Iran’s first-ever cloud data center, created by a local private Internet service provider known as Afranet, was launched on Sunday.
The cloud data center, which was set up in an area of 1,500 square meters over the past three years, can host 20,000 virtual servers and store 6 petabytes of data, Tasnim News Agency reported.
At a press conference held to announce its inauguration, Afranet’s CEO Fereydoun Qasemzadeh said cloud data centers can help improve the quality of network services, reduce costs and create jobs.
“Cloud data centers are among the top 10 technologies in the world,” he said.
He added that the popular messaging application Telegram has been given a deadline by Iranian officials to move its servers to Iran and the groundwork is being laid.
“The government has tasked a number of local companies, including Afranet, with preparing the needed infrastructures,” he said.
An official of Iran’s High Council of Cyberspace had previously said 60% of Iran’s bandwidth are used up by Telegram.
“Telegram made an inquiry about our server capacities and we provided them with a set of data,” the official said, stressing that the two companies had not officially held negotiations in this regard.
Qasemzadeh said Afranet has held talks with Amazon so that the company could work directly in Iran.
“Final results depend on whether or not the sanctions will be lifted,” he said.
He added that distributing servers is common practice and a company such as Google would have set up servers in Iran years ago if it were not for the sanctions.
This is while on August 14, Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, tweeted in reply to Iranian users who had asked him to comment on the issue: “We have no idea what ‘Afranet’ is” and that he had “no idea where all of this comes from.”
In a tweet, Qasemzadeh later said he had mentioned Google, Amazon and Telegram “as examples of potential foreign customers that could use Afranet’s cloud data center services in Iran, if they decide to move their servers here.”
Future Plans
Hamrah-e-Avval and the Telecommunications Company of Iran are the first customers of Iran’s first cloud data center, said the CEO of Afranet.
Qasemzadeh said Afranet, MCI and TCI are working together to provide services at points with heavy traffic and Afranet is prepared to sell the ownership of data centers to these operators.
“Other operators have not yet negotiated a deal with Afranet,” he said.
He noted that currently, 2% of the capacity of cloud data center have been allocated to private sector companies.
“Afranet also plans to launch a Telco Cloud services for mobile networks in three cities by May 2017,” he said.
A telecom cloud provider is a telecommunications company that has shifted a significant part of its business from landline service to devote resources to providing cloud computing services.
Furthermore, Afranet is working on a modular data center project.
A modular data center system is a portable method of deploying data center capacity. An alternative to the traditional data center, a modular data center can be placed anywhere data capacity is needed.
New Jobs
At the same event, Minister of Communications and Information Technology Mahmoud Vaezi said the private sector has invested 400 billion rials ($11.5 million) for setting up Afranet’s data center that has been developed 100% locally.
“The private sector has invested 400 billion rials ($11.5 million) for setting up Afranet’s data center that has been developed 100% locally,” Vaezi was quoted as saying by Mehr News Agency.
“Over the past three years, the private sector has invested over 90 billion rials ($2.5 million) in ICT while the government has invested 45 trillion rials ($1.2 billion) in this area.”
Vaezi noted that the ICT sector could potentially create 130,000 direct and indirect jobs.
