What is the status of cloud computing in Kenya? The University of Nairobi interviewed 54 organizations to establish issues surrounding cloud computing in the country. 70% of these organizations deploy some form of cloud solution, leading adopters of the cloud hail from the telecommunications and financial sectors. However awareness of the policy framework covering the cloud remains relatively low despite 90% of the respondents citing
that the market is ready for cloud solutions.
The study was conducted by UoN (through C4DLab and School of Computing and Informatics), Microsoft and Kenya ICT Authority who examined the issues surrounding cloud computing in the country. The product born from these efforts is Kenya’s 2013 Cloud Computing Baseline Survey. Through this study, says Dr. Tonny Omwansa (the research lead), policies targeting the cloud can be formulated based on solid research.
Major adoption gaps currently exist in the industry, these are on security, cloud architectures, storage and virtualization. Dr. Omwansa expresses the need to fast track the enactment of key policies addressing cyber security, data protection and privacy in order to increase confidence in the adoption of cloud services in the country.
Cloud computing offers immediate, affordable access to high-power computing resources to businesses including small and midsize companies (SMBs/SMEs). This offers cost efficient computing power to enterprises allowing them to bring innovative products to the market faster than ever before. The software economy will particularly benefit because developers everywhere can participate in the global IT market, regardless of the local technology industry infrastructure.
Research highlights:
- 39% organization prefer pure private cloud due to security concerns
- 22% who’ve deployed public cloud solutions
- 75% respondents unaware of cloud standards
- Only 2 out of 10 recognize that there’s policy or legal framework governing cloud computing
- 69% of organizations use some form of cloud solution
- Kenyan organizations prefer IaaS to SaaS and PaaS
- Safaricom, Dimension Data and KDN leading cloud solution providers
The research will be publish the survey on the official C4DLab site.
