What is cloud computing? It is the delivery of computer services over the internet. Think servers, networking, applications and such provisioned as needed by a provider. The cloud here is the internet. The cloud symbol started from flowcharts to represent networks where we did not know about the internal workings.
In March 2020, the government published their Cloud Computing Consideration Policy. In the introduction it states that the public service must become agile, responsive and cost efficient. Also, the provision of secure, reliable, cost effective ICT solutions is a potent instrument of good governance. After reading this document, I would say that the government has a good enough grasp of what is needed to make use of cloud services.
Cloud services are usually pay as you go. There are 3 delivery models and they are IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), SaaS (Software as a Service) and PaaS (Platform as as Service). Then there is public cloud, private cloud and hybrid. For some data because of security and legislation considerations, it would have to be hosted and transmitted locally.
A major talking point around cloud computing that I have seen locally is the security of data and systems. Something also talked about is vendor lock-in. This is something that your IT personnel would have to evaluate and cater for. We have plenty IT graduates and robust internet infrastructure. We have a number of data center providers in Trinidad and Tobago. The major players in the cloud services provider space are international with some of them having partners locally and Microsoft has an office in Trinidad.
Many entities have moved to cloud computing and I predict many more will do so in the future. In my research I came across this April 2018 publication from the IDB, Cloud Computing: Opportunities and Challenges for Sustainable Economic Development in Latin America and the Caribbean. In this it states, "cloud computing is an enabling technology, forming the foundation of big data analytics, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things, and constituting one of the main pillars of the digital economy."
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