Re: [kictanet] Kenya IGF 2011 List Discussions Day 4 Cloud Computing
Hello Listners, Under the cloud business concept - Infrastructure as a Service - IaaS, there are private clouds – which Francis alluded to in an earlier posting. That is a dedicated, or leased, portion of a provider’s hosted facilities. Also, the public cloud which are designed as a multi-tenant environment. More regulatory compliance is required on public clouds since these clouds do not observe geographical boundaries. Therefore, industries which are concerned with the physical location of sensitive data may be reluctant to go public, they would not pass an audit. In terms of cost, public are less expensive due to its multi tenancy concept. Organizations do not buy, install, operate or maintain servers or other equipment. However, private are more expensive since the client has to transfer all the computing power and underlying software to the providers site. Considering these scenarios, it is imperative to define a niche and build policy frameworks that would spur the growth of either one or both. Regards, Sam ________________________________ From: Barrack Otieno <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: Skunkworks forum <[email protected]>; KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <[email protected]> Sent: Tue, July 5, 2011 2:23:23 PM Subject: Re: [kictanet] Kenya IGF 2011 List Discussions Day 4 Cloud Computing Note: Forwarded message is attached. Barrack Otieno ([email protected]) is not on your Guest List | Approve sender | Approve domain
Regarding cloud computing, its great to see efforts by the GOK to try and exploit the potential of the cloud in data storage, sharing of computing resources, not the least carrying out virtualization with the purpose of cutting costs and scaling computing resources to cater for the needs of a maximum number of end users. Nonetheless, the cloud in my humble opinion has been misconstrued to mean many things to many people. Although the concept its not new (The concept of the Internet Cloud was conceived in the 60's), its just in the last five years that cloud computing has gained traction amongst businesses and end users. Even in the geek culture there is quite a lot of disagreement on the definitions, models, implementations and categories of cloud computing. These arguments still continue... The concepts Infrastructure As A Service (IAAS), Platform As A Service (PAAS), Software As A Service (SAAS) are in my humble opinion a MOU (memorandum of understanding) of describing the abstractions of a cloud. For some people (mainly geeks), these categories are not exhaustive and as newer applications and cloud models come up in the future, these categories are bound to change. With respect to Kenya, increased Internet growth will mean demand for content/data and conversely this lead to establishment of more data centres. Yet as Barrack pointed out, these data centers are fragmented and do not share their cloud computing infrastructure with anyone else. This is not entirely their fault, as universal cloud computing standards and APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) still have to be developed (This is an issue that will be discussed here in Nairobi during the IGF). This is just a thought, do you think we should have a national cloud similar to the national power grid (despite its glaring inefficiencies) for which disparate data centres can share cloud computing infrastructure? Besides the issue of sharing infrastructure, there are several overarching issues that also need to be addressed with respect to cloud computing namely privacy (user and data), security and stability of a given cloud or cloud provider. This is where I ask the honorable PS, how do you intend to address these issues? Are they going to be included in any future legislation regarding cyber space? Please shed some light.
participants (2)
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Paul M -
Sam Aguyo