Thiruvananthapuram: Overruling objections by the opposition, the Kerala government has handed over the management of two data centres that handle sensitive official information to a private company.
Sify Technologies, which has won the Rs 64.61 crore deal, will run the data centres for five years, according to a government order.
Sify was handling the New Data Centre (Data Centre-2) at Thejaswini building in Technopark.
Now, Sify will also be responsible for managing the Old Data Centre that was under Keltron till now.
The Old Data Centre, set up in 2005 at the Co-Bank tower at the state cooperative bank headquarters complex, was the first such public sector entity in the country.
Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala and senior Congress leader V M Sudheeran had written to the chief minister against dropping state-run Keltron from the bidding process.
New tenders were floated in September last year after the contracts for managing the two data centres expired.
Keltron's bid was rejected citing its lack of expertise in cloud computing services. Sify, which had quoted the lowest bid, won the contract.
The data centres compile sensitive information on the state's administration and other confidential details with the help of the IT department.
C-DAC, under the union ministry of communications and information technology, ran the centre for the first three years.
The move to hand over the running of the centre to Reliance during the tenure of VS Achuthanandan as the Kerala chief minsiter had triggered a controversy.
In 2012, Reliance was replaced and Keltron was awarded the contract.