'Cloud computing crucial to Digital India,need safe practices'

Cloud computing is a critical component for ensuring success of Digital India, the flagship programme of the NDA government, and access to cloud networks is crucial and requires safe practices, experts said today.

Pamela Kumar, Vice-President, Cloud Computing Innovation Council of India, Bengaluru, said the Digital India programme has several key aspects like digital lockers where individuals can store their information online.

MeghRaj Cloud Computing- Government of India's initiative to harness the benefits of Cloud Computing-- is also a very crticial component of Digital India programme.

Speaking at plenary session on Cloud Computing and Virtualisation at the Indian Science Congress here, Kumar also emphasised on an Indian version of cloud that suits its requirements.
 

"We need the mangalyaan version (of data computing) and not the NASA version," she said.

Cloud computing is the practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and process data, rather than on a local server or a personal computer.

For instance, dropbox, Google Drive, One Note are examples of cloud where data can be saved and accessed from different media like mobile phones, tablets and computers. One need not restrict himself to a desktop or a laptop under cloud computing.

However, cloud computing also needs right kind of security measures. Referring to the hacking of computer of Democratic National Committee, Biswanath Mukherjee, Distinguished Professor at the Department of Computer Science of University of California, said weak passwords are a major factor contributing to such incidents and it is important to follow safe practises.

In plenary session on 5G and Internet of Things (IoT), experts discussed the scope of 5G in coming years.

Rishi Bhatnagar, President of Aeris Communications, said 5G was expected to come in India by 2020. Unlike 2G, 3G and 4G, 5G will leapfrog. We can expect the 5G technology to come up by in next 3 years, he said.

Bhabani Sinha, professor at the Advanced Computing and Microelectronics Unit at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, said several aspects like call drops in 4G and faster draining of battery has to be addressed before 5G arrives on the scene.