Bevil Wood­ing

The cost of en­hanc­ing ser­vice de­liv­ery ca­pac­i­ty is of­ten pro­hib­i­tive­ly ex­pen­sive for busi­ness­es and gov­ern­ments. Cloud com­put­ing has emerged in to­day's eco­nom­i­cal­ly chal­leng­ing cli­mate as an at­trac­tive op­tion for or­gan­i­sa­tions seek­ing to re­duce their tech­nol­o­gy costs with­out com­pro­mis­ing on com­pet­i­tive­ness or ser­vice de­liv­ery ca­pa­bil­i­ty.

In sim­ple terms, cloud com­put­ing can be viewed as an or­gan­i­sa­tion use of hard­ware in­fra­struc­ture or soft­ware ser­vices host­ed or man­aged by an ex­ter­nal par­ty as an out­sourced ser­vice.It pro­vides or­gan­i­sa­tions with ac­cess to scal­able hard­ware ar­chi­tec­ture and soft­ware ser­vices ap­pro­pri­ate to their needs, and a cost com­par­a­tive­ly low­er than if it had to be pro­cured and op­er­at­ed in-house.

The gen­er­al mod­el is not new, but it has been rev­o­lu­tionised by the emer­gence of the In­ter­net as the foun­da­tion for the glob­al­ly ac­ces­si­ble ser­vices.

Key ben­e­fits

Cloud com­put­ing promis­es im­proved ser­vice re­li­a­bil­i­ty; ac­cess to more ro­bust in­fra­struc­ture; re-fo­cus­ing of scarce hu­man re­source; re­duced ad­min­is­tra­tive over­heads; ser­vice de­liv­ery and sup­port cost sav­ings and greater user sat­is­fac­tion.Through in­creas­ing avail­abil­i­ty of broad­band In­ter­net ac­cess and pro­lif­er­a­tion of mo­bile de­vices, cloud com­put­ing now of­fers ac­cess to ser­vices with­out con­cern for back­end soft­ware and hard­ware, or tech­ni­cal staffing re­quire­ments. This al­lows or­gan­i­sa­tions to fo­cus on the re­sults ob­tained rather than the tech­ni­cal de­tails of how the ser­vice de­liv­ery plat­form, or cloud, works.

The abil­i­ty to scale and flex is a crit­i­cal part of the ben­e­fit.

Cloud users can req­ui­si­tion ser­vices as need­ed, speed­ing the time de­ploy new ser­vices or in­crease op­er­a­tional ca­pac­i­ty. Cloud com­put­ing al­so of­fers an al­ter­na­tive ap­proach to trade in ser­vices. En­tre­pre­neurs and de­vel­op­ers stand to ben­e­fit by us­ing cloud-based col­lab­o­ra­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools to par­tic­i­pate in ge­og­ra­phy-in­de­pen­dent de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives. Off-shore pro­gram­ming, e-learn­ing, gov­ern­ment ser­vice de­liv­ery and pro­cure­ment be­come pos­si­ble in ways that over­come the lim­i­ta­tions of tra­di­tion­al ap­proach­es.

This con­nec­tion with in­no­va­tion is im­por­tant to note. In­no­va­tion is best fos­tered in en­vi­ron­ments where busi­ness­es can es­tab­lish them­selves quick­ly to meet a new mar­ket de­mand. With cloud com­put­ing, the in­ge­nu­ity and cre­ative­ness of in­no­va­tors and cre­ators can reach the mar­ket with un­par­al­leled speed, by­pass­ing cor­rupt bu­reau­cra­cies, ad­min­is­tra­tive red tape, tar­iffs and oth­er mar­ket in­ef­fi­cien­cies.

Caribbean fo­cus

Sub­stan­tial chal­lenges stand in the way of cloud com­put­ing in Caribbean. These go be­yond the tra­di­tion­al ob­sta­cles in the cur­rent de­bate on cloud com­put­ing, such as da­ta pri­va­cy and con­trols, ven­dor "lock-in," and ju­ris­dic­tion­al and sov­er­eign­ty is­sues.Ob­sta­cles to the adop­tion of cloud com­put­ing in the Caribbean cen­tre pri­mar­i­ly on in­fra­struc­ture and gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy.

As long as we ac­cess In­ter­net-based ser­vices–whether shop­ping, bank­ing, re­search, or spend­ing time on so­cial net­works–we are en­gag­ing in cloud com­put­ing.The re­al ques­tion is: where are the re­al eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits of our cloud com­put­ing be­ing di­rect­ed?

While cloud com­put­ing de-em­pha­sis­es phys­i­cal lo­ca­tion, cloud in­fra­struc­ture must be phys­i­cal­ly lo­cat­ed in some ju­ris­dic­tion. That ju­ris­dic­tion re­ceives the eco­nom­ic ben­e­fit that comes from host­ing the phys­i­cal da­ta cen­tres and man­ag­ing the ser­vices. This is why the coun­tries with the high­est con­cen­tra­tion of In­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture, In­ter­net con­tent and con­nec­tiv­i­ty are the ones re­ceiv­ing the great­est eco­nom­ic ben­e­fit from the cloud.

From a na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment stand­point, se­cur­ing the in­fra­struc­ture nec­es­sary for cloud ser­vices, the back­bone for busi­ness in the dig­i­tal econ­o­my, is key. Gov­ern­ments and busi­ness should place pri­or­i­ty on en­sur­ing that the phys­i­cal touch­down point for cloud com­put­ing–as well as the as­so­ci­at­ed sup­port ecosys­tem–is lo­cat­ed with­in their ju­ris­dic­tion.Re­mem­ber, cloud ser­vices are re­defin­ing busi­ness and ser­vice de­liv­ery in the dig­i­tal econ­o­my.

Com­mend­ably, the T&T gov­ern­ment in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the World Bank is prepar­ing a strate­gic map to roll out a na­tion­wide high speed broad­band net­work. This is an im­por­tant step. Oth­er im­por­tant steps in the cre­ation of "na­tion­al clouds" in­clude, well-de­fined na­tion­al broad-band strat­e­gy; es­tab­lish­ment of lo­cal In­ter­net ex­change points; strength­en­ing of oth­er crit­i­cal lo­cal In­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture; en­act­ment of leg­is­la­tion to sup­port ecom­merce and to pro­tect against cy­ber­crimes; and nur­tur­ing the rel­e­vant hu­man re­source ca­pac­i­ty.

The de­vel­op­ment of cloud ser­vices re­quires a de­lib­er­ate shift in pol­i­cy pri­or­i­ti­za­tion. This in­cludes, for ex­am­ple, greater sup­port for pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships to dri­ve de­vel­op­ment of cloud com­put­ing cen­ters where lo­cal cloud ap­pli­ca­tions can be de­vel­oped, test­ed and de­ployed.It should al­so in­clude de­lib­er­ate strat­e­gy to im­ple­ment more e-gov­ern­ment so­lu­tions do­mes­tic-cloud-based; to make lo­cal and re­gion­al busi­ness­es more aware of do­mes­tic cloud ap­pli­ca­tions.

Giv­en the ad­van­tages the cloud pro­vides, coun­tries in the re­gion are right to ag­gres­sive­ly pur­sue poli­cies that in­crease in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) in­fra­struc­ture and in­crease avail­abil­i­ty of cloud com­put­ing ser­vices. For busi­ness­es and gov­ern­ments, the is­sue is not whether we should go to the cloud: we are al­ready there. The ques­tion that should in­stead be asked is how do we bring the true eco­nom­ic val­ue of the cloud in­to our lo­cal en­vi­ron­ment; then set about to ac­tu­al­ly make it hap­pen.

Not every coun­try need pur­sue the same path. Find­ing the com­plete so­lu­tion for or­gan­i­sa­tions or coun­tries in­volves many stake­hold­ers and many pos­si­ble ap­proach­es. But it is safe to con­clude that cloud com­put­ing must be in the ar­se­nal of any gov­ern­ment or busi­ness se­ri­ous about spurring in­no­va­tion and pur­su­ing growth in the dig­i­tal econ­o­my.

Mov­ing to the Cloud

Busi­ness­es:

If your or­gan­i­sa­tion has been look­ing in­to util­is­ing cloud ser­vices, here are the top 10 things you need to do:

�2 Un­der­stand the dif­fer­ent types of cloud ser­vices: app, stor­age, plat­form, hy­brid

�2 Not every app be­longs in the cloud. Choose wise­ly which will ben­e­fit from the economies of scale and which you should keep in-house

�2 Size your in­fra­struc­ture: know be­fore­hand what pro­cess­ing and stor­age re­sources you will need

�2 Test the per­for­mance of your apps in the cloud

�2 En­sure that you can live with the provider's SLA

�2 Check the provider's pri­va­cy pol­i­cy

�2 Ver­i­fy the provider's se­cu­ri­ty mech­a­nisms and pol­i­cy

�2 Agree to a con­tract that is aligned with busi­ness needs; es­pe­cial­ly en­sure that scal­ing up does not be­come pro­hib­i­tive­ly ex­pen­sive

�2 Hu­man re­source de­vel­op­ment: switch in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy mind­sets from as­sets to ser­vices

�2 Be strate­gic: utilise the cloud to de­liv­er more ca­pac­i­ty, pro­vide new ca­pa­bil­i­ties, and spur in­no­va­tion in ways which gives the busi­ness a re­al com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage

Gov­ern­ments:

Gov­ern­ments seek­ing to in­vest in na­tion­al cloud in­fra­struc­ture should:

�2 En­cour­age the roll­out of broad­band and oth­er high speed ac­cess tech­nolo­gies

�2 Recog­nise the need for In­ter­net Ex­change Points to keep lo­cal traf­fic lo­cal

�2 Un­der­stand the le­gal and ju­ris­dic­tion­al is­sues for busi­ness­es and in­di­vid­u­als us­ing the cloud in your na­tion

�2 Change the man­date of reg­u­la­tors to­wards a more de­vel­op­ment-ori­ent­ed set of ac­tiv­i­ties

�2 Cre­ate pub­lic aware­ness of the is­sues sur­round­ing In­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment

Bevil Wood­ing is the chief knowl­edge of­fi­cer at Con­gress WBN, an in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion and an In­ter­net strate­gist with US-re­search firm, Pack­et Clear­ing House.

He is al­so the founder of­Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, cre­at­ing Caribbean-fo­cused dig­i­tal con­tent, apps and train­ing pro­grammes.

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