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VMware today announced that the Government of Maharashtra has selected VMware virtualization and cloud infrastructure technology for its MahaGov Cloud.
MahaGov Cloud is an initiative by the directorate of information technology (DIT), government of Maharashtra to provide Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) to various state departments for their e-governance initiatives.
The Government of Maharashtra has deployed VMware vSphere and VMware vCloud Director to virtualize the state datacenter, which hosts the MahaGov Cloud. VMware was chosen after an extensive evaluation conducted by the Government of Maharashtra.
Rajesh Aggarwal, secretary IT for the government of Maharashtra, said "The Government of Maharashtra is committed to making e-governance a success in the state. We were confident that virtualization and cloud computing would play a critical role in enabling our vision for e-governance in the state of Maharashtra and have partnered with VMware, the industry leader, to help us on our cloud journey and fulfill this vision."
State departments hosting their applications on the MahaGov Cloud will allow for better management of the state's IT infrastructure, while also bringing about transparency, efficiencies and lowering costs added Aggarwal.
The VMware deployment has helped the Government of Maharashtra lower the cost of hosting, improve the management of the state datacenter infrastructure, and drastically reduce the time required to provision infrastructure for various state departments.
This has encouraged state departments to host their mission critical applications on the MahaGov Cloud, making it the only government cloud in India that is running a production environment with a high volume of servers and applications.
The Directorate of Information Technology (DIT) has conducted a number of user awareness programmes and has laid down guidelines for state departments to confidently host their applications on the MahaGov Cloud. It has also published a rate card for these cloud services that any government department or public sector undertaking can avail at a nominal cost.
"With limited budgets and a growing need for services, state government's IT Departments need a more flexible and cost-effective model for computing - one that allows them to operate more efficiently and respond faster to emerging needs," said T Srinivasan, managing director, VMware India & SAARC.
We are delighted to partner with the Government of Maharashtra for the prestigious MahaGov Cloud, and are confident we can help them roll out their e-governance initiative added Srinivasan.
"Our cloud solutions are helping governments transform their IT departments into efficient, flexible enterprises that can respond faster to emerging needs, while reducing IT infrastructure and operating costs. Virtualization provides organizations with an evolutionary path to cloud computing that preserves existing IT investments, security, and control," added Srinivasan.