The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has initiated consultations with major global technology companies—including Google, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Apple—as part of its development of a comprehensive “sovereign cloud” framework designed to securely host critical government data and workloads.
Core Objectives and Strategic Scope
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Reducing External Dependency: India’s government-linked workloads and business ecosystems have historically relied heavily on dominant U.S. cloud providers (AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud). The sovereign cloud framework seeks to establish robust domestic control over critical infrastructure.
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Expertise vs. Indigenous Control: While global tech giants are being consulted for architecture, security best practices, and operational scale, policymakers emphasize that the final infrastructure must remain strictly indigenous to safeguard national security.
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Four-Pillar Evaluation Matrix: The preliminary proposal outlines 46 distinct safeguards distributed across four core parameters:
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Legal safeguards and jurisdictional compliance
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Technological capability
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Operational control and management transparency
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A mandated “Make in India” component to ensure local supply chain resilience
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Scale of Government Data and Workloads
The infrastructure supporting India’s digital governance is immense. National Informatics Centre (NIC) data centers currently manage roughly 100 petabytes of storage and approximately 5,000 servers powering over 28,800 virtual servers.
MeitY’s classification framework flags high-sensitivity datasets critical to national security and financial stability, including:
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Identity and Governance Repositories: Passport databases, PAN systems, voter IDs, and digital lockers (DigiLocker surpassing 72 crore registered users).
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Law Enforcement & Judicial Infrastructure: e-Courts systems, CCTNS police databases, prison records, and land registration portals.
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Financial and Payment Ecosystems: Tax databases and UPI infrastructure (which has processed tens of thousands of crores in transactions).
Implementation and Upcoming Milestones
The proposed sovereign cloud will not aggregate all data onto a single server; rather, it will classify workloads by sensitivity to prescribe tiered security protocols.
MeitY currently has 29 empanelled domestic providers—such as Jio Platforms, Yotta Data Services, Tata Communications, Sify, and CtrlS—expected to anchor the bidding process. Following upcoming internal government consultations, broader public stakeholder discussions are scheduled over the next few months to refine the sovereign cloud parameters.
