India, through digital transformation, is steadily marching towards a trillion-dollar economy by 2025. As governments across the globe embrace digitalisation, several governmental processes have incorporated technology into their operations to facilitate e-governance services to citizens. Source

E-governance is the usage of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) by the government to improve the quality of services offered to citizens. Some of the most prominent G2C e-governance initiatives include Aadhaar, DigiLocker, e-Seva, Digi Dhan, and Apps like Umang.

G2B initiatives include e-Procurement and MCA 21, along with services catering to the G2G segment which consists of SmartGov and the Khajane Project. These e-governance platforms are generating vast amounts of data that not only need to be stored but also accessed on-demand, transferred and analysed within government departments when necessary.

According to IDC, the sum of the world’s data will grow from 33 zettabytes (ZB) in 2018 to a gargantuan 175 ZB by 2025. As the volume and sensitivity of data increase, there is a huge need for e-governance services to adapt holistic information through agile data centers that can deliver reliable, innovative and cost-effective solutions. Source

Data centers, therefore, form the critical core of any e-governance system

Growing Demand for E-Governance Data Center Players in India

In an interview with Express Computer, Sanjay Motwani, Vice President, Asia Pacific, Raritan – a brand of Legrand spoke about the massive opportunities for the Indian data center market. This includes providing an IT infrastructure model that can deliver reliable, innovative and cost-effective solutions to businesses in time. According to Mr. Motwani, India is facing a surge in demand for the transformation of its first-generation e-governance services that harness the power of newer technologies such as Cloud, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) and Analytics.

Another huge contributing factor for the growth of these data center players is due to India being the second-largest smartphone user globally; with a growing number of subscribers of e-governance services. In August 2019, nearly 5 million people filed their tax returns online; a record for any single day. Source

Elements of an Agile E-Governance Data Center

Given the criticality associated with e-governance data, modern data centers should be capable of withstanding major natural disasters, such as floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, and extreme climate change.  

To ensure agility all year round, the technology, hardware and physical infrastructure, including servers, racks, storage devices, network switches, power distribution units (PDUs), computer room air conditioners and HVAC systems need to facilitate business continuity by allowing a high degree of disaster recovery. 

The systems should also offer visibility into network and application traffic, utmost security, quality of service (QoS) as promised and a high level of performance along with uninterrupted access to users.

These data centers also need to focus on power management, cooling, airflow and other parameters which are essential to offer seamless services. To ensure this, the infrastructure must be agile, smart and energy-efficient. 

Smart, Edge Data Centers

Smart data centers can assist e-governance services to become more agile and responsive while combining best practices, predictive analytics and IT automation. These virtual machines tap into the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics to achieve positive operational outcomes, optimise cooling and overall data center efficiency, thereby maximising customer experience while lowering risk and IT costs.

Moreover, as smart cities unleash the full potential of Big Data, IoT, Cloud and streaming services, there is a need for real-time collection and analysis of data on traffic, security and infrastructure to assist city officials in responding to problems faster than ever before. Therefore, there is no room for reduced latency in e-governance services. End users and devices demand anywhere, anytime access to services, creating the need to set up edge data centers for effective and efficient delivery of e-governance services.

Edge data centers facilitate data processing close to the source of data generation, therefore shortening the distance between data centers and end users. 

Today only 10% of enterprise-generated data is produced and processed outside the cloud or at a traditional centralised data center. According to Gartner, this figure is expected to reach 75% by 2025. Source

As the need for speed, efficiency, reliability and versatility of e-governance data grows, there is a requirement to create scalable, agile and secure data centers. It is imperative to optimise the existing capacity in terms of space and compute power, which can be extremely cost-effective in the long run. Given the tremendous data surge and nature of this data, creating and expanding rack space is essential. 

We, at Legrand, have a team of specialists that design and build innovative solutions including enclosures, server racks, cooling, power, structured cabling and access management to meet your unique requirements.  

Read more about our data center solutions here: Busbar Power Distribution for Data Centers – Starline Power