Union IT& Communications Minister Kapil Sibal has underscored the importance of Cloud technology-- which enables complete virtualisation-- by terming it as the face of the future.
Addressing the 2012 Cloud Summit organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here, Sibal said the Centre viewed the state-of-the-art innovation as a great economic solution and was in the process of evolving a policy framework.
According to the legal czar-turned-politico, cloud should be used for small and medium scale enterprises and clusters with common business models. Discussions are already underway on the modalities for implementing cloud, he said.
The minister added that infrastructure development would become a key government initiative which would provide land, power, technology and human resources to establish India as a global data management hub.
While industry representatives focused on the many security issues throw up by the new technology, several others sounded upbeat over cloud. “Data is the new currency,” said Kiran Karnik, Chairman, CII National Committee on Telecom and Broadband, while Infosys CEO Shibulal highlighted the amount of integration the cloud can deliver.
The CII White Paper said cloud was a transformational concept that need the development of an ecosystem. And it listed power, connectivity, bandwidth, real estate, technology enablers, awareness and local language support as some of the key essentials for implementing the technology.
Emphasising that ‘cloud first’ should become part of the official discourse, the participating CEOs said the paramount challenge was to realise cloud computing’s immense potential to ensure more effective governance and improve the business practices.