Mich, I agree with all ur submission - except for the political stability thing. Of what use is your "commercial-building-cum-data-center" if some group of youth chanting "Haki-yetu" burned it down because someone over-counted or under-counted some votes? Methinks this is one reason why Kenya - despite its many undersea cables may not attract international data to host locally the way say Mauritius does... Also, laws come in handy because the owner of the data knows that his information within the host country is subjected to similar standards of access, modification, deletion, protection - over and above the commercial contract. In the US there are a host of data specifc laws (Sarbanes Oxley - for financial data, HIPPA - for medical data, etc) that players in the US markets must contend with to increase assurance that once you surrender your data there, it has a lesser risk of compromise. Am glad to hear KDN is building some data center and I just hope we can up our environment (political, legal and others) to ensure they succeed in having local and international customers. walu. --- On Wed, 7/13/11, Michuki Mwangi <[email protected]> wrote: From: Michuki Mwangi <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Open Data - Where does it sit?- its just the beginning. To: "Walubengo J" <[email protected]> Cc: "KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions" <[email protected]> Date: Wednesday, July 13, 2011, 11:34 AM Walu, On 7/13/11 8:44 AM, Walubengo J wrote:
But on a more serious note, an operational data center requires more than one agency to deliver. You need reliable power (KP&L), you need reliable water supply (City Council?), you need reliable security (read vandalism/cable cuts), you need laws (Data-Protection Act to begin with) and yes - even if you had all the above, you will still need reliable Political stability before anyone can trust you enough to let you host their data locally.
The concept of DC and and more specifically "Carrier Neutral" Data Centers is soley driven by the economics of it. Therefore having Data Centers is not subject to political stability or existence of data laws, etc. I will elaborate. IMHO an Carrier Neutral Data Center Owner is a Commercial building Landlord. The owner provides a building, Power + cooling and security. 90% of all buildings in the city and its surrounding have managed to do so successfully. . The only difference betweeen a commercial building and a carrier neutral DC is that instead of office partitionings and fittings they install equipment racks and cables (overhead or under). They dont buy switches or routers or servers. Period. The KDNs, Jamii, AccessKenya, WOL, Safaricom, KPLC, et al, just build their fiber to the building and terminate in a Meet-me-Room. When a customer walks in, he chooses the floor (based on availability) picks their preferred carrier, power grid provider (cant wait for that day), lockable cabinet or shared, etc. They pay for the space on the way out and pay their carrier based on the service agreement monthly. The owner of the Datacenter has no idea what one pays for connectivity. For the above reasons, when a client like the GOK puts up a tender for cloud services. Carrier X or Data Center Y dont often bid. Bidders for such tenders are often customers of Carrier X and Data Center Y. Thus GoK will often sign agreements with the winners of the tender for cloud services i.e Company Z. However, its for Company Z to maintain a relationship with Carrier X and Data Center Y for quality of service. They will inturn (Carrier X and DC Y) have agreements with other service providers to ensure they maintain their SLA with Company Z. (the scenario may differ where Company Z is a one stop shop) Therefore the binding agreement between Client GOK and Company Z is the deal breaker. What does Company Z offer in terms of data protection, security, redundancy, etc. IMHO the law only offers a safeguard that should company Z fail on their contractual agreement there is a legal process that supports my case. Its in the business interest for company Z that they deliver on their obligations, failure to which amounts to business loss.
am afraid in Kenya we do score slightly below average on all the above - for now even though slowly improving. And so we should not complain too much for having found our government data sitting somewhere in the US.
Under what laws are our government data sitting on at the moment?. Regards, Michuki.