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V. Rishi Kumar

Hyderabad, April 9 IT major Sun Microsystems sees a growing opportunity to offer utility computing services, particularly for Central and State eGovernance projects in India and the region.

The company believes this to be one of the major technology trends in this part of the world with several services set to be offered online. Though utility computing has been talked about for sometime, the market is now ready for this offering.

Utility computing is something like the use of electricity at homes. Just as one plugs in to access electricity, the Government and its departments can harness the power of remotely located data centres for their information technology needs, according to Mr Jaijit Bhattacharya, Country Director, Government Strategy, Sun Microsystems.

Mr Jaijit told Business Line, Sun Micro is working with Central and State Governments and in the cooperative sector and panchayat raj institutions, offering technology solutions. Now is the time for rapid expansion of these services as more of them are being sought to be offered online.

Referring to the National Employee Guarantee Programme, which has meant a growing need for data centres in States, most of the governments are looking at using IT extensively to make their projects efficient.

They are considering utility-based computing as it is difficult for governments and their departments to set up their own IT infrastructure. The business of the government is not managing IT but offering services using IT.

By combining the power of data centres with open source software offered by MySQL (now part of Sun Micro after $1 billion buy), they would be able to use the power of technology as and when they require without having to bother about its management, he explained.

Data centres are run and managed by experts and government departments do not have to bother about them while always having access. The analogy is similar to using power and they just have to plug in and use IT resources. They just pay depending upon transactions. This makes for an attractive business proposition — both for the Government and the services provider.

“We are working with some of the major data centre service providers in the country, including telecom companies such as Bharti, Reliance and Data One and NetCore engaging with them in these initiatives,” he said.

Referring to the recent International Standards Organisation ruling on document standard, Mr Jaijit said Internet is something which everyone uses and as a consumer there should be a level playing field.

India, China and Brazil have large developing economies and this brings pricing power into the system. The decision to support this standard is technically flawed, he said.

More Stories on : Outlook | E-Governance

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