African governments, unlike governments in the West, are considering cloud infrastructure implementations both to support their e-government strategies and to empower business, says Huawei Technologies.
Ron Raffensperger, Huawei Technologies CTO: IT Data Center Solution Sales, said during a working visit to South Africa this month that the public sector in Africa was taking a unique approach to cloud computing in public service delivery.
"They are taking a different path - effectively blazing a new trail in terms of the cloud in public service," he said. "Where governments in the West harness cloud computing for e-government, to improve public service delivery, African governments in talks with Huawei are looking to extend the benefits of their cloud infrastructure to the citizens too, with a view to supporting business development." In effect, cloud looks set to become yet another of the services governments provide their citizens.
He noted the difference may be due to the fact that Western nations have a plethora of private sector cloud service providers, while many African nations are still under-served in terms of cloud services. "Whether this trend is the result of a desire to support businesses or whether cost recovery is part of the motivation, we see African governments seeking to extend the benefits of current and future cloud implementations."
The questions these governments are grappling with now, said Raffensperger, are the implementation and management models. "Governments are assessing the best models for building and running data centres, billing and marketing. They are looking at issues like whether public-private partnerships are the best solution, and whether partnership or outsource models will be most viable." For those who have already embarked on the journey, the first steps are typically relatively small implementations that can be built on in future, and these are usually carried out in partnership with a private sector partner or state telecoms service provider.
"Giving local enterprises access to a state cloud infrastructure is an interesting concept that opens up many opportunities," said Raffensperger. "For one thing, it can help to defray the cost of the implementation - although this should not be the primary goal of a state cloud. It can also help keep data within the country, so allaying security and governance fears and the costs involved in moving data to data centres offshore. By offering a cloud model akin to the Amazon Web Services model, African governments can fast-track their nation's adoption of cloud, and through subsidies for certain categories of business, they can empower entrepreneurs to grow."
Huawei, which works with the public sector across the continent, is excited about the potential of cloud to drive rapid beneficial change to both public and private sector organisations in Africa. "In the past decade, mobile revolutionised business and the lives of ordinary people. Now, cloud computing paired with mobile can magnify that revolutionary change, improving public service delivery, business and the lives of citizens," he said.
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