Angolan government invests USD 89 million in the national “Cloud” project

88
Angolan government invests USD 89 million in the national “Cloud” project
Angolan government invests USD 89 million in the national “Cloud” project

Africa-Press – Angola. The Angolan government will invest US$89 million for the implementation of the infrastructure of the National Cloud of Angola, “Cloud”, whose project was presented this Thursday, by the Ministry of Telecommunications, Information Technologies and Social Communication (MITTCS ).

The project includes the construction of two Data Centers, the main prefabricated two-story building, “modelar”, will be built in an area of ​​5,320 square meters, in the Camama district, Luanda, and the modernization of the Data Center Backup, installed in the National Data Center, next to the Telecommunications Institute (ITEL), in Rangel.

The two Data Centers will be interconnected with a 50 gigabitt (G) per second fiber optic ring, according to the director of the National Institute for the Promotion of the Information Society (INFOSI), André Pedro.

The other connection will have a capacity of 10G per second, which will be made available for the interconnection of the different ministerial departments to the main Data Center.

As a result of the Memorandum of Understanding signed in December 2021 between the multinational Presight and the Executive of Angola, the project will allow for a unified government cloud that will be built on the Data Centers that will provide more than 80 services.

This project provides for the migration of existing “apps” and the implementation of new ones to the unified government “Cloud”.

The main Data Center will house 204 server cabinets, with its execution and equipping estimated in 15 months, with two months having already been accounted for.

This project heralds the emergence of wireless offices for the ministries of Telecommunications and Information Technologies (MITTCS), Education (MED) and the National Assembly (AN).

According to the director of INFOSI, in addition to the construction of two Data Centers, the project reserves the training of technicians and provision of services.

“We will have greater security with regard to citizens’ data and the availability of electronic services”, said the official.

With this project, he added, the queues of users looking for electronic services are expected to be reduced, as well as the elimination of the slowness that still prevails in the provision of public services.

The availability of the national Cloud will be stratified into three levels, namely the level of sovereign bodies, State administration and the information society.

Converge Scattered Data Centers

As soon as the project is completed, scheduled for the first quarter of 2024, all data center silos of the ministerial departments will be transferred to this platform, which will allow savings for the State, in the order of 60%.

In addition to reducing costs, overlapping investments in terms of building Data Centers will also be reduced, according to André Pedro.

As an example, he said that maintaining the license for institutional electronic mail, so that they are inviolable, the sector has costs of around 15 million kwanzas per year.

“If each Ministry has a Data Center and if it has to keep the services housed, the maintenance of these licenses constitute a high cost for the Government of Angola, for this reason, the construction of a National Cloud is justified”, said André Pedro to who the scattered Data Centers put the country’s data system at risk.

According to him, the Data Centers independent by each ministry, with various standards, from the most organized to the more or less, endanger everyone’s information security.

“It is very difficult to have tight control in the way data is made available, taking into account that there is a diversity of Data Centers of the various ministerial departments and public companies”, he admitted.

Domain. When will be outsourced

According to the person in charge, INFOSI will no longer be “referee and player”, with regard to the issue of making the .Ao domain available.

INFOSI, he said, will simply become a market regulator, after the completion of the National Cloud, dedicating itself to issuing licenses to the companies that will be responsible for the domain.

The current cost for acquiring a .AO domain is around eight thousand kwanzas per year, a value that the sector will maintain by outsourcing, and control for the price of acquiring this electronic service.

For More News And Analysis About Angola Follow Africa-Press

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here