TWO years into the pandemic, the global dependency on technology is more evident than ever before. In a survey conducted by IBM, 59 per cent of organisations indicated that they had accelerated their digital transformation, with 64pc acknowledging a shift to more cloud-based business activities.

In Pakistan, the situation is not any different. There has been robust growth in information technology (IT) and IT-enabled services over the past five years, with a compound annual growth rate of 18.85pc, which is one of the highest growth rates compared to other industries, and the highest in the region, according to the Economic Survey of Pakistan. Furthermore, Pakistan’s IT sector has the potential and ability to increase its exports further, as the industry grew significantly by around 40pc during the 2020-21 fiscal year.

According to technological research and consulting firm Gartner, 40pc of all enterprise workloads by 2023 will be deployed in cloud infrastructure and platform services; up from 20pc in 2020

The onset of the Covid pandemic served as a catalyst for digital innovation and has particularly seen an exponential increase in the adoption of cloud services globally. According to technological research and consulting firm Gartner, 40pc of all enterprise workloads by 2023 will be deployed in cloud infrastructure and platform services; up from 20pc in 2020.

There are several arguments in favour of a cloud-first approach. Cloud is budget-friendly. Going from physical hardware and infrastructure to cloud-based services eliminates the upfront need for capital expenditure and reduces the overall cost of ownership. Moreover, consolidating hundreds of small to mid-sized data centres leads to a lower carbon footprint, making cloud an environment-friendly option. No further discussion is needed to show the ease, convenience and agility that cloud services bring.

In Pakistan, the Ministry of Information Technology has launched the cloud policy which, indeed, is a welcome step in the right regulatory direction. Under the policy, a cloud-first approach would be taken for all new governmental projects — reducing the capital expenditure burden for the government. Furthermore, a central office would be created to address all cloud-related matters for the government and the accreditation of service providers.

With the introduction of a standardised security and infrastructure framework, the resilience of the government’s IT infrastructure makes it much harder for security breaches to occur. According to the World Economic Forum, the world is amid a “cyber pandemic”. And lately, we have seen cyber security attacks in the public as well as the private sector. This shows that every enterprise or public-sector organisation might not necessarily be tech-savvy or might not have the required resources to invest in a secure infrastructure. In such cases, it makes sense, especially for the government, to engage with reliable service partners to reduce the risk.

With a progressive regulatory policy on its way, we need more local cloud players in the market than those that are currently available, like Multinet and Rapid, in addition to the global players. The latest entrant in the local market is the cloud platform by Jazz which may reduce the dependence of enterprises in Pakistan on international operators.

Currently, much of the revenue and taxation generated by cloud services goes outside Pakistan through global players, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and others. Having more reliable and secure local cloud providers will lead to more economic inflow and the creation of wealth as the cloud value chain will remain within the country.

Furthermore, this would create more opportunities for cloud service providers to invest locally. Most important of all, as data is the new global wealth creator, it would be great to have Pakistani data stay within Pakistan.

The writer is a senior official with a leading digital operator

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, January 28th, 2022