Government of Andhra has entered into an agreement with technology giant Microsoft to use Microsoft Azure Stack for AP government state data centre.
The chief minister Chandrababu Naidu and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella signed an MoU during an event called ‘Microsoft Future Decoded’ in Mumbai on 22nd Feb 2017.
Under the MoU, Microsoft Azure Stack for the first time in the world will be used to migrate live applications currently hosted in Hyderabad State Data Centre (SDC) to Vizag data centre.
Government of India helped erstwhile Andhra Pradesh to build a state data centre in Hyderabad with the funding of INR 400 crore.
However, after bifurcation of the state into residual Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, both the states have bifurcated servers and data but they are using the same data centre in Hyderabad.
As per the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014, AP has 10 years rights on the data centre but state is gradually planning to move all applications hosted in Hyderabad SDC to Vizag and Vijayawada data centres.
The US-based company has tested this Microsoft Azure Stack in its lab but it has not been physically delivered or commercially used anywhere in the world.
For the first time, Microsoft is doing proof of concept (POC) with Government of Andhra Pradesh to prove its capability.
Currently more than 340 applications of Andhra Pradesh including eSeva, MeeSeva, Core Dash Board are running in Hyderabad SDC.
Under the PoC agreement, state will migrate 15 applications to Vizag data centre.
To migrate, part of the applications will be taken to cloud and from cloud it will be transmitted onto the Azure Stack.
In this process, live applications will move from Hyderabad to Vizag.
Once the box is with government Microsoft will not have access to the data but they will have access to data in the cloud.
The security of the data and application at this stage resides with the Microsoft.
What is Azure Stack?- A data centre basically has three important components - server, applications and storage.
- The hardware for all three components are different and they are controlled by software also knows as controller.
- For migration of the data centre from one location to other, generally private companies put on-premise data centre into the cloud and then to different location or it remains in the cloud.
- However, governments are highly conscious of data security because they deal with personal data of citizens.
- So, they usually avoid going to cloud and prefer data to be within their boundaries.
- Microsoft Azure Stack which encompasses three key components of the data centre - application, server, and the storage - into one physical box and delivers to the client, ensures 100% control over the box.
- Technically, it is a cloud software that is binding the entire stack together in one environment.
