Building the "India Cloud"
The country needs to protect its data from international spying and develop a competitive advantage in data security
Narain D Batra
From Business Standard
India is a big data nation. Consider the magnitude of a Unique Identification Number for more than a billion people, Indian pharmaceuticals' worldwide ambitions to provide inexpensive drugs, information technology (IT) industry servicing the corporate global, just to name a few.
India needs to not only protect its data from international spying; it must also grab a fair share of the growing global cloud-computing infrastructure market, as it has done in software and consulting services. Major Indian IT companies, perhaps in partnership with the public sector and the states, could pool their resources and digital brains to build a cloud for India that's as secure and impenetrable as Swiss banks. There's a fortune in security.
According to a report for the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, the global market for cloud services is likely to grow from $148.8 billion in 2014 to $207 billion in 2016. But this projection should be considered in a wider context of the McKinsey & Company's report, "Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy," which estimates that the cumulative economic impact of cloud-based services and technology could be $1.7 trillion to $6.2 trillion annually in 2025. There is an unfathomable fortune in the cloud. What will be India's share?
The European Union (EU) has woken up to the challenge and is planning to build its own cloud. Even before the National Security Agency (NSA) disclosures about surveillance, some European officials were worried that data stored in American IT companies' clouds were not safe from the US government. The European Commissioner for Digital Affairs, Neelie Kroes, for example, has argued that cloud computing's immense benefits to economy depend on two things: first, scale and second, trust in the data that must be stored protectively. Scale is important because if each nation has its own cloud-computing services then it becomes very expensive. And since the EU is a large geopolitical and economic bloc, it can certainly create its own cloud-computing infrastructure. And, of course, that is true of India too with its intellectual resources and global digital footprints.
Most importantly, cloud infrastructure needs to create trust. Total data protection is a legitimate expectation of doing cloud-based business. If international businesses or governments think that they might be spied on, as has been the case with the NSA's ubiquitous spying, the trust in the cloud infrastructure will be diminished.
Kroes rightly asserts that "Privacy is not only a fundamental right; it can also be a competitive advantage. Companies focused on privacy need to start coming forward into the light…. That includes European companies who should take advantage of interest to provide services with better privacy." And the best way to accomplish this objective is for the EU to build its own cloud infrastructure as the European Cloud Partnership Board has recommended. Recently Angela Merkel, Germany's Chancellor, whose cell phone was tapped by the NSA, made a similar proposal.
The idea to create an alternative system to American cloud infrastructure - just as in the 1960s when European countries established the European Space Agency to compete with the National Aeronautic and Space Administration and a European consortium aircraft manufacturing company, Airbus, to compete with Boeing - is very tempting.
American IT companies that control 85 per cent of the global cloud computing market, are seriously concerned about the threat to their business. In an open letter to US President Barack Obama, major tech giants voiced serious concern over the government vacuuming their consumers' data for national security reasons.
They asked the government to ensure that "surveillance efforts are clearly restricted by law, proportionate to the risks, transparent and subject to independent oversight." They asked that the government's authority to collect users' information be limited; and it should be based on transparency and subject to oversight and accountability. In order to enable the free flow of information and avoid international conflicts, it is necessary to build "a robust, principled, and transparent framework to govern lawful requests for data across jurisdictions, such as improved mutual legal assistance treaty or MLAT processes. Where the laws of one jurisdiction conflict with those of another, it is incumbent upon governments to work together to resolve the conflict."
Unfortunately, IT companies' concerns have seized neither the US president's or the US Congress' imagination. Even the recently announced disclosure rules by the Obama administration that will allow internet companies, in a very limited way, to inform their customers about the data asked by the government will not restore complete trust.
The loss of trust is compelling Europe to build its own cloud. But what can India do? There are two ways for Indian IT companies to protect their burgeoning global market for cloud-computing services. They can allow customers to move their data to servers outside the US that promise high-level protection, for example, Swisscom's proposed "Swiss Cloud" in Switzerland, where extreme secrecy is highly valued. Or Indian IT companies could federate and collaborate as a consortium to build the "India Cloud" that not only keeps Indian big data absolutely secure, but also creates business opportunities for them in the growing data-security market. Bangalore should shout from the housetop: you can trust us.
I'm tempted to say: if India can launch the Mars Orbiter Mission with a paltry sum of $75 million, it can certainly build its own secure cloud that creates total trust and sucks in billions of dollars of global business as well as generate thousands of new jobs. In the digital age, India needs to think big and bold. India must compete.
The writer is professor of communications and diplomacy at Norwich University, US and the author of The First Freedoms and America's Culture of Innovation
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