Published on the 30/05/2013 | Written by Newsdesk
The Australian Government has unveiled a National Cloud Computing Strategy intended to boost public sector, consumer and enterprise cloud confidence…
Communications minister Senator Stephen Conroy unveiled a new National Cloud Computing Strategy during Sydney’s Cebit 2013 conference and committed the Federal Government to being a leader in the adoption of cloud services.
The strategy hinges around three pillars, namely: that the Australian Government will take a more aggressive stance as a cloud computer user; that tools and codes will be developed to allow smaller businesses and consumers to feel confident about a decision to buy cloud based services; and finally that the nation will nurture the skills and business landscape which will support a vibrant cloud sector in Australia.
While the goals are laudable, exactly how they will be achieved remains as foggy as Sydney’s autumn mornings which this week delayed the Senator’s arrival at Cebit for several hours.
For example while AGIMO (the Australian Government Information Management Office) is charged with coming up with a plan to encourage more federal agency cloud adoption, and the Australian Computer Society will lead an initiative to develop a voluntary cloud consumer protocol which cloud purveyors will be encouraged to embrace – exactly how these initiatives will bear fruit in terms of increased cloud adoption remains unclear.
Similarly, although the strategy, which can be downloaded from www.dbcde.gov.au acknowledges the lack of ICT and cloud-specific skills in the market, it is sketchy on how more of the right skills can be nurtured, saying only that more details regarding discussions with the tertiary education sector will follow in 2013.
While Senator Conroy is enthusiastic about cloud computing, which is after all a key use-scenario for Australia’s National Broadband Network, other speakers at the Cebit conference were more measured. Patrick Maes, ANZ’s chief technology officer, for example said that it remained wedded to private rather than public clouds. While this was partly to meet regional regulatory requirements he noted that at present, “Most cloud providers don’t have contractual maturity to offer guaranteed service levels…and what happens to data at the end of an engagement?”
