The national government announced an investment of $ 500 million in the renovation, updating and expansion of the equipment of the Data Center of the state company Arsat, to prioritize the creation of the National Public Cloud within the framework of the Plan Connect, released last September.
The director of Arsat, Facundo Leal, stressed to Télam that, “for the State to be more agile, one of the needs is that its infrastructure technology is constantly evolving. “
The director of the state company Anabel Cisneros indicated that the public cloud “constitutes a fundamental tool to reach consolidate sovereignty over data of all the Argentine people “.
The cloud aims to “solve the requirements of different areas”. Photo Juan Manuel Foglia
The Ministry of Innovation, dependent on the Cabinet Headquarters, authorized the transfer to Arsat of $ 509,422,861, in accordance with Resolution 720/2020.
“With the announced investment sufficient resources will be maintained in terms of computing, connectivity and data storage, to make them available through a new self-managed and automated public cloud, based on orchestration and virtualization technology, “explained Cisneros.
He added that the cloud is “designed to provide a solution to the requirements of different areas and agencies of the National Public Administration”, based on the concept that “a digitized State is, without doubt, more efficient.”
Leal specified that the Arsat National Data Center established as a strategic objective for 2021 the deployment of the new Public Cloud based on Opensource or open source orchestration technologies.
Arsat estate, in Lanús. Photo: Juan Manuel Foglia
The platform, he added, “will deploy infrastructure and service in a fast and agile manner,” while allowing the company to “offer and market IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) in a modern way, addressing the management model used by large cloud providers in the world “.
“One of the requests of President Alberto Fernández is to ensure the technological sovereignty of Argentina,” recalled the Secretary of Public Innovation, Micaela Sánchez Malcom, when announcing the transfer of resources.
President Alberto Fernández, in September this year, in an act of the Connect Plan. Presidency photo
He added that “renewing the equipment and creating the National Public Cloud is one of the first steps to achieve it, while strengthening data security. “
For his part, Martín Olmos, Undersecretary of Information and Communication Technologies, pointed out that currently 20% of the clients of the national data center belong to the private sector, while 80% correspond to the public sector.
“Among the main public clients are Anses, the Ministry of Public Innovation, the Central Bank and Indec, among others,” he added.
The Cloud Framework: the Connect Plan
The Plan Connect 2020-2023 aims to promote the universalization of access to information and communication technology services and connections to next-generation broadband, for which it foresees improvements in the federal Fiber Optic network (ReFeFO), promoting satellite policy, promoting Open Digital Television (TDA) and modernizing Arsat’s National Data Center.
This last objective foresees the acquisition and improvement of storage equipment, servers, networks, backup and software to expand the ability to provide ‘cloud’ services.
The systems, batteries and generators will also be updated to ensure 24-hour operation every day of the year, indicated from Public Innovation.
The Secretariat will make a total investment of $ 37.9 billion in the next three years, they specified.
The plan will be executed by Arsat through external financing agreed with multilateral credit organizations and through own resources of the Ministry of Public Innovation.
With information from Télam
