Article Review - ‘cloud Computing and Developing Nations’

Greengard, S. 2010, ‘Cloud computing and developing nations’ Communications of the ACM, vol. 53, no. 5, pp. 18-20

In the article ‘Cloud Computing and Developing Nations’ Greengard presents an overview of current thinking about the importance of cloud computing for businesses today and focuses especially on the potential that it offers to developing nations. He states that cloud computing, which capitalises on recent internet developments by using virtual servers to store data accessible to anyone at any time, represents a new way of doing business and collaborating on development - a ‘paradigm shift’ (p. 18).

Greengard argues that through cloud computing small business operators will be able to enter the online business market as effectively as large scale operators. This is because resources that were previously only available to the large scale operators are now available to everyone via the online virtual ‘cloud’. Thus the opportunities to profit in developing countries have been greatly expanded. The author quotes a prediction that in India, for example, the income generated by cloud computing will rise from $50 million currently, to $15 billion between 2009 and 2013 (p. 20).

Greengard provides examples of the benefits of cloud computing with quotes from a number of business and IT experts. For a business, he states that because they are now able to store data in the cloud via virtual servers and synchronise that data with multiple devices, organisations will be able to connect and collaborate through various new online applications without geographic or time restrictions. ‘Clouds provide a powerful—and often otherwise unattainable—IT infrastructure at a modest cost’ (p. 18).

The benefits for developing nations are shown through examples of farmers in the southern Sahara and apparel traders in India who now can take part in cloud based trading systems and information exchange