RailTel Corporation of India Limited and Esri India have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to provide cloud-based geographic information system (GIS) solutions to their users in the ‘government sector’. This collaboration will address the strong emerging demand for ‘GIS on Cloud’.
With the government’s increasing focus on using GIS for various national programs such as digital India, GatiShakti, Svamitva, Smart Cities, Jal Jeevan Mission, etc., the availability of robust and scalable geospatial infrastructure has become a huge need of the hour. Esri India, being always at the forefront of technological innovation, has already developed a unique product called Indo ArcGIS for Indian government customers. Apart from GIS technology products, the Indo ArcGIS suite includes industry-specific solution products for disaster management, forest management, land records, electric utility management, property tax management and many more. In addition, over 500 data layers are available to customers through the Indian edition of ArcGIS living atlas.
With Esri India and RailTel’s partnership, ‘Indo ArcGIS on Cloud’ would now be available on RailTel cloud, giving customers the much-needed advantage of scalability, agility and cost-efficiency. Joint offerings would include software, cloud infrastructure, and related services. This will help government organisations reduce costs and complexity by moving from on-premises infrastructure to cloud and speed up the use of GIS in their initiatives and programs.
Commenting on the partnership, Aruna Singh, CMD, RailTel, said, “Geospatial infrastructure is fast becoming the backbone of many new strategic initiatives of both central and state governments in India. RailTel with its two tier III data centres and over 61,000 kilometres of optic fibre network (OFC) is uniquely positioned to support government organisations in deploying their GIS applications on a secure public cloud. With this partnership with Esri India, we intend to offer a reliable, secure and managed GIS Infrastructure for large government programs and projects.”
Meanwhile, Agendra Kumar, managing director, Esri India, said, “The convergence of GIS and cloud technology opens new avenues for building the geospatial infrastructure in India. The solutions and data products included in Indo ArcGIS are created with the aim to help the government and private organisations solve the most pressing problems of the country effectively with GIS. To facilitate enhanced collaboration and more informed decision-making at a lower cost, we are now offering Indo ArcGIS on cloud. RailTel offers the best-in-class secured cloud infrastructure. Our partnership with RailTel will foster accelerated GIS deployment and provide the power of ‘geospatial infrastructure on Cloud’ to our Indo ArcGIS users.”
