FINISHED COPY
NINTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM 2014
ISTANBUL, TURKEY
"CONNECTING CONTINENTS FOR ENHANCED
MULTI-STAKEHOLDER INTERNET GOVERNANCE"
WS22
CLOUDS AND MOBILE INTERNET - BENEFITING DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
04 SEPTEMBER 2014
14:30
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This is the output of the realtime captioning taken during the IGF Istanbul, Turkey, meetings. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> MODERATOR: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests. Welcome to the workshop and thank you all for joining us today. This workshop, we are focused on Cloud Computing and Mobile Internet. As all of you know, Cloud Computing and Mobile Internet are the hot topics in the last several years. This new emerging technology are not only hot topics for discussion, but also the power that have changed the ICT industry. Our hardware industry has changed. The software industry is changing now. Even the business model is quite different from that in the past.
In this workshop, we bring speakers from China, Kenya and Portugal to deliver their ideas and share their experience of practice. The first speaker is Professor Xiaofeng Tao at University of Pulse and Telecommunications. The second speaker is from Kenya, Fiona Asonga. Next speaker is Mr. Paulo Calcada, Professor in the University of Paleto. Also we have Vice President of (Indiscernible), Member of the Open Data Center Alliance, to give a speech. This workshop is divided into two parts. Four speakers will present their speech for 15 minutes each. Then we will have 30 minutes for questions and discussion. Remote participation are welcome to join us.
In the Cloud Computing era, the business model changes a lot. Infrastructure is a service. Platform is a service, and also software is a service. So everything, including the security, the storage, will be provided as a service. This kind of change will bring us great benefits. We will have an information infrastructure with more scalability and more reliability. And more cost effectiveness; however, we still face challenges and difficulties in Cloud Computing. Security is a problem. Privacy most people be concerned about.
Also, we can see from the industry, we can see the standards maybe a problem. From the end user, we think the probability and interoperability will be a big challenge for the Cloud Computing. Though we have faced all of these questions and problems, the speed of adoption of Cloud Computing is great. There is some number, as you can see from this slide, by the year 2016, more than 36 percentage storage will go to Cloud Computing. And the market of Cloud Computing will be reached more than 200 billion U.S. dollars in the year of 2016.
We can also say from 2010, many countries have launched national Cloud Computing plan and strategy. China launched Cloud service innovation suggestion in November of 2010. The United States also launched the Federal Cloud Computing Strategy in February, 2011. European Commission adopted a strategy for unleashing the potential of Cloud Computing in Europe in September, 2012. That is a very brave background of today's workshop.
Now we would like to invite speakers to share their experience in practice. First, Professor Xiaofeng Tao is from Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications. He is also the Director of National Engineering, Laboratory of the Mobile Communication. His speech will focus on the Development of Mobile Internet in China, and also an emphasis on the influence brought by the Mobile Internet. Professor TAO, please.
>> X. TAO: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, I'm from the University of Post and Telecommunication and a Member of CCIT. I'm very happy because my background is communication wireless. So you can see the data shows we are already in the time of Mobile Internet in China. Mobile Internet has gained popularity. People prefer to use mobile devices to connect with Internet. And the people will go even further in future. In other words, mobile communication is a promising industry because of increase in demand and rapid development.
Actually, we can look at Mobile Internet is kind of extension of Internet. With Mobile Internet, we don't have to keep staying with cable, instead, we can access the Internet with mobile devices at home or on the subway, almost everywhere in the world. This is to say where you have more chance to access the Internet with mobile devices, and various kinds of services have been provided for users such as social networks, online pay, radio broadcast, online games and so on.
The popularity of Mobile Internet results from rapid development of mobile communication. Especially the data rate third‑generation 3G has 2 Mb per second. For 4G it is 100 Mb per second. For 5G maybe in the near future 1 Gb per second. At the same time, you can see it is short range access technology, for example wireless LAN. The data rate is about 54 megabits per second. And new technology could use the LITE communication to make communication. Nowadays the data rate is 150 megabits per second. Of course it is still underway.
Here this slide shows some systems. In the 2006 we established network and data rate is 122 megabits per second. Now, days you can see 4G is 100 megabytes but this happened in the 2006. About three years later, the year 2009, we reached 1000 megabits per second, also initial step of 5G.
From this year, we also launched some project, for example, 5G project. And the data rate is about 10 gigabytes per second. Mobile Internet already has ability to support high-speed environment and can provide high-bit rate services such as high television and Mobile Internet, and the Cloud Computing, are perfectly suitable for each other. And Mobile Internet is a solid foundation of Cloud Computing. And computation capacity and storage capacity of Cloud Computing greatly improves the performance of mobile devices and connect to the Mobile Internet. Mobile applications require a large amount of data computation and the data is changed and greatly improves the user experience of Mobile Internet and the Internet scenario. Sometimes the people want you to enjoy a good experience.
On the other hand, as more mobility and popularity of mobile devices bring to the Cloud Computing more users and the more realtime data, which in turn, changes the functionality of Cloud Computing.
Here is our future. 5G trial network. Let's forget about some technical terms. Here you can see we can connect Cloud Computing as platform for 5G and make use of both great computation capacity and storage capacity of Cloud Computing. I mean use Cloud Computing, the function of Cloud Computing as entity of our base station, of 5G.
Of course we get an example where you get award in this area. There is development of Mobile Internet and has brought a lot of changes to China. By the end of last year, 2013, the land of Mobile Internet users had reached 500 million. The maximum size of modern Internet is about 17 billion. And smartphone sales increased to 320 million only in the year 2013.
In China, Mobile Internet has promoted the development of other industry and services and also provided some job opportunity and also promoted the development of other industry.
For citizen, for ordinary person, Mobile Internet also brings about a lot of changes. It is a great convenience of mobile phone. For example, at this time, I want to go to the airport. I use a taxi, TT, adjustable taxi, on our mobile phone. And then, a taxi driver is waiting downstairs and I take taxi to the airport.
So use mobile devices such as phone, we can stay in touch with the work and we can order food, film and also book a taxi and watch the latest news.
Mobile Internet also brings about new job opportunities. For example, some part‑time jobs, or blocks or microblocks, or rent online shop, or some develop IPPs.
Mobile Internet also brings about some new chance to education. For example, I want to take China Open University example. Usually, we want to establish some digital laboratory. You can see here there is some e‑Books, some of you sure, and some papers or others.
Nowadays, when we use Mobile Internet, we can use them for example, mobile terminal. We can use APPs, some APPs. And here, I also want to show you some true stories. True stories. One story happened far away from Beijing, the west part of China, it is about 4000 kilometers from Beijing. And some farmers sell grapes online. Grapes online. And each year, each farmer, earn about 1,600 dollars, U.S. dollars.
And a second story is about fruit. And this happened also very far away from Beijing. Some farmers use Internet to sell fruits. And income increased by about 16,000 U.S. dollars. Of course all of this could be happening in Alibaba Cloud Platform and I was very happy this time, in open ceremony, officers was expert and also to tell us something about Alibaba.
And Mobile Internet brings a number changes or chance to Chinese Internet companies. It brings more users, more product and services. For example, Ten Cent is Chinese company, famous for its messenger, QQ. Before the year 2009, Ten Cent QQ has only 15 million online users. After the popularity of Mobile Internet, its online user had increased by four times. Moreover, Mobile Internet was bringing 396 million it active users. Without Mobile Internet I don't think Ten Cent could have such amazing success.
Mobile Internet also promotes the emergence of startup companies. In China, and a lot of startup companies like Xiomi and others, set up Mobile Internet. Mobile Internet also brings challenges, and we also mentioned security. Malicious software, the first number of malicious software rose from 14,000 to 400,000 in a year. That means the year 2012. And also some fake Wi‑Fi when we have conference here. We also hear about fake Wi‑Fi.
And the second challenge is expense. The wireless Space Station much more expensive, as well as co‑network. And here I want to share some more about our future National Mobile Internet Programme, and last February, our Ministry of Industry and the Information Technology. The second is National Development and Reform Commission. The third is the Industry of (Indiscernible) and Technology, launched 2020. So objective here is to establish a platform, this platform, and it is to promote search and development of Fast G and also want to look for global cooperation in this area and also want to establish a system. The rate is 10 gigabytes per second and also some technical terms. And I want to use this to make a conclusion of my presentation. Mobile Internet brings changes and opportunities to us in daily life or education, for both people in urban areas also rural areas and for a big companies or startup company, and for Developing Country or Underdeveloped Country. Thank you very much.
(Applause)
>> MODERATOR: Thank you Professor TAO. Your speech really give us a nice view about how China benefit from Mobile Internet. Mobile Internet does really great significant changes to various aspects of social lives today. Applying Cloud Computing and Mobile Internet technology give us opportunities to boost the economy with less cost and more efficiency. Also, it will be very helpful to the development in the remote and rural area. Thank you.
Now I would like to introduce now a second speaker. Ms. Fiona Asonga from Kenya, CEO and Secretary of the Telecommunications Service Provider's Association of Kenya. The speech we will hear an introduction of Kenya, Internet Exchange Point and how this organisation enhances Internet use with fast, efficient and inexpensive services. The talk will last about 15 minutes. Ms. Fiona Asonga, please.
>> F. ASONGA: Thank you very much. So quickly, just to continue with the discussions we started. I will briefly just share on what Exchange Point has been doing over the years.
Basically, the Kenyan Exchange Point was set up in 2001 with three main functions: one was to keep the local Internet traffic local, second was to improve on communications speed and reduce latency that arises as a result of tromboning of traffic on to international links and back into the country; and third, was to give end users an enjoyable online experience.
And over the years, the exchange has grown and continues to increase in times of service that is we are offering. We have gone out of our way to work with global content providers to be able to bring as much international content as possible to the local scene, localizing of international content.
However, when it comes to Mobile Internet use and Cloud Computing, we do not -- are not unique to the challenges that have been highlighted. Just to mention, Kenya has a population of about 48 million. Of the 48 million, 70% have access to mobile phones. And of those who have access to mobile phones, a large percentage of them have phones that are able to access the Internet.
So we find that out of those who have mobile phones as per the last statistics collected by the regulator, based on the reports that our operators provide, about 21 million Kenyans have phones that enable them to get on to the Internet, or basically has access to the Internet, and this is a significant number when you compare to the population of the country. So, almost half of the Kenyans are able to access Internet services by various means. There is a lot of dependency on the mobile phone because is it the easiest that the customer can use in terms of accessing the Internet.
As a result, there is a lot of drive and demand by the consumer‑driven demand for applications and services over the mobile phones in large parts of the country. Some of the challenges that we experience in Kenya that have created these is the challenges of infrastructure deployment. Because of some areas being so sparsely populated, a lot of operators are not laying construction to those areas, especially for Internet services. You will find the mobile operators are in those parts of the country and are offering services. And so the mobile phone then will double as an Internet access device as well because of access to the mobile infrastructure.
So there are challenges of solutions. There has been for a long time, the challenges of the coastal bandwidth. Though, when we compare the cost of bandwidth in Kenya, vis‑a‑vis, other countries in the region, especially within East African Region, the price of Internet access in Kenya is significantly low, but it is still not low enough for every Kenyan to be able to afford access.
The other challenge that has been experienced is system interoperability of web and mobile application platforms. That is something that we find a lot of developers are now coming up. In Kenya we've seen a development of the developer space because the local developers are the best suited to be able to address the challenge of interoperability of the different platforms about which services could be delivered. And we are also seeing a lot of government services being introduced and mobile part of it is being incorporated into the whole solutions.
We have seen companies like SFP coming into provide solutions that offer mobile‑based access for the rural community. These are helping, for example, in the health sector. There is M health solution by SAP, that is about to keep track of maternal care and help in registering the birth as soon as the child is born. And those are the kinds of solutions we see more coming up within our space as a result of the mobile phone being the preferred gadget or device for last minute access.
Other challenges are around issues of content, development. Because of the need to be able to get services online, they need to be able to have the content available and this is something that has been worked on our public‑private partnership with the government to address the content development that we can assure there is sufficient services for on the Internet that can be accessed with the mobile phone by the general public. Without the services being available, then it becomes a bit difficult to be able to talk about the impact that Mobile Internet has had and the relevance of Cloud Computing within our space, because there has to be content that has been put on to the Cloud, either by the service providers who are offering these services to the public, that is a different government agency. And also by the public putting on their content on to the different Cloud Platforms that are available.
Another challenge we observed within our space is hosting. The truth is we do not have proper data centers outside of South Africa on the African continent. There are a few that have come up, a few companies that are trained in centers, but with that, in that kind of scenario, then there is a lot of demand for Cloud hosting services, because where else can we host our content? And part of it is our results of developmental challenges we are facing in times of ensuring the infrastructure we need to host properly is available.
Issues of power are still a challenge. In my country, I talk about Kenya because I'm a Kenyan. It is possible for you to have a blackout that goes on for 12 hours. It is possible for you to have power that is fluctuating so your house lights or office system is on and off like disco lights. And that is the kind of environment that makes it very difficult to have a proper hosting facility because then you would have to invest significantly into a power backup system that would be able to last up to 48 hours, which is a bit of a challenge in times of investment required to be able to have this in place.
So when we look at the benefits, vis‑a‑vis the challenges, as a country, we have a lot more to do to be able to overcome the challenges we face so we can be able to benefit the most possible benefits to achieve out of Cloud Computing. Mobile Internet has been our best strong point and we hope that we will be able to write on this as a result of that, those challenges. Some of the things that have been done taking Kenya as a case study on how ICT infrastructure has been managed and deployed, to ensure that Kenyans are able to benefit from online services, have been developing appropriate policing, and guiding documents in terms of how the country is going to move forward.
So we do have in place, for example, a national broadband strategy. We have an ICT master plan that looks into infrastructure and capacity within the country so that then we are able to see how shared services, using of Cloud Computing, using of Mobile Internet access, can all be maximized to be able to deliver the most possible services by the government online.
The other thing that has been done, the government has taken the approach of the public‑private partnership as the main way to move forward. So government is no longer putting in full budgets for ICT deployment, but the minister of ICT is leaving the process in developing public‑private partnerships for the different ICT deployments that have been undertaken in the country. Case‑in‑point, the team submarine cable is a consortium owned by the Kenyan government and telecommunication companies to be able to provide redundancy on the submarine cables to the country. We have the national fiber optic infrastructure that is again owned by government, run and operated by private sector company but also now opened up to be owned by other telecommunication operators as well.
This has been able to get at least right now, we have five bar connectivity across the entire country to the key governing locations where this is what we call in our country, counties. Every county in Kenya is connected to fiber from one service provider or another.
The other thing that the country has done is encouraging shared infrastructure through the communication authority of Kenya, operators did sign a Code of Practice that would be able to foster the sharing of infrastructure by various operators, and so with that in place, it means operators do not have to go and lay their own infrastructure well. But they could share. And mask from parameters who are already in those locations.
Then, a number of other policy interventions have been made by the ministry -- sorry, by the cabinet. And these are led by the President. These have included the incorporation of the construction of ICT infrastructure alongside all other infrastructures that have been deployed and that is from this year moving forward.
All roads being developed are being developed with cable ducts along the roads and across the roads, which should be able to accommodate and make it easy for infrastructure to be deployed. We have projects at the centere gauge railway rubbing from Mombasa to Uganda. And this is also being built to accommodate ICT infrastructure cable ducts alone and not cross it. We have national corridor pipeline project that is running from southern Sudan through Uganda, Kenya, to Mombasa where crude oil from the southern Lebanese region will be shipped off for export. And this entire project is accommodating the deployment of infrastructure alongside it. So there will be spaces for cable ducts and to accommodate spaces for ICT termination equipment alongside the project.
So those are the interventions that the government of Kenya and the private sector have been working on together to ensure that we are able to facilitate the deployment of infrastructure as much as possible. And that means when this projects are run alongside the current national fiber infrastructure project that is already deployed, we will have some sufficient redundancy. And it is hoped that we will continue to use the mobile phones and mobile infrastructure for the last mile solutions, especially in the areas where fiber will not or not there today because we have the northern part of the country that is very rocky, and in those areas, it is going to be difficult to dig fiber. So then mobile access interventions come into play.
Some of the strategies that made Cloud and Mobile Internet contribute significantly to the growth of our country that have been considered include, looking into how Cloud services can be hosted within our country. We are talking to companies like Cloud fair, for example, and asking them to bring in most of their traffic into the exchange point. So this is where the exchange point then begins to become a valuable tool in ensuring that the consumer gets an enjoyable experience in reducing the speed of communication, and reducing the costs of bandwidth to the end users and to service providers within our market space, because by encouraging the international hosting organisations to bring that content, we have brought in value to the end users. We brought in value to the end users. We have brought in value to the community as a whole and to the rest of the peer community.
We are also working closely with application developers to be able to continue to develop more mobile best applications, because it is going, for us, we see that as the easiest way of being able to offer online services like I mentioned earlier. And these are going to continue to be the tool for our access.
Because it is much easier to teach someone who has a phone to get on to the Internet, especially the older generations who are already using the phone and who are using it for SMS, to use the phone for other services as well that comes on a mobile platform in the format of an SMS and it is really website where all the data is collected and can be used and accessed on the web platform to offer public and cities and services.
We are focusing largely on public/private partnerships and these have been opened across‑the‑board. In our ICT master plan, we have adapted a principle where if a foreign country has to come to help us in the solutions within enterprise solutions within the country, they must work with a local organisation. They must work or must be local inputs and transfer of skills at the local level so that we are at the same time building the capacity we require to be able to support the service that is we develop or that are developed for our region, and to be able to gain the benefits of Mobile Internet access and of Cloud Computing.
Cloud Computing is something that the government is going to depend on heavily moving forward. When you go through the ICT master plan, which is a public document and accessible on the Minister of ICT website, the Kenyan Minister of ICT website, it clearly details how Cloud Computing would be preferred as a means of managing the services and the data that will be collected.
And I think with that, those are my few interventions because everything else on the Internet mobile connect can do and what Cloud Computing is doing, has been shared. And I am in agreement with what has already been presented before me. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> MODERATOR: Thanks for sharing with us the valuable experience. And I think access to the Internet with affordable service is very important to the Cloud Computing in Developing Countries. She and her organisation really make a great stand moving forward. Thank you, again.
Because Ms. Fiona Asonga had to leave for the airport right now, I would like to invite the Executive Secretary of China Association for Science and Technology, to present a gift for her impressive speech. Please.
(Applause)
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Thank all of you. Now I'd like to invite our next speaker, Mr. Paulo Calcada from Portugal, vice president of Euro Cloud. He will discuss how can Developing Countries benefit from the experience of European adoption of Cloud Computing, especially the European Cloud strategy. He will begin to talk with a brief description of the European founded project, Cloud for Europe, and address the many challenges and the priorities of the European Cloud strategy. Mr. Paulo Calcada, you have the floor.
>> P. CALCADA: Thank you for inviting me to participate. It's an honour. It was a challenge to prepare my presentation, because as is it shows, it is not really easy to identify what could be the right priorities. This is the Human Development Index from 2014. So it is really easy to see there are very huge differences between countries all over the world and obviously the priorities are very different. So, it was quite a challenge to define a set of priorities to help us create this workshop, a solid ground for helping to foster Cloud Computing as an enabler to create smarter communities and smarter cities.
So, I have decided to develop this presentation try to give you a perspective of someone who worked on the Cloud Computing topic the last four years. And also working closing with the Commission on my role at the University. But nowadays, I'm at the City Council for the city and I'm trying to help develop that. So I have a perspective of a city and a community. And then I will try to show you and share with you some results of the strategy that the European level we are developing.
So as I said, it was a challenge. For instance, it was quite easy to say for several developing words out there, there is a lot of challenges. It was presented by Fiona, started from the technical infrastructure talking about the skills of the Human Resources and the high cost of telecommunications. But most important is that in my perspective, a lot of very interesting use cases especially of the mobile world.
For instance this is an example of technicians in Zambia, which is installing telecommunications equipment. And if you look at the example, we are talking about a country that was able to grow their mobile partition from 500,000 mobile dices to almost 3 million devices in only four years, for a population of 12 million. But as she also said, in Kenya we have almost 70% of the population already with access to this mobile infrastructure, which in my view, is for the -- to start talking about other kinds of services on top of this infrastructure as our share in the next slide.
When talking about future communities, everyone says that the majority of the population is almost 8 billion inhabitants will live in cities. 70% of the population will live there. And everyone starts by thinking about megacities. Every time every purpose that talks about future communities starts by saying, let's start living in megacities like Tokyo, like Shanghai, or even like São Paulo. This is very important because on these megacities, these large communities, we had a lot of devices. We have from Kenya and Zambia and a lot of population is connected to the Internet but everywhere it is not only people that are connected to the Internet, all the devices are connected.
This is why? Because devices produce data. Data is for the developing communities. Thanks to computer capacities, we are able to use reverse analytics in order to be able to develop the right actions that will really have impact and benefit our community. So, in order to develop smarter growth, we have to start by connecting all the devices, all of our community devices. Here is where Cloud Computing can help us, do to elasticity, this hybrid model. We are not only talking about large data centers. We can apply to Cloud Computing model to smaller infrastructures to more focus infrastructures.
We could have an application for the health sectors are hosted together for entertainment for instance. And then obviously, hopefully, -- more resilient infrastructure. On top of this, we are also trying to figure out ways to have more security infrastructure.
Computing So we have data and data together with capacity is really helping us and our community to develop the right strategies to become a smarter and sustainable community. What is the right strategy to move forward and create the smarter cities and smarter communities?
So as I initially said, majority of people think about megacities. So I made a very short survey of this, and it was very easy to see the numbers that does apply. We have only two megacities, which represents almost 5% of the population. In the United States, it's almost the same as Brazil.
Most importantly, as I initially said, I am giving you also perspective of someone that is in the city or in the community, because this kind of strategies usually have to be managed by City Council or by someone who is managing the community. If we connect the so‑called megacities, the reality they are not megacities, they are a large group of smaller cities. For instance, in Europe, and even in the United States, we decrease the percentage of population that is living in megacities. So, if you take a look that the kind of analysis, in order to really try to figure out what is the profile of cities and communities that we are talking about?
For instance, in Europe almost 40% of the population lives in large urban areas. 50% of these large urban areas are smaller than one million of inhabitants. Only 4% are larger than 5 million inhabitants. If we start looking at more close detail, what you realize is larger percentage of population doesn't live in larger cities. They really live in small to medium cities. Once again, what I will try to highlight is we need to connect not only people but also to connect cities and communities. This is the basic principle to start developing these smarter communities and states.
The most interesting thing is that this is a perspective of what is happening in Europe and in Brazil and almost the same thing happens in United States. Unfortunately I don't have the numbers for Asia and for China. This is an exercise that I would do when I return home. What I'd like to provide is it is really important to correct people directly but also connect the cities to have access a large set of information data which is for the right of action plans for developing cities.
So, talking about future cities, we have to talk about cities and communities that are connected. This is where I live. It is very easy to find me if you decide to visit me. As I said, I was trying to give you this view of someone that is responsible for visionary City Council. Highlighting the relevance of connecting people. As we were able to see, this is important to Europe. This is important to after. This is important and Asia.
So let's talk a little more about one of the main projects that Europe is developing. I am representing Europe -- as a flagship European funded project, which aims to develop a set of use cases fostered by the public sector. So, in my view, I think that this is kind of things that we could also develop in several other areas, especially on Developing Countries. The public sector could have a very important role trying to figure out use cases that will help not only to foster the usage of Cloud Computing but also to have industry and local companies working together in order to develop that economy. This is the main goal of Cloud Europe: t use Cloud Computing as a way to identify solutions for very key Cloud Computing issues.
We are using -- which in my view is an excellent instrument, which defines a framework for collaborating between the public sector and also the industry, which is a model that could also be used in several other areas. Let me talk more about that next slide.
This is a very large consortium with the research entities and public sector representatives. We have cities and agencies and research universities all over Europe. And the main goals of the project is very simple. Identify a set of obstacles that are creating barriers to develop Cloud Computing in the public sector, once again using the public sector as a tool to foster the cloud adoption. Define a set of services that will be developed in partnership with the industry, and use this investment to find an innovative that will solve the problems. We will start by which are the problems that are affecting development of Cloud Computing in Europe? Maybe we can do the same thing in Kenya. Maybe we can do the same thing in China. Start by identifying which are the problems using the Cloud, the public sector as a use case. Then in partnership with local partners and local entities, research entities, and also the industries trying to find out the best solutions to those problems.
In terms of agenda, are very a lot of areas that we have applied our efforts from the data protection security legislation. A lot of problems that in our cases, are obstacles for developing the Cloud in Europe and once again, as I said, we could do the same thing but focus on specific problems in each area.
There are a set of almost 12 challenges that were initially defined and selected. Obviously, the project didn't have the funds to fund every area. So we have selected a smaller group. First, we even created a deeper study of the problems that we identified, which we called -- services. In the end, will select three examples that will be funded.
As I said, this is very important in terms of the approach that was used. This is not a project in which the public sector says okay, this is the problem. Where is the problem to solve the problem? We are identifying challenges that in our view could be used to develope, to strengthen also the economy of the region and of the country.
This is a very open and clear method in which every company is invited to participate and to help with the first stage, to make a clear and open view of the problem and then try to identify the strategy to solve the problem. In each phase the number of companies will be reduced because there is also a capacity of the problem to address the next place. And then in the end, the consortium will buy the product to solve the solution.
This is an instrument, in my view. It's for to help specific needs of the public sector using Cloud as an instrument. Share the risk between the public sector and provide sector and obviously create solutions that is will be able to foster the economy and help startups and companies on the map.
So only to summarize and to close my presentation, data is to create smarter, inclusive communities, large communities, small communities. In order to have data, we need to connect people and connect devices and connect communities. In my view, that's a major priority. So, thanks to the computed power analytics, we will be able to provide actions and this is for me Cloud Computing for future and smarter cities and communities. Thank you very much.
(Applause)
>> MODERATOR: Thanks to Mr. Paulo Calcada and thank you for sharing us the very useful opportunity, and especially the Cloud Computing applied in the city management. I think it is very useful area for the Cloud Computing technology.
Actually, we already have started the cooperation between the Chinese Cloud Computing organisation and the Euro Cloud. And I think it is a very good example for both of us to promote the Cloud Computing technology between the Developing Countries and the Developed Countries. It's a very good example.
Now our fourth speaker is from Inspa corporation group. He will share with us a practical case on how to build a public information platform with Cloud Computing and big data technology. The talk will last for 15 minutes ‑‑ the floor is yours.
>> Before my speech, maybe Ms. Fiona can take in questions from the audience?
>> MODERATOR: I wonder if you have any questions for Fiona Asonga? Because she will leave right now.
>> (Off mic) -- in the Caribbean. Now one of the things I'd like to know is, before Kenya embarked on their national effort, was this something that was entered into? Was it driven by the government? Was it driven by the private sector, for was it a combined effort of both, in terms of getting you to have your national IT strategy.
>> F. ASONGA: the development of the national IT strategy began with the last government. We've recently gone through an election and we have a new government in place. It was an effort of the previous government to be able to have a binding document that will assist in guiding how the industry will develop.
So, that initiative was from the previous government. What this government has done is incorporate the private sector in the development of that document, in the ownership of the strategy and the implementation. So right now, it is being owned and implemented by both government and the private sector.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: And can I have a follow‑up question? I'm sorry. I noticed that you indicated that you have built your infrastructure so you can quickly upgrade the connectivity by ensuring you have thoughts on the side of the roads. Was that done ‑‑ was that done because you said fiber optic ‑‑ will it be continued or are you looking towards having microconnectivity? Microwave connectivity?
>> F. ASONGA: The building of ducts alongside the road was as a result of pressure because of the service providers because we envisioned that we will continue to use fiber connectivity for a long time as the main, core infrastructure. But, of that, for the last mile solutions, there are going to be a whole range of solution that is will be deployed. However, to be able to connect the towns, the cities, we envision running that on fiber for quite some time.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: So my question ‑‑ come back from Kenya. We have very good cooperation with -- and it is formerly announced as national data sharing centere established. So, this is good news. However, -- the connection it is pretty low. Very low. Extremely low. So there -- transfer very hard. Do you think those in Kenya have very good programme to improve the connection? Thank you.
>> F. ASONGA: That is the connection of a University. We have the Kenya Educational Network that has been mandated to ensure that all the institutions and schools get Internet connectivity. And I know that currently there is effort to improve on the quality of services to most of the universities who have preferred to use other service providers. All the academic institutions are being sent -- I'm sure that is going to improve. And as the Service Provider's Association -- just looking into it to make sure that your centere is getting sufficient connectivity.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you. That is very good.
>> MODERATOR: I'm afraid she cannot catch‑up with the flight. So, thank you again.
(Applause)
>> Good afternoon, my name is Hu Leijun from Leesburg. Today's topic is about the big data for public service application. Why we accept public service application from other applications. The reason is public service is much more from what we say, for example, public health service, for telecommunication and for education and for some government sector pretty much like taxation, like public insurance. All of those applications are running by organisations and the data not like in public Cloud Computing like a Google or like Alibaba in China.
And the data is not created by the public, not from the consumer directly. It is created by the organisations themselves. They want to keep this information, those dates, inside group, but on the other side we use this to provide service to public. So this is the different.
Maybe someone want to say why we post them in public Cloud. I think public Cloud is majorly inside some of organisation for industry, the data, and the using their own Cloud Computing platform on a big data platform to provide service internally. They do not provide public service. So that is the difference.
Based on this difference, we can see a lot of change if we want to use big data technology in a Cloud Computing technology in this area, how we can deal with it. As we know, the big data has changed everything. It changes our behavior in consuming areas. For example, the search engine can direct you based on your words you search on Internet to some delicate online purchases website. And also they can use in the Internet to recognize your voice more correctly than before. And it also can create a new business model like Internet and macro financial, like you know, personalized health care. Now those ‑‑ or new model of service. New model of business based on the big data analysis.
Why we have a disability? Because the volume of big data, the variety of big data, the velocity of big data, and the value potentially contend in the massive data giving us chance to find more deeply chance we can use for the business and service we can provide to the public.
In the last -- data becoming explosion, we can see 90% of current data was produced in last two years. And in the year 2013, 25 terabytes of data was created every day. Based on this kind of situation, we will see if the public service began to utilize new technology. What is the progress? We first looking back a little bit about what is the progress in the last maybe 7 years or 5 years.
In the very beginning, all the IT infrastructure for public service, mostly are separate, dedicated, isolated information. The CIO had target after delicate purpose and the design and infrastructure and hardware and software layers -- to provide the direct service to some people. But after that, where we see you're using Cloud Computing technology to saving some money, so they began to concentrate these applications together in one straight, flat, hardware platform. After that, they say maybe we can accumulate the data together to make the programme much easier.
Then we began to do the data collection and data consolidation and to giving another layer about the hardware and some kind of a data abstraction layer to let everybody write using same kind of programming model based on the data abstraction layer to describe application.
After that, when we gathered all data together, we find maybe we can create more active and interesting application, that kept giving us much value, much higher quality of service to public. So that is the big data service today. Now we standing at the gates or one foot already inside the gate of big data. It's a big data era.
So, we are looking back and we see the IT infrastructure for public service utilized the Cloud Computing technology and big data technologies through several phases. The first phase is business driving phases. And the second is data phase. The third is data driving phase.
For the first phase we can see the characterize of the application systems, pretty much like a call. -- a lot of different applications, even same organization, same industry or same area of governments departments, they are separate. They are using their delicate servers, using their delicate software layers, using their delicate applications to do the job, the transactions, to do the transactions, to do the data processing. They are separate. They're not connected together. So that is the problem.
At the very beginning when we began to be using IT infrastructure to take the advantage off the efficiency of computer, that is not a big deal. After that, we find the benefits of the Cloud Computing so we can gather all the applications and put them in the same platform. We call it Cloud Computing platform using virtualization technology and data virtualization or storage virtualization technology to give them in computing pool and storage pool and network pool to let them run on the platform.
So, in this phase, we begin to concentrate all the applications in one data centere. After that, we found if we put all of those data together, if we have ability to analyze a different dimension of data, we can create more value. We can find interesting roles. We can find the more deeply main in the status than why step into the data driving phase. It's given us a door to new creative computing utilization area.
So, if we are looking at this or if we step into this section, we will see we still have some challenge we have to face. The first challenge is for public service, mostly for example in different industry. For example, telecommunication is one section and public health service is another seconds and for the water supply service another section. Public insurance another section. Taxation is some part of government and even in the same organisation, there also be separate into several sections pretty much like in the area of traffic management and traffic light control, traffic surveillance and the recording of GPS and public vehicles. It all belong to different departments, all belong to different sections. If we want to concentrate If we want to put them together, they will always be a barrier between these organisation.
Another is how we store and manage huge data in one platform. There is -- maybe today we set up a system. Next day it looks like a long time. We do not have enough room to store them.
And then another thing is about visualization. Visualization is always the biggest thing to consider. So, there is some solutions of big data that can help us to do that and we are using this kind of technology to handle and showcase -- traffic management system. They all have the problems we just mentioned the challenges, we mentioned before.
What we have done is the first in the very beginning, the co‑applications. The first thing we do is we build up a platform to pull in the computing power and the storage and the Internet and the connection. And then we port in all the applications and do not touch the application itself. We do not modify that. Then we introduce the new datasets into this platform. And we create more interesting application about that. So, it is pretty much like organizing the information, weather information, hotspot information, accident information, to creatively create an algorithm using on‑time real‑time data analysis technology to manage the traffic.
So, if we want to say in the future how we do for the big data, first is we should encourage government to invest in this area and we should encourage the government, regarding the data as strategy resource. The second, we should set up some regulation to giving the chance to give the industrial government to share data with each other. And for conclusion, I think we should -- do not design the isolated application anymore. Will we begin to do more applications? We should use flat data platform to create all the new applications, especially in Developing Countries.
(Applause)
>> MODERATOR: Thank you for that speech. Cloud Computing and big data is a popular topic in the Internet community and the society. From his speech, we can say that big data is really result for the organisation and the society. If we process them properly. Thank you again.
Now all the speakers have finished their speech. Next will be the time for questions and discussions. Any questions.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you very much. My name is from -- the United Nations Esquire in Beirut, Lebanon. I guess my question has to do with the measurement. We are talking about big data, government data.
When we say data, there are statistics and conclusions and trends and aggregations that will stem from such data. And we know that in every country of the world there are a national statistical department or national statistical authority where they do that classical manipulation of data. They gather the data in a classical manner and they do analysis and reporting also in a classical manner. So, at certain point in time in the future, I think this question will come out. How does or how will the government handle such data for policy making? For planning? For development issues? So, until now, the way I see it, is that we are just pulling ‑‑ a computer programmer pulling out data from servers, and throwing the data on the table.
So, this is the missing link in my judgment. Because I want the real policymakers and the ministries of planning, trade, transport, water, electricity, all of the ministries, I wanted to benefit from the big data and the Cloud data. Thank you.
>> H. LEJUN: I think I can take that question. The thing I think the big data on one side giving unified platform to store all different kind of data. That is giving us much easier way to access different kind of data and combines them together to figure out what is the much deep meaning of this status. That is different than before. And another thing I want to see if we are using big data technology to do more realtime or close realtime analysis. That is unique statistic is pretty much like you know, we do it for a moment in time, a week at a time or a quarter of time. Or yearly. The realtime is pretty much like, we are looking at the measure of your car to see what is the currency in Asia right now. How we can handle it and give it some other kind of input to adjust the direction or L. and this is why we encourage the Governments and the public service sector to share it together. And we see for example, the traffic management, and they not using the realtime data analysis to adjust the traffic light time slots, the green light time slots, to actively respond to the traffic in a day in different times. So, if we look at the big picture, looking at the country, looking at the whole economy right now, we, if we can combine all the data, we right now, have in common platform, it will be very interesting. I do not know if there is a company or a country that begins to do this, but it is definitely has a very big potential to look forward in that direction ‑‑
>> X. TAO: I also have comments. Actually in several months, I was attempted many conference about this title. As you see, government also big data is very important, but to me, I want to grasp. Data resources and many conference, talking about big data. We want to grasp data resources. And I think maybe it is very hard to find solution to your questions, but for our professors, (?) and maybe the first step to share data, a work shop was about 4:30 this afternoon. And professor Neil (?) will share the first step to share experiments of first step and show us data in the work shop number 17. Maybe you can go to the workshop.
>> Y. JIAO: We have a question from the remote participant. The question is for professor TAO and the question is, as you have mentioned on slide 4, there is heterogenous wireless networks such as secure networks, WLAN, visible light communication networks, et cetera, able to support Mobile Internet. And convergence of these heterogenous networks is supposed to be changed in the future. Are there any corresponding work in China or any development or difficult?
>> X. TAO: Thank you very much. I think a lot of this, I remember the slide may be basic scheme of our national programme. And I want to give us a solution for supporting very high rate. For example maybe 10 times. And then we verify and then organisation. I think maybe in the near future, not only big data but also Mobile Internet ‑‑ at least sometimes needs are very high data rate. So, we lead a programme on the strategy. Of course this kind of programme also work on corporation, especially offices. Thank you very much.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you for the discussion and questions. But I think the time is up. So, finally I would like to take a few minutes to conclude this workshop. Distinguished guests and ladies and gentlemen, thank you for attending our workshop this afternoon. Now four speakers have discussed how to leverage the Cloud Computing and the Mobile Internet from different perspectives. From this speeches and discussion, we can see that it is necessary for all of us to promote the new technology, new emerging technology such as Cloud Computing, Mobile Internet, and the big data. In the societies and communities. The second is leveraging the Cloud Computing services and its benefits will be helpful to bridge the digital divide, both in Developing Countries and Developed Countries. The third one as we can see, corporation among multistakeholders will be the right solution and the right direction to the challenge and difficulties facing by Cloud Computing and big data and Mobile Internet, new emerging technology. Also, it is a great player for me to moderate ‑‑ a great pleasure for me to moderate this session. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to all of these panelists for their contributions. Also, for thanks to the comments and discussion from the audience. Now, I would like to call session closed. Thank you.
(Applause)
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This is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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