BSNL, Sai Info eye Rs 75 cr from data centre business

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), in partnership with Sai InfoSystem (India) Limited (SIS), on Tuesday launched its internet data centres business and is aiming at achieving revenues of Rs 75 crore from this public-private initiative in the first year.

The state-run telecom services provider had, in 2011, signed an agreement with SIS to jointly set up internet data centres in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chertala (Kerala) and Kolkata.

SIS is an Ahmedabad-based information and communication technology solution provider and systems integrator.

BSNL, together with SIS, has so far invested close to Rs 450 crore to establish these Tier-III level data centres with 99.982 per cent uptime, through which it will offer managed co-location, hosting and cloud services.

“Our target is to achieve Rs 15 crore of business from the Hyderabad centre in the first year. It, however, will take at least four years from now to reap the capital investment that we have made,” V Srinivasan, chief general manager (AP circle), BSNL, told mediapersons here on Tuesday.

According to RK Iyer, vice-president (data centre), SIS, the joint venture is targeting around 200 small and medium enterprises (SMEs), of which it expects 100 to embrace its services in the first year.

The BSNL-SIS joint venture has already started signing five-year contracts with cooperative banks to offer core banking solutions. “Though our primary focus is SMEs, we are not averse to catering to large corporate houses. We are in talks with large organisations, besides looking at offering data centre services to e-governance initiatives of various state governments,” Iyer added.