The division of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh has resulted in a new government data center for the new state capital in Guntur.

Andhra Pradesh was formally divided into two states in June 2014, with the newly created Telangana operating from the state capital of Hyderabad. Andhra Pradesh is creating a new capital city in Guntur district, and will build a new data center there to handle its business.

New state, new center
Andhra Pradesh was formed in 1956 by merging Telangana and Andhra, but a Telangana movement has continued, and the states were divided this year. Both will share the state capital in Hyderabad for up to ten years, and the governments are currently sharing data center facilities.

There are no details of the new Andhra Pradesh state data center (SDC), which will be set up by an e-governance authority, led by the Andhra Pradesh prime minister, and including the IT minister and IT advisor.

The committee is tasked with creating a state-of-the-art facility using cloud computing and big data analytics, to act as the central store of state data, and a reource to deliver online government services and citizen information through a web portal.

With the advantages of a fresh start, Andhra Pradesh aims to avoid some of the pitfalls that have beset other online government efforts. The data center will be shared by multiple government ministries on a common infrastructure to avoid silos and make the best use of infrastructure. It will also provide shared disaster recovery and be remotely manageable - and be built to withstand earthquakes and cyclones.

"The existing data centre in Hyderabad is now catering to the needs of both AP and Telangana," said an official quoted in The Times of India. "After the bifurcation, the physical infrastructure is located in Telangana. It is inevitable that a separate data centre will be needed for AP as all the departments need to be integrated to the SDC since the government is now focusing on using IT to reach out to the people."

The state aims to build for the next twenty years and is considering public and private finance for the new site.