OdishaLIVE Bureau
Extremely severe cyclone ‘Fani’ has completely devastated Puri and Khordha districts of Odisha including the smart city Bhubaneswar. With the cyclonic impact, essential services like water supply, electricity, mobile communication and internet have been thoroughly disrupted. Twenty years after 1999 super cyclone, the city of Bhubaneswar has been affected such worse. Even a week following the cyclone, this smart city is still grappling in an ocean of darkness. But amidst such despair, STPI has beckoned a ray of hope for Odisha IT industry as despite the disastrous impact of cyclone, it could be able to provide internet and other core services.
Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), the front ranking agency of Govt of India playing a pivotal role in providing IT infrastructure and formulation of policy framework for the nation has stood as a strong pillar of support for more than hundreds of govt departments, Public Sector Undertakings and IT companies situated at Bhubaneswar. As the common citizens and organizations run from pillar to post for resuming internet services, STPI has ensured this support for its client organizations.
Taking to OdishaLIVE, the Director of STPI, Bhubaneswar, Mr. Manas Panda has said, “We took as much precaution we could before the cyclone hit Odisha. We were ready with a special team and an action plan to combat the damages made to various IT infrastructures of STPI. Therefore we could provide uninterrupted internet service to our clients and become watchful about our server and data storage support running without obstacles”.
STPI has its office and Network Operation Centre at Fortune Towers located in Bhubaneswar. Also the STPI Elite located in the city has a Data Centre. Mr. Panda told to OdishaLIVE that STPI took heavy precaution and adopted alertness to see that the extremely severe oceanic storm ‘Fani’ does not impact the IT backbone of Odisha such adversely.
In fact, STPI’s IT infrastructure was impacted by super cyclone ‘Fani’. But the Crisis Management Group led by the Director was attentive to resolve the issues on war footing. To oversee the post cyclonic situation, the Sr. Director of STPI, Mr. Devesh Tyagi also flew from New Delhi. Similarly STPI’s Director General Dr. Omkar Rai was in constant touch with the Bhubaneswar team on the developments and provided important suggestions to keep the IT backbone of Bhubaneswar completely safe and active.
After the cyclone, STPI has quickly jumped in to repairing of the RF infrastructure and ensuring uninterrupted internet service to clients with the support of 24 hours DG connection.
Added to this, STPI had issued advisory to several IT companies situated in Bhubaneswar to protect their IT infrastructure, data and server; avoid damages, reduce losses and resume to normalcy at the earliest possible time.
Because of the uninterrupted internet service provided by STPI along with the Data Centre and server support, several departments of Govt of Odisha along with big IT companies placed in Odisha could run their operations smoothly.
Prominent among the number of clients of STPI include organizations namely Idco, Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation, IIMT, Bhubaneswar Smart City, IIIT, NALCO, OMC, Omfed, Institute of Life Sciences, OPTCL, OPEPA, PCCF – Odisha, State Pollution Control Board etc. STPI also manages the HRM software of Govt of Odisha along with managing the servers of leading state and central PSUs like NALCO, OTDC, Idco and Bhubaneswar Smart City Ltd. These organizations have got data and server support immediately after the cyclone.
Not only the govt departments or PSUs but also leading IT companies placed in commercial hubs like OCAC Tower, STPI Elite and DLF Cyber City have been running their operations uninterrupted within hours of the Cyclone ‘Fani’ 2019 and thereby saved the IT industry from severe losses.
Today, the IT serves as the backbone to Odisha’s economic progress as the major IT companies are earning huge revenues for the state. Hence such support provided by STPI during the disaster has been largely appreciated by its clients and the key stakeholders.
Meanwhile the Director of STPI, Bhubaneswar Mr. Manas Panda has appealed to the Chief Secretary and Principal Secretary, Energy, Govt. of Odisha, to provide power supply to the IT Parks placed in Bhubaneswar on priority basis.
Mr. Panda has also said that the IT companies providing service to overseas clients should be considered on a different footage from the rest of the industry. Considering its significance, the state government needs to provide power supply to IT sector as soon as possible, he hopes.
