Starting from October 15 all payment-based services of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will be closed for 12 days as the civic body's data centre is migrating to a cloud-based system.
During this period, around 80% works, including financial transactions like receiving and making payments, will be suspended. Customers will also not be able to make water bill or property tax payments during this period. Moreover, the BMC will not issue any work orders, commencement certificate or occupation certificate for buildings, or birth certificates, among other services.
As the Worli data centre of BMC has almost exhausted its capacity and addition of any new service or feature is not possible, the civic body has decided to migrate to the cloud-based system. "We are migrating to cloud based system from October 15, and this will take at least 12 days," said a senior civic official.
Most of the services, both on website and mobile app, will be suspended, the official added. Even, residents will not be able to access the BMC website.
The civic body will also not accept any payment between October 15 and 25 as the payment gateway will also remain closed. "Citizens will not be able to pay their property tax or water bill during this period," said the official. He added that the BMC will be closed for three four days owing to holidays and this could reduce the effect of the closure of online services.
The official also pleaded that people should not panic as all online services will resume by October 28. "The present Data Centre in Worli, with a capacity of around 60 terabytes, has been working on its full capacity, and it can not accommodate any new service or features," said the official, adding that the civic body does not have an option but to migrate to cloud-based system . The cloud service provider will be based in Mhape in Navi Mumbai. "The cloud service provider will manage cloud environment's servers, storage, networking and data center operations," said the official.
