Friday
17 May 2013 Geneva, The World Summit on Information Society (WSIS)
closed curtains, after five days discussions around telecommunication
and innovations trends. The 2013 forum held in Geneva, Switzerland from
13-17 May, brought together more than 1,800 participants from 140
countries which included the academia, governments, civil societies and
private sectors.
Organized
by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and guided by ten
targets; WSIS forum offered 150 sessions and workshops on various
thematics. Main focus being -how to improve connectivity and ICT’s
access to half of the world’s inhabitants by end of 2015. Started in
2003 in Geneva, WSIS forum work towards connecting villages, schools,
health centres, governments departments with ICTs; besides encouraging
the development of content, presence and use of all World languages on
internet in addition to connect scientific research with ICT’s.
 |
Dr Hamadoun Touré ITU secretary General address WSIS forum |
The
forum creates a global platform to share information on
telecommunication and trends, acts as an avenue to network and learn on
new technology innovations and provides space to question and critique
dangers of technology on our day to day life.
Facebook
and Twitter among other social media applications are the most popular
words in our recent time, accross all generations. As i sort to learn
more about technology behind Facebook and Twitter, I discovered yet
another word ‘Cloud Computing’ which was used at the forum to refer to
social media.
What is cloud computing technology?
Cloud
is a technology that allow shifting compuer applications and data onto
remote servers; for later convinience on-demand network access to a
computer resources with minimal effort. This technology provides
flexibility, location independence access that are available on demand.
As demand for data storage increases due to the expansion of data
production, the use and retention of such data emerges.
Cloud
services are used by various webmail and social media to store data and
can be used by individuals or organizations.
Infrastructure as a service (Iaas) is one type of cloud computing
network which provides storage among other infrastructure services. The
customer has no control of the data centre or operating system-Amazon
web offers best example.
The
second type of infrastructure is Platform as a service (Paas) which
allows customers to use their own applications, are able to control data
and hosting environment. The last type is refered to as Software as a
service (Saas). It provides applications through internet and customers
access the infrastructure. Facebook and Twitter fall in the Saas
category of cloud computing and most profitable than the other two with
an income of USD 17.5 billion.
International
Data Corporation (IDC) estimates an increase in the usage and storage
of data from 1.8 zettabytes in 2011 to 7 zettabytes by 2015.
Opportunities and risks presented by cloud computing
Innovators
and researchers say that cloud computing reduce cost of providing
ICT’s, allows access to wide range of applications (without having to
download or install anything), permits access anytime anywhere and
offers flexibility to accommodate changing demands.
Besides
the good news, technology challenges governments and other stakeholders
back to the drawing board as they grumble with emerging issues it poses
on matters such as security standards and environmental impact.
Increased
energy consumption from data storage machines raise concern among
environmentalists. Music Tank in its recent report say that youtube
alone accounts for 0.1 per cent of global energy consumption.
Innovation
attracts early adapters and repels laggards. As one participant at the
WSIS forum said: Internet is like a knife one can use it for good things
like eating or for bad things. Whatever or whoever you choose to
become, from the technology innovations of cloud computing- may it
result into your happiness as you ‘DO NO HARM’ to others with opposed
thoughts to yours.
/…Eve Balla contributed to the article
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