Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella meets Andhra chief minister Chandrababu Naidu

For many tech firms, India is a key determinant on how they build products and global tech major Microsoft is one of them. Recently, the government of Andhra Pradesh inked an agreement with the Redmond, Washington-based firm to utilise the latter’s hybrid cloud platform, called Azure Stack, for AP State Data Centre (SDC) located in Hyderabad. Under the agreement, the Microsoft cloud solution will be used to migrate live applications currently hosted in SDC in Hyderabad to Visakhapatnam data centre.

Post-bifurcation of the state, both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have divided servers and applications but they are using the same State Resident Data Hub (SRDH) in Hyderabad which was built with a funding of R400 crore from the Centre when the state was united. As per the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014, AP has 10 years rights on the data centre, but the state is gradually planning to move all applications hosted in Hyderabad to Visakhapatnam and later on to Vijayawada.

“We have entered into an agreement with Microsoft for use of Azure Stack. There are about 340 applications including Mee Seva, Core Dashboard which are currently running in Hyderabad SDC. Under the agreement, the state will migrate 15 applications to Visakhapatnam data centre with the help of Azure Stack,” said Rama Rao Atluri, executive director, Andhra Pradesh State FiberNet.

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Basically, a data centre has three important components—server, applications and storage. The hardware for all three components are different and they are controlled by software, also known as controller. For migration of the applications from one location to other, usually private companies put on-premise data into the cloud and then to different location or it remains in the cloud. However, government departments are highly conscious of data security, so they usually avoid going to the cloud and prefer to keep data within their boundaries.

Now in order to address this challenge, Microsoft has come out with Azure Stack which encompasses three key components of the data centre— application, server, and the storage—into one physical box and deliver to the client. The client has full control over the box. Technically, it is a cloud software that is binding the entire stack together in one environment.

According to an AP government official, Microsoft has tested Azure Stack in its lab but it has not been physically delivered or commercially used anywhere in the world. For the first time, the company is doing proof of concept with the government of Andhra Pradesh to prove its capability.

To migrate, part of the application will be taken to the cloud and from cloud it will be transmitted onto the Azure Stack. In this process, live applications will move from the existing state capital (Hyderabad) to Visakhapatnam.

Government officials said that they don’t expect Microsoft to do their all work. So, they have issued a tender for a setting up a co-location centre in Vijayawada. The government is also creating a disaster recovery (DR) centre of Visakhapatnam SDC in Vijayawada. A request for proposal (RFP) has already been released and the state expects to set up DR unit within three months.

Apart from Microsoft, IT giants like IBM and Amazon Web Services also sell such type of applications. According to an official, currently Microsoft has approached government with this product. “This is a win-win situation for both Microsoft and AP. They want to test their product and we want to migrate our applications. Be it any company, we need such solutions,” said Rao.