VMware to roll-out MahaGov Cloud initiative

BANGALORE, INDIA: Virtualization software maker VMware announced that Government of Maharashtra has selected its virtualization and cloud infrastructure technology for MahaGov Cloud initiative.

Rajesh Aggarwal, Secretary IT, Government of Maharashtra, said, "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. The VMware deployment has helped the Government of Maharashtra lower the cost of hosting, improve the management of the state data centre 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.

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 data centre, which hosts the MahaGov Cloud. VMware was chosen after an extensive evaluation conducted by the Government of Maharashtra.

"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.