BoU seeks to understand offsite data storage services
Dr Twinemanzi Tumubweine (L), the BoU director bank supervision and Raxio’s James Byaruhanga. COURTESY PHOTO
What you need to know:
Usage of shared ICT services such as data centres and cloud services is expected to reduce total cost of ownership by introducing pay as you grow models.
Kampala. Bank of Uganda (BoU) has said it has started a conversation that seeks to incorporate cloud computing into the banking system.
Speaking during the first executive roundtable for business and ICT leaders to discuss how to manage operational costs by leveraging cloud technologies, organised by Raxio Data Centre and Oracle, Mr Tumubweine Twinemanzi, the BoU director for commercial bank supervision, said the central bank needs to have an acceptable position on cloud computing services.
“Do we allow it? Under what circumstances? Who can and who cannot, what can they do and what can they store there?” he said, emphasising the need for the banking industry to invest in financial data. Cloud computing uses a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and process data, rather than depending on local server or personal computers.
Raxio has since last been working on a data centre, which it says will improve data storage.
Mr Joachim Steuerwald, the Oracle Cloud Platform sales director, said the presence of a Tier III data centres, such as the one being developed by Raxio will make Uganda an attractive investment destination by big players in the technology and data industry.
Mr James Byaruhanga, the Raxio managing director, said local cloud computing services and data centres will not only cut the cost of administration but will improve business efficiency.
African countries such as Uganda have a low adaptation of cloud services partly because of absence of data centres.
However, there has been increased growth for the need of such facilities due to rapid growth of ICT services on the continent, particularly in Uganda.
