Parliament winter session: Cloud data centre capacity in India estimated to grow 4-5 times by 2030, says IT Minister Jitin Prasada

Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT Jitin Prasada. Pic/X

Cloud data centre capacity in India has reached approximately 1,280 MW, largely serving critical sectors such as banking, power and other critical public infrastructure, and according to industry estimates, it will grow by four-five times by 2030, the Parliament was informed on Friday during the Parliament Winter Session.

Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT Jitin Prasada, speaking about the expansion of data centres across the country, said, "The expansion of data centres in the country is being propelled by the growing digitalisation and rapid adoption of AI across both government and private sectors, accompanied by the increasing adoption of cloud services."

Global technology companies are already investing significantly in India's AI and data centre ecosystem, news agency IANS reported.

Google has already announced a USD 15 billion AI Hub in Visakhapatnam, making it their largest investment in India. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is also setting up an USD 8.3 billion data centre in Maharashtra.

Minister Jitin Prasada stated that India is building a secure, scalable and AI-ready cloud infrastructure to support digital governance, private sector collaboration and citizen empowerment while addressing the Upper House of the Parliament.

He further asserted, "The growing demand for cloud services across government, private and social sectors is driven by the country's digital transformation and increasing use of AI-enabled applications."

To meet the cloud requirements of the government, a national cloud infrastructure has been established under the Digital India initiative.

The "GI Cloud", known as MeghRaj, provides secure, scalable and elastic cloud facilities for delivery of e-governance services.

While highlighting the features of GI Cloud-MeghRaj, the minister further stated, "The salient features of the ‘GI Cloud-MeghRaj' include elasticity, scalability, pay-per-use metering, self-service provisioning, rapid deployment of applications, on-demand service provisioning, etc."

Jitin Prasada, further stated, "The National Data Centres deliver cloud services to government departments and are designed to safeguard the cloud services from potential threats by implementing a layered security framework comprising established practices and procedures."

(With inputs from IANS)