Well said John Gitau, you have introduced interesting perspectives such as Net Neutrality which has been a topic of discussion for two consecutive years in the Internet Governance Forum and is likely to feature this year. It advocates for all traffic on the Internet to be treated equally, i hope Mich and other peering experts can comment on this, meanwhile i am ropping in Vladimir Radunovic a key Net neutrality crusader to comment on why net neutrality is important for developing economies. On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 1:54 PM, John Gitau <[email protected]> wrote:

So to add on to Michuki's post earlier, As a country, someone somewhere should be looking at the strategy (short,medium and long term) for Kenya as a regional ICT hub and where data centers and cloud services come in. They should be tying that into the infrastructure and the technical know how. Carrier specific Data centers will take care of most of the demand from multinationals.

What I have concern for is how the average Kenyan takes advantage of this computing capacity, There is an awareness 'hole' that might end up just creating excess unnused capacity (this might not necessarily affect a carrier neutral DC). It should be so easy to host 'stuff', stream 'stuff', share 'stuff' with my friends and neighbors. Start small, install IP camera's in your estate, share the feed, get excited; when your storage needs surpass what you have, go cloud or whatever. My point here being that the issue is not so much cloud as how to use the cloud computing resources - for most people. Alot of people say cloud and expect everyone to understand what they mean.

This discussion for me brings out other issues from the woods: - Net neutrality - Local content - and where it is hosted. - Unbundled local loops - Im so happy to see Zuku's fiber outside my door, but that ties me to Zuku, imagine if the city council owned that fiber and I could choose my provider based on services I need. - At the counties I think the local governement/municipal has a huge opportunity to take control of how fiber connectivity gets to the homes and actually make money off it. Maybe we should have a model 'connected county'.

In the meantime, we'll trudge on, the way I see it, this road ends at a happy place. I also expect a major disruption soon.

JGitau

On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 1:15 PM, Barrack Otieno <[email protected]> wrote:

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Thank you Mich for the insightfull response coming at a time when we are looking forwad to the open data initiative at the end of this week,  John welcome on board the thread is still open feel free to comment

On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 12:56 PM, Maux <[email protected]> wrote:

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Hi Guys, My understanding of cloud computing is basically a shared/distributed service that allows for the massive storage of data. Through application interfaces a developer/entrepreneur can access this data and make a business out of it and most importantly scale. Using Google as an example it may not be able develop every niche product out there so it opens up its platform to developers either through android or chrome and plans to take a cut through its payment system google wallet. In the case of Kenya, Government owns/holds most of the data available and hence should lead the way in creating a Shared services and Cloud computing policy. That is why the Open Data Initiative is an idea whose time has come. What is the most efficient way of managing this process? I think making businesses out of it is probably the most sustainable way. By the way I am John Karanja Founder of Whive.com and we too are offering a SMS based cloud service for storing mobile contacts across web and mobile platforms. This is my first post on skunkworks and I hope to interact with you guys in the future. Best, John

On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 12:37 PM, Barrack Otieno <[email protected]> wrote:

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Thank you Paul, Lucy and Aki for responding to issues raised by listers, i do hope we will all be available for the Face to Face meeting to cement our networks and look at how we can assist our governmnet since we are part and parcel of, feel free to continue contributing to the debate.

Best Regards

On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 8:29 AM, aki <[email protected]> wrote:

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@Paul Kukubo, thanks for the input. Some of us very aware of the cloud opportunities and applications. Whether we take virtualization of data storage to creating terminal services, these environments exist. Whether SME or startups, they need cost cutting and affordable ways to maintain ICT continuity without breaking the bank.

You bring a key point about Govt being the driver of data storage and management, yet there is a big disconnect between the private sector such as ISPs, Telcos, Developers and Govt. At this infant stage of clouding, in whatever context we may look at, Govt support is key as a catalyst of what cloud services could become. I strongly insist that all Govt projects should be kept within the borders and systems of KE. We need this ownership and aslo the ability to use the existing infrastructure. Govt needs to open up the world class data centre for private/public use and also its infrastructure like fiber so that anyone planning a system or such can know what the options are, besides other networks and services. There is no need to put up many data centres, if we already core ones in place.

As govt representative, you also need to comeup with a development register that will notify Kenyans of planned projects and those interested can have ample planning and resource time to engage in such projects.

Rgds.

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