NICSI, Jio operationalise government cloud services

National Informatics Centre Services Inc. (NICSI), and Jio Platforms Limited (JPL), under the public private partnership (PPP), have come together to offer National Government Cloud (NGC) for state-run digital initiatives over the cloud, based on a pay-as-you-use model, using former’s data centres.

“There were capital investments which are to be shared, NICSI is providing data center space and non-IT infrastructure. The capital investments and energy consumption will be shared between both parties” RK Mishra, managing director (MD), NICSI told ET.

Indian billionaire-Mukesh Ambani-owned Jio Platforms would maintain National Government Cloud services for a period of seven years while NICSI and National Informatics Centre (NIC) oversee the cloud platform's strategic control and governance.


“There is a lot of demand from the user departments. There is plenty of availability of cloud resources as only 20% of capacity has currently been utilized. There is provision in place to augment more on-demand capacity if consumption reaches around 70%,” Mishra said.

The official further said that a unified cloud management with self-service portal, designed as per government processes, has already been rolled out for end-users enabling them for resource provisioning, monitor usage, control cloud consumption and maintain governance with ease.

Cloud platform related activities such as onboarding, operations, management and technical troubleshooting is being regularly monitored by the government together with Jio Platforms.

The partnership is based on a revenue-sharing model between Jio Platforms and the state-owned firm, and is aimed to offer competitive cloud services with an option to enhance capacity.

The two companies aim to offer state infrastructure services at competitive pricing to cloud tenants. “There is attractive discounting up to 20% of cloud cost in case of long-term commitments.”

The official believes that the collaboration would significantly enhance national cloud infrastructure, and drive efficiency and innovation in government-run digital services.

In 2023, the request for proposals (RFP) were sought from Indian cloud vendors for managing NIC cloud solutions under the Meghraj 2.0 program, to enhance national cloud infrastructure and enable multi-cloud services.

Mumbai-based Jio Platforms Limited (JPL) was selected to deploy and manage secure and scalable cloud services for NICSI, dedicated for multiple government departments and agencies.