Iran Launches its First Private Cloud Data Center
Iran’s first private cloud data center gets launched in Tehran during a ceremony attended by the Minister of Communication and Information Technology. The construction for this data center took 3 years and 12 million dollars.
In the recent years the Iranian government had been insisting on building local data centers which could help elevate the privacy of the Iranian users on the internet. This would also provide a faster and cheaper way to access local content. Rouhani’s government showed its determination by providing a 5 million dollar fund for the construction of the country’s first private cloud data center. This 2 megawatts data center has been built on a 15,000 square meter area which includes server rooms and IT infrastructure equipment with a capacity of 1000 cloud servers and 6 petabyte storage.
Previously Mahmoud Vaezi, Iran’s Minister of Communication and Information Technology had stated that with the launch of local data centers, Iranians would benefit from faster, cheaper and higher quality services while maintaining their privacy and security on the internet. This data center which has been constructed by the Iranian ICP giant Afranet, has received a 5 million dollars fund from the government, of which 60% is issued by the Innovation and Development Fund and the other 40% is issued by the Ministry of Communications and the Electronics Support Fund.
“By launching this data center, both local and international [service] providers would be keen to offer their services on this platform in order to lower their costs and enhance their service quality for the end user,” said Ghasem Zadeh, Managing Director of Afranet. Ghasemi also added that as a social responsibility Afranet is planning to grant 100 of its cloud servers a number of entrepreneurs introduced by the Ministry of Communications for free for a year.
Afranet currently hosts the servers of some the country’s biggest startups such as Digikala, Netbarg, Cafe Bazaar and Sheypoor. Some of these startups suddenly went offline in the past weeks because of server issues.
SOURCE TASN