Union Minister of State for Electronics & Information Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, visited Microsoft’s Hyderabad centre on the 7th of march 2022. The Microsoft announced its intent to set up India Data Centre region in Hyderabad so as to accelerate the country’s digital momentum. According to a study, the Microsoft datacenter regions in India have already created 1.5 million jobs in the Indian economy over the past five years, which includes 169,000 new skilled IT jobs.
The announcement comes in at a time when the Indian economy has seen an accelerated digitalization of products and services over the last 2 years. Reports have suggested that before the lockdown was implemented, an average of 270 Petabytes of data was consumed on a daily basis, which has grown to around 308 Petabytes of daily data consumption after the lockdown.
This is a reported rise of around 14 percent in the daily data consumption. As per the data, the smartphone users have spent almost 16 percent more time on the internet, when compared to the pre-COVID period. With the schools and colleges making use of the online method of education and with the work from home regulations in force, has led to a consequential higher increase in data consumption.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that the Digital Indian Economy is expanding and is driving the growth of Indian economy towards the goal of 5 trillion dollar economy. He credited and thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for laying the strong foundation of technology through the Digital India Programme that was launched in 2015.
The Digital India Programme, launched in 2015, had put out 3 objectives:
- To transform the lives of the citizens.
- To expand the economic opportunities.
- To create strategic capabilities in certain areas of technology.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that the Digital India Programme has largely met its objectives number one and two. India now comprises of the world’s largest digital identity system, known as Aadhar. India is successfully driving the World’s largest technology driven vaccination campaign through the indigenously developed CoWIN platform, through the development and use of Aarogya Setu app for Covid management and leading the world in Digital Payments, Direct Benefit transfers of Subsidy and Fintech technology.
The achievements clearly demonstrate to the world that with the help of Digital India Programme, the country has become one of the pre-eminent Nations in the use of technology, not just in conventional areas of Research and Development, technology development and innovations, but also in the use of technology to empower and transform citizen’s lives, he added.
He further added that the strength and durability shown by the Indian Government during the Covid Pandemic, the revival of the economy as the fastest growing economy in the world, receiving highest ever FDI, creating Unicorns at a fast pace, can all be attributed to the investments made in technology over the last 7 years under the Digital India Programme.
Speaking on the rise in number of Indian Startups and Unicorns, Rajeev Chandrasekhar affirmed that India has become one of the world’s most vibrant startup ecosystems.
Going forward the rapid rate of digitization will pose challenges as well as opportunities. To tap the opportunities, MeitY is working as per MeitY’s 1000 Day Vision plan. Data Centres are an important element of any Digital ecosystem. The government is undertaking consultations with all the respective stakeholders for a New National Data Centre Policy.
Microsoft announced that it will establish its latest datacenter region in Hyderabad, Telangana. The strategic investment is based on Microsoft’s commitment to help customers thrive in a cloud and AI-enabled digital economy and will become part of the world’s largest cloud infrastructure.
Customer demand for cloud as a platform for digital transformation, driving economic growth and societal progress across India, has constantly been increasing. According to IDC*, Microsoft datacenter regions in India contributed 9.5 Billion dollar revenue to the economy in the period between 2016 and 2020. The IDC report also estimated that around 1.5 million jobs were added to the economy, including 169,000 new skilled IT jobs.
To support customer needs for high availability and resiliency, Microsoft had launched Azure Availability Zones in December 2021 in its Central India datacenter region. This forms the most extensive network of datacenters in the country with disaster recovery provisions and coverage of seismic zones.
Read Also: Piyush Goyal Asks To Focus On Tier 2 And 3 Cities
