Head in the clouds?

Only 3.9% of Africans have access to the internet, but as access to the web speeds up, Michael Dynes looks at the potential for usage-based “cloud computing” to take to the skies for business on the continent

Cloud computing, the notion that you need own nothing more than a keyboard, a screen and a navigational tool such as a mouse or a touch pad, and yet still have access to all the processing and storage power of the internet, has its advocates and detractors, its bulls and bears – probably in equal measure.
But rarely has such an innovation in computer architecture triggered such frenzied debate about the shape of the future as it has in Africa.
Anyone who uses an email server in Africa is already using cloud computing – though most people don’t know it. Everything you send or receive can be stored at the service provider’s data centre, rather than on your own personal computer or mobile platform, freeing up scarce computer space. Most people think nothing of it.

Computer users are now being told that owning their own software and hardware is passé. Why spend all that hard cash on buying complicated hardware and software, which is expensive to operate and maintain, when you can simply rent it at a fraction of the price? Hardware and software capabilities can now be sliced and diced, and sold to multiple users, who simply pay a monthly bill for their usage in much the same way as they pay for their consumption of electricity or water, effectively banishing everything but the means of access “to
the clouds”. Cecil Barry, founder and CEO of Johannesburg-based Media Cloud Networks, sees the arrival of the new bandwidth as the dawning of a new age of computing in Africa. “No more expensive hardware, horrendous electricity bills, local storage requirements or expensive software licences. The cloud is the Holy Grail of computing,” he told Africa investor. Software innovations such as Dropbox, the web-based file hosting service that uses cloud computing to enable users to store and share files and folders with other users across the internet, is one of many illustrations of the advantages offered by the new computing architecture. Apart from eliminating the need to email oneself with updated files from one platform, say a laptop, with outdated files held on a desktop or a mobile handset, the application provides one of the most graphic ways to illustrate what cloud computing can do. “The popularity of smart phones and devices like iPads prove that people are becoming more and more mobile, and need to work away from the office,” says Barry. “Consumers simply need a place to store their stuff whether it’s a file, a software licence or a piece of music – as long as they have access to it when they need it. The same thing is beginning to happen at a corporate level. It does not matter where assets are stored so long as they are accessible.” But would the chief accountant or CEO of a small or mediumsized company, never mind a giant corporation, be happy to outsource the company payroll, designs for a new product, or marketing strategy for taking on rivals? Perhaps not yet. For privacy advocates, who fear that companies hosting cloud services will be able to control and monitor – lawfully or unlawfully – ever increasing
amounts of the communication and data stored between user and provider, there are profound confidentiality concerns. While for those who subscribe to conspiracy theories, there is a gnawing fear that cloud computing is little more than a trap aimed at forcing more and more people to buy into proprietary computing systems that may end up costing them more over the long-term.

African potential

“The market is in its infancy and so probably isn’t worth much at the moment,” says Barry. “But significant amounts are being invested in new data centres and fibre-optic networks throughout Africa. The growth will be exponential over the next few years, and this will become the way computing gets done in the future,” he added. Telecomscompanies, internet service providers and entrepreneurs will be the drivers of that transformation, he said. Moreover, advocates such as John Savingeau, president of Pacific-Tier Communications, the Hawaii-based IT firm, are adamant that cloud computing will not only change Africa, but transform Africa’s relations with the rest of the world. Cloud computing, and the wireless and broadband technologies that enable it, will provide Africa with “an entry point into the global community, without which no individual can expect to function as anything other than a victim or a donor recipient,” he told the 2010 Digital Africa Summit in Uganda.“Africa more than any other continent needs to be able to outsource its computing infrastructure,” Liam Terblanche, Chief Information Officer at Accsys, a software company specialising in people management systems, told Africa investor. “People take access to computing power for granted in the rest of the world, but in Africa it is not a given.
Here, the need is still dire.” Already in large parts of the developed world, expensive in-house private sector hardware and software is in retreat. The pace of change has been so fast that some forecasters anticipate that around 25% of all companies will no longer have in-house IT infrastructure within three years. Judging by this trend, the days when companies used large, powerhungry servers, housed in expensive air-conditioned rooms, appear to be numbered.

Large cloud computing service providers, such as Google, Amazon and Salesforce, along with a string of IT firms actively involved in cloud computing applications, including Microsoft, IBM, Dell, Hewlett Packard and Fujitsu, have assumed the mantle of evangelists, and are on a mission to convince users that this is the wave of the future – insisting that if you don’t get on board now you run the risk of being banished to the stone age forever.Swathes of these companies have arrived on African soil to preach their message, hoping to sign up millions of new converts along the way. Microsoft, which now has 13 offices from Cape Town to Dakar, is forging partnerships with telecoms companies in big economies like Nigeria, Angola and Kenya, as well as second-tier economies like Ghana, Tanzania and Uganda, to provide new data services, while IT specialist Novell has teamed up with Vodacom with ambitions to put the entire African continent “under the cloud” by 2015.

Practicality and privacy

Cloud computing not only has appeal for large corporates. It could leapfrog some of the more formidable obstacles faced by small and medium enterprises, which often do not generate sufficient turnover to justify the large-scale capital expenditure needed to obtain and service in-house computing power, which has inhibited, if not crippled, their growth and development. It also has the potential to totally transform educational provision, replacing dogged-eared textbooks and chalk and blackboard lessons with online study aids and web-streamed lectures. Unlike ardent advocates, Liam Terblanche from Accys is somewhat hesitant to announce the imminent arrival of the digitalised Promised Land, however. The success of cloud computing in Africa will hinge on the provision of the primary infrastructure needed to host it, particularly stable power supplies, and low-cost, high-speed broadband. But at present, that infrastructure is not good even in South Africa, let alone the rest of Africa. Nevertheless, the enabling environment has improved significantly over the past decade. The days when you could only access the internet from a dial-up connection – which took five minutes to turn a page – are, mercifully, a distant memory. The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization estimates that the number of internet users in Africa has grown by 1,809% over the past ten years. That is a growth rate three times faster than any other region in the world. Yet still only 3.9% of Africans have access to the internet. Nevertheless, cloud computing enabling infrastructure – power and broadband – is available in most South African cities. If the electricity grid ever fails, an ever-present reality in Africa, all business is paralysed, however.

“In most metropolitan areas it is currently possible to get 350-500 megabit broadband – actual not advertised,” says Terblanche. “You can get faster but it is still very expensive. You need at least one gigabit for cloud computing to be an attractive option. The 3G networks are too slow. But things are improving. The arrival of the fibre-optic cables is going to have a big impact. You will see things change dramatically in the next 18 months,” he added. In rural South Africa, not to mention Africa north of the Limpopo, there is further to go – but even here things are improving. “Cloud computing in Africa holds great promise,” Gareth James, Senior Systems Engineer at the South African offices of Florida-based Citrix Systems,
told Africa investor. “It may serve as a mechanism to extend computing power to the majority of the continent. Wherever there is cellular phone reception, you have a link to remote computing. It can be seen as the democratisation of computing as we extend it to the masses.