Luanda – The Angolan Executive will invest USD 89 million in the implementation of Angola´s National Cloud infrastructure, whose project was presented Thursday, in Luanda, by the Ministry of Telecommunication, Information Technology and Mass Media (MINTICS).
The project includes construction of two Data Centres, with the main two-storey prefabricated "model" building to be erected in an area of 5,320 square metres in Camama district, Luanda, and modernisation of the Backup Data Centre, which will be installed at the National Data Centre, next to the Telecommunications Institute (ITEL), in Rangel.
The two Data Centres will be connected with a fibre-optic ring of 50 Gigabytes per second, according to the director of the National Institute for the Promotion of the Information Society (INFOSI), André Pedro.
The other connection will have the capacity of 10 Gigabytes per second, which will be available for the interconnection of different ministerial departments to the main Data Centre.
As a result of the Memorandum of Understanding signed in December 2021, between the Presight multinational company, the project will enable a unified government cloud that will be built on top of data centres that will provide more than 80 services.
This project foresees the migration of existing applications and the implementation of new ones to the unified government cloud.
The Data Centre will be equipped with 204 server cabinets and its implementation and equipping is estimated to last 15 months (two gone now).
It is hoped that this project will provide wireless offices for the Ministry of Telecommunications, Information Technology and Mass Media (MINTCS), ministry of Education (MED) and the National Assembly (AN).
According to INFOSI director, in addition to the two Data Centres, whose project aims the training of technicians and availability of services.
The official said that the country will have greater security in terms of respect to citizens´ data and the availability of electronic services, adding that with this project it is expected that the queues of users in search of electronic services will 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.
Converging Disperse Data Centres
As soon as the project is concluded, which is foreseen for the first quarter of 2024, all the silos in the ministerial departments' Data Centres will be transferred on this platform, which will enable savings for the State of around 60%.
In addition to cost reduction, the overlapping of investments regarding Data Centre construction will also be reduced, according to André Pedro.
As an example, he said that in maintaining the licence for institutional electronic mails, so that they are inviolable, the sector has costs of around 15 million kwanzas per year.
“If each Ministry has a Data Centre and has to keep the services of maintenance, this constitutes a high cost for the Angolan Government, which justifies the construction of a National Cloud”, said André Pedro, adding that the dispersed Data Centres put the country´s data system at risk.
He said that independent data centres for each ministry, with various standards, from the most organised to the least organised, jeopardised everyone´s information security.
The official admitted that it is very difficult to have a tight control over how data are made available, bearing in mind that there is a diversity of data centres in the several ministries and public companies.
AO domain will be outsourced
According to the official, the INFOSI will no longer do all work alone as regard to the availability of the domain.
He said that INFOSI will simply become the regulator of the market, after the conclusion of the National Cloud, devoting itself to issuing licenses to the companies that will be responsible for the domain.
The current cost of acquiring an AO domain is around 80,000 kwanzas per year, a value that the sector will maintain by outsourcing, and controlling for the price of acquiring this electronic service.
