AI boom in India makes resilient cloud infra critical: MeitY secretary

As India looks to apply emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, it is important to have a resilient ecosystem where critical data can be stored in the country, said Meity secretary S Krishnan.

India generates millions of terabytes and megabytes of data, which is stored in multiple places, not just in India but across the world, Krishnan said.

“Eventually, when we have to have a resilient ecosystem within the country, it’s important that the most crucial data is stored in the country itself,” he said at Tata Consultancy Services’ Accelerating India conference in New Delhi.

Speaking at the event, TCS chief executive K Krithivasan stressed on the need to be “very adaptive” in an uncertain world where “we don’t know how things are evolving”.

TCS will work with governments, startups, enterprises and academia to address multiple opportunities such as modernising the industry, security and make the public services smarter and more inclusive, Krithivasan said.

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Girish Ramachandran, president – growth markets at TCS, said many of the company’s offerings which have been launched in India can be scaled up globally.

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TCS launched a sovereign cloud offering, SovereignSecure Cloud, which complies with India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act that may require critical data to be stored within the country in some cases if specified by the government. Referring to TCS’ offering, Krishnan said this can be used to further build India’s digital public goods infrastructure.Amid uncertainties, TCS is “sharpening its focus” on emerging markets such as Brazil, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the Asia-Pacific, in addition to India which is already an important market, Ramachandran told ET. These markets are showing more resilience, although they may see short-term challenges due to the tariff wars, he said.

Learnings from India can help TCS’ efforts in these markets too, including the sovereign cloud initiative being rolled out first in India, he said.

While some of the hardware of the sovereign cloud is not from India, “when semiconductor picks up in the country, there is an opportunity for us to work with the Tejas (Networks) of the world, the Tata Electronics of the world and build something which is fully indigenous”, he said.

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