Cloud Computing, Government Cloud [G-Cloud] beckons: Which Way NIGERIA

For beginners, the United Kingdom’s released official document’ Government Cloud Strategy’  of March 2011 recognizes that the US National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) definition of cloud computing is the most widely adopted one, and has been adopted for G-Cloud; it states that: “Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g. networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or cloud provider interaction.” this is coming after the resistance to the cloud idea by the United Kingdom government.

Now enters Nigeria, every country after their initial resistance to the idea of cloud computing have come to the realization that the maths does add up after-all. Accordingly, the UK document confesses thus; “Cloud computing has brought about a step change in the economics and sustainability of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) enabled service provision. Government is committed to the adoption of cloud computing and delivering computing resources to users as needed (an on-demand delivery model). By exploiting innovations in cloud computing we will transform the public sector ICT estate into one that is agile, cost effective and environmentally sustainable.” … that is a thinking government being proactive!!!

It is sad that non of those in the Nigerian government as presently constituted has muted the idea of cloud computing talk-less of adopting a strategy to implement government computing in the public sector via the cloud.
We as a people shall benefit from the introduction of cloud computing in our developing public sector to enable us take advantage of the cost effectiveness and sustainability that are some of the derivable benefits synonymous with the cloud technology.

In the days ahead, I will be exploring in details the benefits, challenges and opportunities of early adoption of G-Cloud by the public sector in Nigeria.

Watch the space.