Webworks, via Maha-IT.