State-owned BSNL today said it has signed a pact with IT firm Datacraft Asia to set up data centres and provide IT-related services to customers with an initial investment of Rs 200 crore.

In the first phase BSNL and Datacraft will open data centres in six regions with an investment of Rs 200 crore.

Both the companies did not reveal the revenue sharing.

The alliance is for a period of 10 years, wherein BSNL will provide the infrastructure base to Datacraft in turn the IT firm will provide services, including IT systems, cloud computing under the brand 'onecloud' to clients.

"Our clients from the Government, Public Sector and Banks can now undertake data center transformation services - using our flexible sourcing options or simply host their entire IT assets within our secure data centers with complete peace of mind at a very competitive cost," BSNL CMD Gopal Das said.

The data centres will be all geared up within next six months, he added.

The agreement will see Datacraft build, operate and manage -- six strategic data centres in Jaipur, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Ludhiana, Ghaziabad and Faridabad Datacraft Asia COO Dilip Kumar told reporters here.

Later on this will be extended to other four centres, which includes Hyderabad, Tiruchi, Ranchi and Bangalore.

"Datacraft's global strength and strategic capabilities will enable us to build new strategic IT capabilities to capture growth opportunities of data centers and connectivity," Das added.

Firstly, the facility will be available for enterprise customers and later on will be extended to the retail ones.

"BSNL evaluated a number of companies before choosing Datacraft for our differentiated and unique data center optimisation services to offer business continuity, disaster recovery and secure remote access services," Kumar added.

Datacraft is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dimension Data.

The company combines an expertise in networking, security, data centre, with advanced skills in managed services to craft IT solutions for businesses.