Microsoft Asia-Pacific chief marketing officer Andrew Pickup estimated that Viet Nam would post the highest growth in the region this year for cloud computing services.
"Overall the Asia-Pacific market is growing 33 per cent per year, but in Viet Nam, it's 50 per cent," he said. "Viet Nam has a small base and is expected to grow faster"
Cloud computing was already a fixture of consumer-oriented services such as email, social media and entertainment-delivery sites, Gartner said, adding that the shift from traditional software models to the internet offered opportunities to enterprises of all sizes, enabling them to deliver scalable and resillient services to employees, partners and customers at lower cost and with higher agility.
"In the near future, cloud computing will help enterprises and organisations save a lot of expenditure for IT infrastructure and energy and provide more suitable applications to users," said Cisco Systems Viet Nam chief technology officer Phan Thanh Son.
Cloud computing delivers infrastructure, services and software on demand via the internet. Traditional computing requires traditional hardware, manual addition of new services and in-house repair of system failures. Provision of cloud computing services can be made on a monthly basis, meanwhile, with costs based on incremental purchases, and users don't have to invest in infrastructure, hardware and software, paying only infrastructure leasing and service fees.
Cloud computing therefore can allow businesses, organisations and governmental agencies to save money. Japan, for instance, maintains public databases and primary applications of the Government on the cloud, allowing users to access through a conventional internet connection. Singapore has also built a government cloud with a focus on e-government applications.
In Viet Nam, provinces and cities receive budgets of only VND5-20 billion (US$238,000-952,000) per year for developing information technology, not even enough to acquire hardware, according to ICT news.
Giving shape to the Vietnamese Government's vision of the nation becoming a leader in IT and e-government, various departments and ministries here have begun using cloud computing to increase efficiency while cutting costs.
Dr Quach Tuan Ngoc, director of the information and communications technology department of the Ministry of Education and Training, told the website FutureGov that his department had instructed local education and training departments to shift to cloud computing.
According to Ngoc, the cloud is suitable for the education sector and would lead to significant cost benefits.
"Every school needs one server and one website," Ngoc said. "With cloud computing, we won't waste time, money or effort in installion, upgrades and maintenance. Cloud computing will make it much more efficient when many more students are accessing our system."
Nguyen Trong Duong, director of information technology for the Ministry of Information and Communications, said the ministry was considering a mechanism for applying cloud computing at State agencies under public-private partnerships or service outsourcing.
The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment has already cut its costs for IT infrastructure by about 20 per cent. The director of its ICT department, Nguyen Huu Chinh, said the ministry would use cloud computing to integrate all data relating to Viet Nam's natural resources and environment. Cloud computing would help the ministry address its fragmented IT infrastructure with data centres scattering at local department and provincial-level offices.
A senior executive of IBM Viet Nam, Tran Viet Huan, said that developed countries have already implemented policies encouraging cloud computing, and the EU and Malaysia have laws in place on protecting the privacy of personal data maintained on the cloud.
Nguyen Manh Quyen, deputy director of the e-commerce and IT department under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, thinks that there is no need to design a specific policy for cloud computing. Viet Nam already has a Law on Information Technology and a Government decree and other regulations guiding implementation of the law. Additional regulation might simply impede the development of cloud computing, he said, or it might serve only the big cloud computing service providers while not levelling the playing field for other enterprises.
Quang Trung Software Park Development Company director Chu Tien Dung disagreed. The Government needed to give some advice to enterprises and let the enterprises make decision for themselves. However, it would be necessary to issue legal documents to the State agencies which stipulate that budget resources be allocated to cloud computing and which provide guidance on the implementation, purchase and uses of such services.
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Quelle/Source: Viet Nam News, 29.10.2011
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