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.

Running with Mich's argument on the "economics of it"... Do we really need (or MUST we have) a DC comparable to Amazon or Rackspace grades for hosting to be done locally - and in this specific case, opendata.go.ke? How does KRA manage (or is it survive)? Even with all their downtime issues, they still run a competent DC, at least in my view, and this has brought enormous efficiencies countrywide. Most of all, each downtime, brings a new set of practical knowledge to the folks there on how NOT to do it. What of Equity bank with their over 6 million clients? How do they do it? Am informed Orange has over 2000 sites hosted on 3 servers physical servers. Safaricom: probably more sites on less equipment. I beg to be educated on what is a Data Center, meanwhile here are my two cowrie shells: To host opendata.go.ke locally we require approximately 3 servers and bandwidth and some real estate for the rack (am told Kukubo has an entire rack of sun servers sitting idle - anafanyia nini?). If KRA does it, and Equity bank does it among a host of others, yet they are not industry players but consumers, really for ICT board this should be a no brainer! To claim that we require "political stability" to host our data locally is a comical joke. For crying out loud: there are 40 million Kenyans physically "hosted" in Kenya day in day out, with all its potholes and blackouts, kwani hii data iko na nini? Really let's stop busy-bodying and making all sorts of excuses. Capacity is not an issue. Period! Regards Eugene Lidede | Chief Technology Officer | Synergy Systems Limited 6th Floor, Phoenix House, Kenyatta Ave. | Cell: +254 721 289497/476367 | Tel: +254 20 2113163 live.mystocks.co.ke | www.propertykenya.com | www.mystocks.co.ke Outstanding Online Investment Content Provider 2009 - Computer Society of Kenya -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Michuki Mwangi Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2011 11:34 AM To: Eugene Lidede Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions Subject: Re: [kictanet] Open Data - Where does it sit?- its just the beginning. 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. _______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list [email protected] http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Unsubscribe or change your options at http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/eugene%40synergy.co.ke The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development. KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

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.

On 7/13/11 12:41 PM, Walubengo J wrote:

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...

While your point is valid i believe the same would apply to a non-data center building. However the construction boom seems to be ignorant of such fears if the public media information is anything to go by. The point here being that the data centers are being built to host local content. To avoid the capital flight and importation of local content for better efficiency and lower costs of access. In addition such facilities are fundamental to tapping innovation. The International data will come if the market is attractive enough. We just need to start being able to host relevant local content here.

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.

Walu, unless am mistaken the mentioned laws are there to govern the collection and use of the data. For instance, the Financial Services Providers, Hospitals are bound to store data for set periods and how it should be stored. The solution provider offers a solution that meets the clients requirements. However the cloud services is not responsible if the client decides to delete customer data - would they be held accountable for allowing the client to delete their own data?. I highly doubt.

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.

+1 on KDN. Further we need other players as well (read non-carrier). This will enhance the competition which = lower costs and better QoS. Am more keen to see local clients taking up the space and from the Region (banks in Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi). That will definitely make us the Hub. The International folks will just spice up the market - but they are not necessarily key. The long term objective is to see our Internet usage shift from the current over 90% international to 90% local and 10% international. Then we shall have succeeded. Regards, Michuki.

Bwana PS, On 7/13/11 1:52 PM, [email protected] wrote:

IT infrastructure is in place but non of us is talking about content. We wait to complain when foreigners start doing it.

My thoughts. If the GoK states that over the next 24months we are going to move the datasets from the Socrata platform to Kenya. prior to this, i.e in the next 18 months we shall issue a tender document providing all the requisite data information of the cloud hosting services we require. The winning bidder will get to host the data sets once awarded and hosting will have to be local. What impact is that likely to have?. Regards, Michuki.