Gov’t urged: Jump into Cloud

Following last year’s 12th ASEAN Telecomunications and Information Technology Ministers Meeting (Telmin) and 13th ASEAN Telecommunications and Information Technology Senior Officials Meeting (Telsom) held in Cebu, an official of a leading independent IT provider said that more government agencies would be ready to go into Cloud computing this year.

“This year, it’s the government’s turn to jump into the Cloud,” said Cyril Rocke, Data One Asia president and chief executive officer in a statement yesterday.

DataOne Asia launched last year a cloud-based business productivity and communications service for enterprises that comes with expert, round-the-clock support and last year, the Philippines was established as a promising market for cloud when many enterprises, as well as small and medium businesses (SMBs), have learned to adopt the technology in their operations.

In his speech delivered by Vice President Jejomar Binay during last year’s conference, President Benigno Aquino III said the government would need a lot from technology to be able to deliver the changes they want to implement in all the government networks around the country.

According to Rocke, Cloud computing will definitely help the government achieve this saying that Aquino has also recently showed his optimism for a government cloud computing project that will revolutionize childhood education in the country.

trends

“The government adoption of cloud computing technology will be one of the biggest trends in 2013. First, government agencies intend to avoid capital expenditures whenever possible, since they cause a long, tedious and sometime risky process. All capital expenditures are subject to RA 9184. Because the process is long, there is a tendency to ‘over-procure’ which results in unnecessary costs,” Rocke said. “

The adoption of cloud computing would downsize the government’s lengthy process of acquiring resources and services, and would cut costs, he said.

defined

According to virtual analysts and IT experts cloud computing are services hosted over the Internet.

These services include infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, and software as a service.

Rocke said cloud computing would allow the government agencies to deal with reliable IT service providers, thus saving more time, man-hours, skills development and troubleshooting.

He said that the government would benefit with the the available option of a subscription-based procurement of highly customizable cloud computing services.

“They can subscribe for one month or several years, and the resources they procure can be increased or decreased on demand. Therefore, the risk of making wrong decisions is eliminated. If the wrong resources or application is procured, the engagement can be easily terminated,” he said.

customized services

Aside from being reasonably priced, subscription-based cloud computing services are also customizable according to the specific needs and requirement of every government agency eliminating the need to purchase more computer hardware or software for upgrades./Reporter Aileen Garcia-Yap