• State Minister Palak visits the Meghna Cloud data centre and says it as an excellent example of strategic partnership between the government and private sector
• Meghna Cloud to save huge forex spent to buy, use cloud tech

Gennext Technologies Limited, a leading ICT company, has recently inaugurated the full-fledged operation of Bangladesh’s first cloud data centre – Meghna Cloud – at Bangabandhu Hi-Tech City in Kaliakoir of Gazipur.

The platform will provide cloud service infrastructure, including servers, storage and networking equipment,and associated software technology.Through this, it will be possible to provide services to both government and private entities, by keeping the country’s data within the domestic territory.

This move is expected to save a large amount of foreign currency the country spends annually for purchasing and using the cloud technology.

Within just one year, the cloud platform has been operationalised. On 29th December 2022, Gennext made a joint venture agreement with Bangladesh Data Centre Company Limited (BDCCL) for Meghna Cloud.

Under the agreement Gennext will build, operate and maintain the Meghna Cloud as well as ensure sales and marketing of the cloud services to government and private sector together with BDCCL.

State Minister for Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology Zunaid Ahmed Palak said that this ‘Made in Bangladesh Cloud’ is an excellent example of strategic partnership between government and private sector. Through this initiative, the country can save a huge amount of foreign currency and ensure more data security.

On Feb 8, 2024 the state minister came up with the remark after visiting the Meghna Cloud data centre at Bangabandhu Hi-Tech City in Kaliakoir of Gazipur.

During the visit, Gennext Technologies Chairman Touhidul Islam Chaudhury and Gennext Technologies Managing Director AlaveeAzfar Chaudhury briefed about the cloud centre’s operation to the State Minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak and ICT Secretary Md. ShamsulArefin.

Gennext has used state-of-the art technologies to set up the cloud platform and developed a skilled workforce to operate it.

“Meghna Cloud will support the Smart Bangladesh move forward. We are also setting up a research and development center for teachers and students of both government and private universities”, said Touhidul Islam Chaudhury, Chairman of Gennext Technologies.

 This initiative will provide training on cloud related technology to about 5,000 students every year, he added.

The company is planning to invest around USD 500 million within the next five years for this project, said JavedOpgenhaffen, Vice Chairman of Gennext Technologies.

 “We want to work with the government jointly to contribute to the overall development of the country. This cloud platform is expected to play a significant role to establish Smart Bangladesh,” he said,

 The data centre would help the government save foreign currency in purchasing and using cloud technology from other countries as Bangladesh would not require depending only on foreign data storage facilities, he added.

According to industry experts, most of the data in Bangladesh comes through Singapore servers. This creates a two-fold challenge. Firstly, in the current system the government of Singapore will have access to the data. Thus, it would be difficult to retrieve any sensitive data.

Secondly, the cost of transferring data would be higher as it would need to travel quite a long distance which would require around 60 millisecond to transfer from Singapore to Bangladesh. If the data centres are within country boundaries, then it would mitigate these two issues.

“Meghna Cloud is hoping to create a security platform which would provide top-most data security to government and non-government organisations,” said AlaveeAzfar Chaudhury, Managing Director of Gennext Technologies. 

In 2019, the government established the tier 4  National Data Centre, the largest in Bangladesh, at the Bangabandhu Hi-Tech City. It is run by BDCCL.