Amazon Web Services (AWS) India has announced that it has received cloud service provider (CSP) empanelment from India’s Ministry of Electronic and Information Technology (MeitY) for cloud services provided using the AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region. Operational since November 2022, as part of AWS’s total investment of INR 1,36,500 crores (US $16.4 billion) in cloud infrastructure in India by 2030, the AWS Asia-Pacific (Hyderabad) Region is the second AWS Region in India to be fully empaneled by MeitY. In 2017, AWS India became the first global CSP in India to receive full empanelment for its cloud service offerings after the AWS Asia-Pacific (Mumbai) Region completed MeitY’s STQC (Standardization Testing and Quality Certification) audit.
The empanelment affirms that AWS meets government standards of quality, availability, and security, and provides government organisations, public sector undertakings (PSUs), statutory bodies, and financial institutions mandated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) more scope to innovate with the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud.
AWS Regions are comprised of Availability Zones (AZs) that place infrastructure in separate and distinct geographic locations. AZs are located far enough from each other to support customers’ business continuity, and near enough to provide low latency for high availability applications that use multiple data centres. Public sector organisations and financial services institutions across India, including banking and payment providers, can achieve greater operational resiliency from the AWS Asia-Pacific (Hyderabad) Region – which consists of three AZs – by using its cloud infrastructure for higher availability, disaster recovery, data backup, while meeting security and regulation requirements, and enjoying lower latency performance. Government organisations can improve e-governance standards and enable on-demand digital services for citizens and businesses across India. Similarly, financial services organisations can benefit from agile, efficient, and security-compliant cloud solutions at scale, providing consumers faster and secure digital banking, insurance, and payment innovations.
Powering India’s digital transformation and economy
Access to cloud computing lowers the cost of starting new businesses, encourages innovation, spurs development of new technologies, and enhances e-governance services. Hundreds of thousands of customers in India have chosen AWS to run their workloads to drive cost savings, accelerate innovation, and speed up time to market. This includes numerous organisations in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, including AWS customers like Acko General Insurance, Axis Bank, Clevertap, CropIn, Digital India Corporation (MeitY), Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Government of Telangana, HDFC Life, Jupiter, Lendingkart, National Skill Development Corporation, Numaligarh Refinery Limited, PhysicsWallah, Prasar Bharati News Services, Tata Elxsi, and the University of Delhi. The AWS Partner Network (APN), with more than 100,000 partners worldwide, includes locally-owned technology businesses in India like Dataevolve Solutions, Minfy Technologies, StarOne IT Solutions, and Trigyn Technologies, and global system integrators like Accenture, Deloitte, Infosys, and Tata Consultancy Services, who are working closely with India’s public sector customers. Customers can rely on AWS Partners’ deep technical expertise to respond quickly and securely, driving innovative solutions for the government.
Cloud technology is key to accelerating innovation in India’s public sector. With AWS, the Indian government can enhance its delivery of services to citizens, and develop digital public infrastructure, thereby enhancing government-citizen engagement, empowering citizens, and driving better governance. Examples include initiatives such as the development of Co-WIN, which has supported more than 2.20 billion COVID-19 vaccinations in India; DigiLocker, which provides citizens anytime, anywhere access to authentic digital documents; and Samarth eGov, which automates governance for more than 200 higher education institutions across India. MeitY and AWS are also powering quantum computing research, providing quantum computing as a service to researchers and academicians, to accelerate research in various areas, including chemical engineering, and drug discovery.
The Indian government is pushing ahead with digital transformation initiatives to propel the country to become a US $5 trillion economy within this decade. Investments in cloud infrastructure such as the AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region will help contribute to India’s growing economy, and enable digital innovation to support government programs such as Digital India, Skill India, Smart Cities Mission, and Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission.
Shalini Kapoor, director and chief technologist for the public sector with AWS India Private Limited (AWS India), said, “India’s economic growth is tied closely to digital transformation. Cloud computing and adoption of technologies such as generative AI are important for the growth of the country’s digital economy, helping drive digital transformation at scale, modernizing governments, innovating securely and sustainably, and developing future skills. With both AWS Regions in India empaneled by MeitY, AWS is providing customers more choice to access resilient, secure, and low-latency cloud infrastructure, while offering more ability for AWS Partners to develop innovative solutions and address customer needs.”
Addressing customer needs and driving new solutions through partners
The Department of Information Technology, Electronics, and Communication (ITE&C Dept.) in the Government of Telangana uses IT to achieve effective, efficient governance and to promote economic and social development in the state of Telangana, which is home to nearly 40 million people. Srinivas Pendyala, director of e-government initiatives with the ITE&C Dept in the Government of Telangana, said, “We are pleased that the AWS Hyderabad Region is empaneled for government workloads. The ITE&C Department is planning to introduce a new paperless secretariat initiative in Telangana, where all approvals pertaining to government-related files within a department will henceforth be completely paperless and digital. This initiative would help achieve a smooth and efficient workflow for approvals and information exchange between various departments. This workflow will have a high number of concurrent users across various government departments, especially during peak periods like the beginning and end of the month. Implementing this initiative in the AWS Hyderabad Region will provide us with benefits of high scalability, availability, and low latency, enabling us to deliver seamless, quick, and efficient services to our citizens, and achieve good governance.”
mjunction is one of India’s largest business-to-business (B2B) e-Auction companies, enabling buying and selling between businesses through its innovative digital platforms on AWS. More than 3 lakh micro-small-and-medium-enterprises (MSMEs) buy and sell their products and services using mjunction’s e-Auction, e-Procurement, and business to business (B2B) e-marketplace platforms to achieve efficiency, transparency, innovation, and saving. Amit Khan, chief information officer (CIO) of mjunction, said, “mjunction is one of India’s e-Auction pioneers, executing over 30,000 e-Auctions each year for over 150 prominent organisations, including governments and PSUs. Our businesses largely depend on digital platforms and hence requires us to meet stringent compliances and certifications. A second AWS Region in India empaneled for government workloads gives us choice to enable disaster recovery, and leverage it for data backup, especially when our customers have high availability applications.”
Based in Hyderabad, Dataevolve Solutions is an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner offering end-to-end cloud migration consulting services to public sector and commercial organisations. Avinash Kommireddi – founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Dataevolve Solutions, added, “Government organisations and agencies are increasingly turning to cloud computing to leverage the benefits of scale, agility, and security. The AWS Hyderabad Region offers additional capacity to meet growing customer needs, and opens up more opportunities for AWS Partners like Dataevolve Solutions to support government organisations to accelerate e-governance and innovation. Customers with low latency needs, and data residency requirements arising from statutes, regulations, and corporate policy will benefit from a second MeitY-empaneled AWS Region in India to run workloads, securely store data, and plan for operational resiliency.”
Long-term commitment to India
The AWS Asia-Pacific (Hyderabad) Region’s empanelment by MeitY is part of AWS’s long-term commitment to developing India’s digital economy, innovation, and boosting local job creation. AWS’s planned investment of US $12.7 billion (INR 1,05,600 crores) in cloud infrastructure in India by 2030 includes allocating more resources to data center infrastructure, which will create an estimated average of 131,700 full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs across industries like construction, facility maintenance, and engineering roles, among others. AWS’s investments in cloud infrastructure is expected to contribute US $23.3 billion to India’s total GDP by 2030, demonstrating the company’s commitment to catalyzing the country’s digital economy with the cloud.
Besides driving local economic growth and boosting innovation, AWS is committed to creating a sustainable future through its operations. In 2022, both AWS Regions in India – in Mumbai and Hyderabad – were among 19 AWS Regions globally whose electricity consumption was attributed to 100% renewable energy.
As India transforms digitally, AWS is helping individuals develop cloud skills, and organisations to upskill their workforce. Since 2017, more than four million people in India have been trained in cloud skills through a variety of training programs like AWS Skill Builder, AWS re/Start and many others. Recently, AWS also announced seven free and low-cost training courses on generative artificial intelligence, underscoring the company’s mission to help individuals gain in-demand digital skills.
