AWS CASE STUDY FOR INDIAN GOVERNMENT SECTOR

AWS CLOUD:

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, offering around 2500+ services such as compute, databases, and storage.

Some salient features of AWS Cloud computing can be stated as follows:

1. Ease of Use: AWS provides a very user-friendly interface called the AWS Management Console. This server interface provides access to a wide number of applications and services.
2. A diverse array of Services: While it was initially meant for cloud storage and computing, it has expanded to around 2500+ services categorized as Compute-as-a-Service, Storage-as-a-Service, Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service, and various other applications for Machine Learning, Mobile Platforms, and caters to each and every enhanced need of the current industry.
3. Unlimited Server Capacity: There’s basically no IT-based need that your business has, that AWS cannot handle. Even better, you can expand or grow as you wish, without worrying about service disruption. This unlimited capacity is why AWS rules the cloud computing space.
4. Flexibility and Affordability: The “pay-as-you-go” facility of AWS makes it quite affordable for the users and it comes in handy for small businesses on tight budgets looking to grow without paying a small fortune for the web services.
5. Reliable Encryption and Security: AWS provides a more reliable security measure that’s guaranteed to keep your data safe and secure.

Difference between Traditional Infrastructure and AWS Cloud:

1. The “pay-as-you-go” facility of AWS makes it quite affordable than the significant long term contracts in the traditional model.
2. Also, the cloud provides far better Disaster Recovery Management and Security options than the traditional infrastructure enabled.

NEED OF CLOUD IN THE INDIAN GOVERNMENT SECTOR:

In order to make a smooth and effective transition from the traditional infrastructure to the Cloud platform, there can be various key advantages jotted as follows:

1. Higher Efficiency: While most government departments continue to use legacy applications and manual (document-driven) processes, the cloud migration initiative gives them an opportunity to automate and digitize the process, minimize manual interventions and optimize legacy workflows.
2. Greater Innovation: To stay relevant and aligned with citizen expectations, the government sector needs to take active steps towards innovation and digital transformation.
3. Lower Costs: Moving to the cloud will enable government departments to increase utilization and lower operational risk (downtime, latency, and security)
4. Agility: With continued budget challenges all departments needs to find ways to deliver the services as economically as possible without hampering productivity. Public cloud services help to roll out such services easily.

AWS IN INDIAN GOVERNMENT SECTOR:

In 2010, AWS introduced its Public Sector program to support tech-led innovation in government, education, healthcare, and nonprofit organizations.

In late-2017, AWS brought its public sector business to India. It was impaneled by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. Since then, a few State governments in India have implemented a ‘cloud-first’ policy and successfully moved their workloads to the AWS cloud. AWS public sector business covers the Central and State governments, all PSUs, NGOs, educational institutes, and public healthcare. The common thread is the citizen's impact.

AWS public sector customers in India include Andhra Pradesh State Skill Development Corporation, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), CSC e-Governance Services (set up by the Ministry of Electronics & IT), Gujarat Technical University, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), and Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati.

1. Common Services Center e-Governance Services(set up by the Ministry of Electronics & IT):

CSC E-Governance Services India Ltd scales on-demand with AWS. By using AWS, CSC E-Governance Services India Ltd elastically scales to meet user demand across thousands of common services centers across India. With Amazon EC2, Amazon Elastic Block Storage, Amazon RDS, and Amazon S3, CSC E-Governance Services India Ltd can scale instantly to provide seamless service for users logging onto the system. The flagship programme of CSCs Prime Minister Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (PMGDSA) is completely run on AWS cloud. It is a digital literacy program run by the CSC to provide digital education and training to rural people.

2. Vigyan Prasar:

Using Amazon Web Services (AWS), Vigyan Prasar of the Government of India launched a first-of-its-kind science channel with daily scientific content for school-aged children and the public at large that can seamlessly scale on demand. Vigyan Prasar is an autonomous organization under the Department of Science & Technology of the Government of India. Using Amazon Athena and Amazon S3, Vigyan Prasar made its new science channel’s daily content searchable with frame-by-frame meta-tagging.

3. Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs:

The Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has used AWS to create a data laboratory to collate and analyze urban data and build insights that could be given back to the cities to help them become smart.

4. Minfy Tech and Department of Information Technology(Govt. of Manipur):

Minfy Tech helps customers create cost-effective cloud operation models. Minfy Tech helped the Department of IT achieve scalable compute and storage in the cloud using Amazon EC2 and Amazon VPC. This combination offered security that was similar to the on-premises data center but with much greater scalability. Amazon EBS delivered persistent block storage and replication across availability zones, offering the redundancy required to protect the network against failures. Amazon CloudWatch is used to monitor and manage applications and system-wide performance. As a result, 6 critical apps and websites were migrated to the cloud with minimum disruptions.

5. Minfy Tech and WEBEL(West Bengal Electronics Industry Corporation Limited):

Minfy Tech created a cloud environment by taking advantage of Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). Using Amazon VPC, Minfy Tech provisioned a logically isolated section of the AWS Cloud to host the application. The company used Amazon EC2 to provide resizable compute capacity in the cloud, enabling Webel to expand the use of the blockchain application as needed to support other government services. The PwC app was loaded to this infrastructure along with Ethereum. The Ethereum platform tracks contracts in blockchain environments and allows applications to run without the risk of downtime, censorship, fraud, or third-party interference.

Webel’s initial purpose for creating the PwC blockchain environment was to support two primary government services. The first project was the blockchain-enabled birth and death registration for the New Town Kolkata Development Authority of West Bengal. The second project was a crowdfunding initiative used to raise funds for the social services of Vivek Tirtha, a global organization engaged in humanitarian and social service activities at Eco Park, New Town.

6. National Skills Development Corporation (NSDC), India:

The NSDC is a not-for-profit set up by the Ministry of Finance to promote the development of skills among Indian students through the creation of large vocational institutions. To date, the NSDC has trained more than 5.2 million students.

NSDC turned to AWS to run applications for their Skill India Portal Learning Management System (LMS), Skill Management and Accreditation of Training Centers (SMART), Takshashila Portal for Training of Trainers/Assessors as well as it's enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. They can now handle high transaction volumes on their applications and manage their internal systems in a cost-effective manner.

PAVING WAY FOR MORE CLOUD APPLICATIONS & A SWIFT TRANSITION TO CLOUD PLATFORM BY INDIAN GOVERNMENT SECTOR:

In order to utilize and harness the benefits of Cloud Computing, the Government of India has embarked upon an ambitious initiative — “GI Cloud” which has been named “MeghRaj”. The focus of this initiative is to accelerate the delivery of e-services in the country while optimizing ICT spending of the Government. This will ensure optimum utilization of the infrastructure and speed up the development and deployment of eGov applications.

“India’s Move to adopting Cloud Services in the Public Sector can be ‘A Game Changer’.” In the upcoming years, IDC believes that cloud platforms and ecosystems will serve as the Launchpad for an explosion in the scale and pace of digital innovation. This will result in ‘enormous innovation’ with as many new applications deployed in the cloud as prior generations deployed over the previous decades.