Comms minister pushes the cloud

Ed Vaizey talks up the benefits of cloud computing at recent UK-China Internet Forum

Minister for communications Ed Vaizey has bigged up the cloud at the third annual UK-China Internet Forum.

In a move that will give channel cloud players a boost, the minister outlined the potential of the new technology at the forum, which brings together government and business from both countries to discuss business opportunities and policy issues related to the internet.

The event this year was held at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

“Access to the networked resources provided by clouds enables companies to enter markets without having to meet the capital costs of building their own computer infrastructure,” Vaizey said. “What they get instead is a sort of pay-as-you-go service tailored to their specific requirements. This is especially significant today at a time when we are seeing an explosion in the number of portable devices with limited storage capacity.

“Access to clouds enables them to transcend that limitation and provide a level of functionality which would normally be associated with much larger machines,” he said.

But Vaizey warned that realising the full potential of this technology would require “significant change”, and that ensuring individual privacy and data security would be essential for consumer trust and confidence, requiring a step change in co-operation between industry, consumers and governments.

The comments came as a code of practice was unveiled by the Cloud Industry Forum to benchmark quality in cloud services provision, and at the same time as the EU has given the green light to a three-year research project to allay security concerns about the cloud industry.