SA's plan for a stated-owned cloud computing mega-network

Solarion said:
A BBBEE venture which means it's based locally in SA. What if say that data centre gets hit by an Earth quake or a fire guts it or even a terrorist attack. That's your whole government running around with its pants down lost. GL with that.

Sorry but if you are building a data center from scratch to encompass entire government capabilities then it sounds dangerous honestly. It's just not the right way to do this.
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“The HPCDPC shall be replicated with two similar centres to ensure the availability of backup and business continuity in instances where the main centre comes under cyberattack,” the policy proposal states.
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Imo there isn't much wrong with the plan. It is just a private cloud a.k.a data center for all government institutions that will be consolidated in a single+backup data center instead of each department or SOE running their own. In theory it should reduce costs and increase scalability etc.
Then they go one step further where others can rent excess capacity. Again, not a bad idea.

The main problem is of course that our government has a horrendous track record when it comes to implementation, and just hosting everything with AWS or Azure will probably work out cheaper and be more reliable.

If both the US government and the Chinese (kind of) can use Azure, what makes SA so special the we don't trust our data with the big players?

I can't wait to see the kind of SLA's anc-cloud offers, and the myBB articles commenting on how often they were broken.
 
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

It's going to fail like all SOE's before millions are stolen by the ANC criminal organization, as usual. These criminal ANC ****s just got a new a idea to loot more money
 
NarrowBandFtw said:
I don't know if it's the Rochefort 8 I had over lunch, but I can see the future of this plan clear as day:
- BBBEE / RET etc tendas awarded to the highest briber
- project ends up billions over budget and years overdue
- infrastructure ends up being run by a Gupta owned company that just obfuscates AWS yet charges 20 times the AWS rates
- Jan van Riebeeck is blamed for every problem encountered
- guavamint continues to pay big bucks forever to maintain their legacy system anyway
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The interface.. AWS obfuscation ... layer will be hosted on a foreign owned company just of the coast?
 
Having been involved in investigations regarding the procurement of servers for various government departments, for data center-type use, I'm not optimistic that this will be cost efficient or in any way functional.
 
To think Hlaudi was a visionary after all..

CataclysmZA said:
Having been involved in investigations regarding the procurement of servers for various government departments, for data center-type use, I'm not optimistic that this will be cost efficient or in any way functional.
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What do you means optimistic like there's even a chance? Its guaranteed to be a ****up if the ANC is involved.
 
Big Brother cometh.... beware chinese lookalike mind control!
 
Barbarian Conan said:
Imo there isn't much wrong with the plan. It is just a private cloud a.k.a data center for all government institutions that will be consolidated in a single+backup data center instead of each department or SOE running their own. In theory it should reduce costs and increase scalability etc.
Then they go one step further where others can rent excess capacity. Again, not a bad idea.

The main problem is of course that our government has a horrendous track record when it comes to implementation, and just hosting everything with AWS or Azure will probably work out cheaper and be more reliable.

If both the US government and the Chinese (kind of) can use Azure, what makes SA so special the we don't trust our data with the big players?

I can't wait to see the kind of SLA's anc-cloud offers, and the myBB articles commenting on how often they were broken.
Click to expand...

So the problem of external clouds might be a legislative one. If I recall correctly in the banking industry across Africa and most other parts of the world this is a requirement.. data kept within national borders.

I suspect the same will be true in SA or rather for government data especially sensitive citizen data. You could argue the use of AWS (why do you think SA infrastructure put in) I guess but good luck doing so with a cost based in USD and earnings in ZAR. Many companies with that kind of problems and a limited space vs passing on cost have fun when currency shifts.

Comparing with US gov.. you taking about a country that’s inflating it’s way out of problems.

Lastly I’m not sure about centralizing it all.. I’ve seen epic screw ups at SOEs which have become battle stories of fixing peoples crap. It’s the BEE folk and the SOE staff people will claim but in the mean time it’s the dev shops who screwed up epically and leave the SOE with crap to sort and no skills to do it.. not that its easy to fix some things.

Anyway my point is that you correct that it makes sense strategically, might be cost controlled better.. but I worry about data. Gov work involves many cooks with many nefarious types trying to cement their position or sell products into it which are often inferior but with some payoff happening.

Bleh.. now I guess we waiting for Dell etc scandal hey
 
krycor said:
So the problem of external clouds might be a legislative one. If I recall correctly in the banking industry across Africa and most other parts of the world this is a requirement.. data kept within national borders.

I suspect the same will be true in SA or rather for government data especially sensitive citizen data. You could argue the use of AWS (why do you think SA infrastructure put in) I guess but good luck doing so with a cost based in USD and earnings in ZAR. Many companies with that kind of problems and a limited space vs passing on cost have fun when currency shifts.

Comparing with US gov.. you taking about a country that’s inflating it’s way out of problems.

Lastly I’m not sure about centralizing it all.. I’ve seen epic screw ups at SOEs which have become battle stories of fixing peoples crap. It’s the BEE folk and the SOE staff people will claim but in the mean time it’s the dev shops who screwed up epically and leave the SOE with crap to sort and no skills to do it.. not that its easy to fix some things.

Anyway my point is that you correct that it makes sense strategically, might be cost controlled better.. but I worry about data. Gov work involves many cooks with many nefarious types trying to cement their position or sell products into it which are often inferior but with some payoff happening.

Bleh.. now I guess we waiting for Dell etc scandal hey
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I think the data within borders thing is a non issue. With Azure, and I'm sure the the rest as well, you can choose where your data resides. MS has a whole bunch of compliance docs on their site, and I doubt our data standards are more stringent than GDPR, which they completely comply with.

As for costs... different regions in Azure have different costs for some services, reflecting the different costs to operate in different regions. I can't comment whether it's really cost effective for an SA company to use the cloud, and I guess it depends. If you need the elasticity, like for example on black Friday, or if it means you can get rid of a couple of employees, it may make sense for you.

As for the dev shops screwing up... I worked for a dev shop that did work for one of the banks, and there was very little room for us to screw up because of how the bank managed it. You can and should blame the dev shop, but at the end of the day government isn't some one-man-show getting a website done who is completely at the mercy of the designer. They are massive customers, and dev work of that nature is more like a partnership than a customer/client relationship.

Data... yeah... they can't even balance the books in most municipalities, now they need to comply with privacy and audit ISO standards.
 
krycor said:
So the problem of external clouds might be a legislative one. If I recall correctly in the banking industry across Africa and most other parts of the world this is a requirement.. data kept within national borders.

I suspect the same will be true in SA or rather for government data especially sensitive citizen data. You could argue the use of AWS (why do you think SA infrastructure put in) I guess but good luck doing so with a cost based in USD and earnings in ZAR. Many companies with that kind of problems and a limited space vs passing on cost have fun when currency shifts.

Comparing with US gov.. you taking about a country that’s inflating it’s way out of problems.

Lastly I’m not sure about centralizing it all.. I’ve seen epic screw ups at SOEs which have become battle stories of fixing peoples crap. It’s the BEE folk and the SOE staff people will claim but in the mean time it’s the dev shops who screwed up epically and leave the SOE with crap to sort and no skills to do it.. not that its easy to fix some things.

Anyway my point is that you correct that it makes sense strategically, might be cost controlled better.. but I worry about data. Gov work involves many cooks with many nefarious types trying to cement their position or sell products into it which are often inferior but with some payoff happening.

Bleh.. now I guess we waiting for Dell etc scandal hey
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You can just create a type of private cloud in Azure that governments use. No need to re-invent the wheel, Azure is already in SA. However, this will be too cost effective and much less scope for corruption. Azure is already used by governments to create government clouds. The ANC cloud will fail in normal terms but the cadres will score.
 
RedViking said:
Gonna be such a success
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I would like to help the government to sort this problem in a pro way but I am already busy with my own clients overseas and my skin colour is incorrect for the SA government.
 
Is this not the point of SITA (who you only hear about when home affairs etc is down as they are forced to use them)
 
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