According to the minister of state for electronics and information technology, the central government has migrated 1.6 million official email accounts of various ministries and departments to a cloud-based platform managed by homegrown Zoho Corporation at an expenditure of nearly Rs 1.80 billion. He added that the government continues to use services provided by the National Informatics Centre (NIC).
The minister added that payments are linked to the actual number of email accounts migrated, with pricing ranging between Rs 170 and Rs 300 per account per month, depending on mailbox size between 30 gigabytes (GB) and 100GB.
He explained that the migration aims to ensure ministries and departments have a robust, sovereign, and secure official email system. He said the selection of Zoho as master system integrator (MSI) was conducted through a transparent and competitive bidding process on the Government e-Marketplace (GeM-CPPP), which included a proof of concept evaluation with shortlisted bidders and designated government users.
Further, the minister emphasised that the government continues to mandate the use of NIC email services for official communication, while the upgraded cloud-based solution is being implemented to modernise legacy infrastructure and enhance scalability, collaboration, and security.
