☁️ India Getting Its Own Cloud?
Data is the new oil and India is finally realising this. It wants to keep this oil supply tightly under its own control. Here's how it is going about this.
Data is the lifeblood of this digital economy.
And with the world getting more and more digital every day, data is getting more and more precious.
How precious, you ask?
The global big data and business analytics industry is growing at a CAGR of 13.5%, set to be worth $684.12 billion by 2030.
So, India is planning to create its very own National Government Cloud to store this data. But why do we need this cloud?
🤨 Why We Need Our Own Cloud
Right now, a lot of our data is stored on clouds of companies like Amazon, Google, Azure etc.
Yes, including confidential information like the details about our army.
Now, while these Big Tech companies cannot really use this data for their purposes, it can always be hacked.
What's more, storing data with foreign companies could give their parent countries an unnecessary advantage over us.
Some foreign governments could even try to snoop in on our data.
So, we have decided that we need to store our data in our systems in our own country.
Enter: our very own Cloud system.
But don't we already have something like that in place?
Well, yes. We have MeghRaj (kudos to whoever named this project), which is a national cloud initiative.
But its focus is more on connecting state governments with other PSUs and allowing them to launch and scale e-services.
For instance, 1,095 hospitals across India have joined an e-hospital platform hosted on MeghRaj. This will serve as a one-stop platform where doctors, patients and other hospital administration can all access patient information and stay connected digitally, making it easier to give patients the right treatment on time.
The new cloud initiative focuses more on controlling the storage of data.
You see, even though the National Informatics Centre controls the MeghRaj and its operations, sometimes this cloud data is also routed to and through actual physical servers. Now, most of these servers do not belong to the government and put us at risk of data leakage.
So, under the new National Government Cloud initiative, we will also be building a network of hyperscale data centres.
These data centres are physical locations that process and store data.
Now, the government is looking for an agency to create a detailed project plan for this whole venture. And after that, it will look for companies who can help turn this dream into reality.
There are lots of contenders for the project right now like TCS, Wipro, or even PWC and KPMG who will be handling the project management side of things. But no private player will get the whole contract. The development of these data centres will be done through a public-private partnership.
Sounds great, no? Finally, we will be storing and processing our own data.
Well, this is bad news for Big Tech companies.
🧐 What This Means for Big Tech
The Indian government building its own data centres doesn't just mean loss of business for Big Tech companies. It also means that India is moving steadily towards data localisation.
You see, India was planning on launching a data privatisation bill to regulate how data is stored.
One of the propositions of the bill was that Big Tech companies need to store data from Indian customers in India itself (data localisation).
Big Tech was against this because they would have to build multiple data centres in India, a move that would increase expenses.
For the time being, the bill has been scrapped and a new one is being drafted.
But this move shows that new bill or old, data localisation is still going to be an important theme for India.
And, why not?
Several countries have created similar laws to protect Big Tech from preying on sensitive data.
India is lagging behind in this space. It is high time we buck up and take control of our own data.
But this could have a few drawbacks. You see, some time ago the government itself was mulling whether it should take control of our data and become its primary seller (you can read all about it here). This could be pretty dangerous for us.
In fact, the whole way data is being handled is a little scary. Every time you are on the internet you are giving away details about your life to strangers who use it to sell something or the other to you.
There is no way it is going to stop. Because Big Tech or the government will always find a loophole. So, should the government create a system where we are paid to give our data?
⚡In a line: India is finally working on storing its sensitive data within its borders and this could be a big blow to Big Tech.
💡Quick question: How much would you want the government to pay you for getting access to all your data?
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