Cloud Hosting

The State Information Technology Agency (SITA) is working on a massive project to migrate the South African government to cloud services, said its chief technology officer Pandelani Munyai.

SITA is doing an application analysis, gathering information from all government departments to find out what software they use and which applications they already own, aspart of the initial stages of the project.

Munyai made the statementduring a panel discussion at the 2017 MyBroadband Cloud, Hosting, and Security Conference.

He said SITA has set itself deadlines, which have beencommunicated to government departments to ensure the project remains on track.

Munyai said there is a huge appetite from the government to migrate services into the cloud.

There were issues with infrastructure in South Africa, however, which he said were not unique to the country.

Other African countries face the same challenges, with limited government infrastructure spending, saidMunyai. Our infrastructure leaves a lot to be desired.

For this reason, SITA has embarked on a tender process to partner with private industry players to ensure it receives reliable connectivity to cloud services.

Connectivity is a very serious issue for cloud services. Those services in the cloud should be accessed by people in rural areas, he said.

Munyai believes operators, including Vodacom and MTN, will reduce their data prices over time, making access to cloud services more affordable for South Africans.

Munyai also revealed that the South African government is looking at Internet of Things applications, especially in the light of affordable narrowband networks like SqwidNet launching in South Africa.

IoT networks can be used for various functions, including utility meter monitoring, health services, and vehicle tracking.

Follow this link:
SITA working on massive government cloud migration project - MyBroadband