Mark Mutahi| Standardmedia
A clueless official at the ICT ministry has warned that if more clouds are not found in the country soon, local cloud computing services will ground to a halt.
It is understood that for the cloud computing industry to take off there needs to be permanent cloud cover in the skies, something that has proved next to impossible in this part of the tropics.
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“Due to the seasonal and unreliable nature of cloud cover in the country, we are soon going to find ourselves reliant on countries with better cloud cover. And this dependence on others does not augur well for our future,” the official, a self-taught computer scientist, is quoted as having warned.
This, he cautioned while at a seminar held to commemorate twenty years since the first computer was placed in the clouds, and thus giving birth to cloud computing.
With importing cloud cover from other countries is out of the question, since the transport costs are prohibitive, this will mean that cloud computing services will increasingly be outsourced. And this, in turn, will translate to high costs for doing business in the country.
To solve the problem of lack or inadequate cloud cover, the government is putting in place measures to ensure that when a little cloud forms, it is not blown away by the wind. “Clouds are an important national resource and the government should step in, and put up invisible walls in the air that will prevent clouds from being blown away by the wind to neighbouring countries!
We have always talked about conservation of the environment, but it is time we started to talk about the conservation and preservation of clouds. This will enable us to reap maximum benefits from whatever little cloud that is formed locally,” the self-taught computer scientist suggested.
This warning from the ICT ‘guru’ comes barely a week, after the ICT sector faced yet another setback in the efforts to popularise uptake and adoption of ICT services.
This occurred when some public transport vehicles (PSV) in the county of Nairobi begun discriminating against passengers who own smart gadgets. The PSVs refused people bearing smartphones, phablets, laptops and tablets from boarding their vehicles.
