Bangladesh Local players eye bigger slice as in-country Cloud Computing storage/processing gains foothold

[Bilal9]

Cloud computing is a model of delivering computing services such as data storage, processing and networking over the internet on a pay-per-use basis​

Infograph: TBS

Cloud storage is becoming more popular in Bangladesh as a way of safely and affordably storing and managing data and websites.

The shift from traditional storage systems to cloud storage promises a variety of sectors, including finance, corporate, education, and e-commerce better data loss prevention, maximum efficiency at a minimum cost and uninterrupted IT solutions to businesses.

The market size of the domestic cloud storage is currently around $20 million and is expected to reach $46.3 million by 2025, according to industry stakeholders.

Though international vendors such as Amazon, Google, Huawei and Oracle currently dominate the business with around 90% of the market share, local players now look to grab a bigger slice of the pie.

"The business growth has been good over the past couple of years and the future also looks promising," Toufique Ehsan, head of business of local Mir Cloud, told The Business Standard.

The cloud providers aim to convince businesses to give up building and managing their own data centres and to use their computer capacity instead.

Mir and key local market peers such as Aamra Technologies Limited and Brilliant Cloud offer complete data storage and IT solutions. Their packages include cloud server, storage, auto scaling, data security, disaster recovery, remote access and round the clock customer service.

In a recent development in December 2022, Gennext Technology Limited and state-owned Bangladesh Data Center Company Limited signed an agreement to set up a joint venture named Meghna Cloud – which is also dubbed as "made in Bangladesh cloud".

In 2016, Amazon Web Services (AWS) introduced cloud computing to Bangladesh through its local agents. Subsequently, Brilliant Cloud by InterCloud Limited joined the business to become the first local service provider.

Losing online data or files from websites and computers after a server failure is a common occurrence in businesses of all sizes.

In contrast to firms managing their small-scale data storages, data loss is prevented in a cloud storage system because the hosting organization stores data on multiple servers through a mirroring system, according to Md A Abbas Chowdhury, the chief IT officer at a corporate organization.

He added that cloud storage also eliminates the need for purchasing storage equipment, paying for space rent, and reduces the cost of management. As a result, companies and enterprises are increasingly turning to cloud services, which provide users with the added benefits of no additional investment in hardware and no extra capital expenditure during business growth.

A competitive market

The cloud storage market in Bangladesh is currently divided among three types of vendors.

International first-line vendors make up 53% of the market and include Huawei, Google Cloud, Amazon, Microsoft Azure and Oracle.

International low-cost vendors hold 40% of the market and include Cloudflare, Liquid Web, DigitalOcean, and Wasabi.

Local vendors make up the remaining market share and include InterCloud, Aamra, Mir Cloud, BRACNet, PacECloud, Square InformatiX, Plexus and EyHost.

Among international first-line vendors, Huawei Cloud is witnessing rapid growth, particularly in the Bangladesh market.

Md Shajahan Ahmed, sales manager of Cloud Business Development (Bangladesh) at Huawei, said the Chinese tech giant is committed to its cloud services and solutions and is looking to accelerate digital transformation in the region through its presence.

Huawei Cloud currently serves a number of prominent customers in Bangladesh, including Robi, Ifad Autos Limited, bdjobs.com and Rokomari.com.

To have an edge over the global tech giants, local cloud providers offer cheaper packages, unlimited data transfer, data storage inside the country and payment in taka instead of dollars amid the ongoing greenback crunch.

Md Hasibur Rashid, director and chief marketing officer of InterCloud Limited that owns Brilliant Cloud, said it has low latency access and high availability nationwide.

He noted the company has backup infrastructure in Dhaka and Jashore, and customers can enjoy unlimited data transfer without any capping.

Policy support is all they need

As the cloud market grows, the share of international vendors is also increasing, which has negative consequences for the government amid the dollar crunch, according to local entrepreneurs.

They pointed out that when customers use cloud services from international vendors, payment must be made in foreign currencies, which has become a critical issue for now.

Local investors believe that if the government formulates a policy to keep data within the country's borders, it will be a major benefit for the local vendors.

Currently, there are no direct guidelines for businesses regarding the location of the data storage centres.

Besides, if guidelines were put in place mandating banks and other government organisations to store their data in the cloud, it would provide a significant boost to the local cloud industry, said Mir Cloud's Head of Business Toufique Ehsan.

 

[Pranaayam]

Cloud computing is a model of delivering computing services such as data storage, processing and networking over the internet on a pay-per-use basis​

Infograph: TBS

Cloud storage is becoming more popular in Bangladesh as a way of safely and affordably storing and managing data and websites.

The shift from traditional storage systems to cloud storage promises a variety of sectors, including finance, corporate, education, and e-commerce better data loss prevention, maximum efficiency at a minimum cost and uninterrupted IT solutions to businesses.

The market size of the domestic cloud storage is currently around $20 million and is expected to reach $46.3 million by 2025, according to industry stakeholders.

Though international vendors such as Amazon, Google, Huawei and Oracle currently dominate the business with around 90% of the market share, local players now look to grab a bigger slice of the pie.

"The business growth has been good over the past couple of years and the future also looks promising," Toufique Ehsan, head of business of local Mir Cloud, told The Business Standard.

The cloud providers aim to convince businesses to give up building and managing their own data centres and to use their computer capacity instead.

Mir and key local market peers such as Aamra Technologies Limited and Brilliant Cloud offer complete data storage and IT solutions. Their packages include cloud server, storage, auto scaling, data security, disaster recovery, remote access and round the clock customer service.

In a recent development in December 2022, Gennext Technology Limited and state-owned Bangladesh Data Center Company Limited signed an agreement to set up a joint venture named Meghna Cloud – which is also dubbed as "made in Bangladesh cloud".

In 2016, Amazon Web Services (AWS) introduced cloud computing to Bangladesh through its local agents. Subsequently, Brilliant Cloud by InterCloud Limited joined the business to become the first local service provider.

Losing online data or files from websites and computers after a server failure is a common occurrence in businesses of all sizes.

In contrast to firms managing their small-scale data storages, data loss is prevented in a cloud storage system because the hosting organization stores data on multiple servers through a mirroring system, according to Md A Abbas Chowdhury, the chief IT officer at a corporate organization.

He added that cloud storage also eliminates the need for purchasing storage equipment, paying for space rent, and reduces the cost of management. As a result, companies and enterprises are increasingly turning to cloud services, which provide users with the added benefits of no additional investment in hardware and no extra capital expenditure during business growth.

A competitive market

The cloud storage market in Bangladesh is currently divided among three types of vendors.

International first-line vendors make up 53% of the market and include Huawei, Google Cloud, Amazon, Microsoft Azure and Oracle.

International low-cost vendors hold 40% of the market and include Cloudflare, Liquid Web, DigitalOcean, and Wasabi.

Local vendors make up the remaining market share and include InterCloud, Aamra, Mir Cloud, BRACNet, PacECloud, Square InformatiX, Plexus and EyHost.

Among international first-line vendors, Huawei Cloud is witnessing rapid growth, particularly in the Bangladesh market.

Md Shajahan Ahmed, sales manager of Cloud Business Development (Bangladesh) at Huawei, said the Chinese tech giant is committed to its cloud services and solutions and is looking to accelerate digital transformation in the region through its presence.

Huawei Cloud currently serves a number of prominent customers in Bangladesh, including Robi, Ifad Autos Limited, bdjobs.com and Rokomari.com.

To have an edge over the global tech giants, local cloud providers offer cheaper packages, unlimited data transfer, data storage inside the country and payment in taka instead of dollars amid the ongoing greenback crunch.

Md Hasibur Rashid, director and chief marketing officer of InterCloud Limited that owns Brilliant Cloud, said it has low latency access and high availability nationwide.

He noted the company has backup infrastructure in Dhaka and Jashore, and customers can enjoy unlimited data transfer without any capping.

Policy support is all they need

As the cloud market grows, the share of international vendors is also increasing, which has negative consequences for the government amid the dollar crunch, according to local entrepreneurs.

They pointed out that when customers use cloud services from international vendors, payment must be made in foreign currencies, which has become a critical issue for now.

Local investors believe that if the government formulates a policy to keep data within the country's borders, it will be a major benefit for the local vendors.

Currently, there are no direct guidelines for businesses regarding the location of the data storage centres.

Besides, if guidelines were put in place mandating banks and other government organisations to store their data in the cloud, it would provide a significant boost to the local cloud industry, said Mir Cloud's Head of Business Toufique Ehsan.

No offense but $20 million market is a joke. To put out an article glorifying such miniscule achievement is cringy.

I consider India's over $5 billion cloud storage market an embarrassment (although growing fast). This is another level.

 

[mb444]

Cloud computing is a model of delivering computing services such as data storage, processing and networking over the internet on a pay-per-use basis​

Infograph: TBS

Cloud storage is becoming more popular in Bangladesh as a way of safely and affordably storing and managing data and websites.

The shift from traditional storage systems to cloud storage promises a variety of sectors, including finance, corporate, education, and e-commerce better data loss prevention, maximum efficiency at a minimum cost and uninterrupted IT solutions to businesses.

The market size of the domestic cloud storage is currently around $20 million and is expected to reach $46.3 million by 2025, according to industry stakeholders.

Though international vendors such as Amazon, Google, Huawei and Oracle currently dominate the business with around 90% of the market share, local players now look to grab a bigger slice of the pie.

"The business growth has been good over the past couple of years and the future also looks promising," Toufique Ehsan, head of business of local Mir Cloud, told The Business Standard.

The cloud providers aim to convince businesses to give up building and managing their own data centres and to use their computer capacity instead.

Mir and key local market peers such as Aamra Technologies Limited and Brilliant Cloud offer complete data storage and IT solutions. Their packages include cloud server, storage, auto scaling, data security, disaster recovery, remote access and round the clock customer service.

In a recent development in December 2022, Gennext Technology Limited and state-owned Bangladesh Data Center Company Limited signed an agreement to set up a joint venture named Meghna Cloud – which is also dubbed as "made in Bangladesh cloud".

In 2016, Amazon Web Services (AWS) introduced cloud computing to Bangladesh through its local agents. Subsequently, Brilliant Cloud by InterCloud Limited joined the business to become the first local service provider.

Losing online data or files from websites and computers after a server failure is a common occurrence in businesses of all sizes.

In contrast to firms managing their small-scale data storages, data loss is prevented in a cloud storage system because the hosting organization stores data on multiple servers through a mirroring system, according to Md A Abbas Chowdhury, the chief IT officer at a corporate organization.

He added that cloud storage also eliminates the need for purchasing storage equipment, paying for space rent, and reduces the cost of management. As a result, companies and enterprises are increasingly turning to cloud services, which provide users with the added benefits of no additional investment in hardware and no extra capital expenditure during business growth.

A competitive market

The cloud storage market in Bangladesh is currently divided among three types of vendors.

International first-line vendors make up 53% of the market and include Huawei, Google Cloud, Amazon, Microsoft Azure and Oracle.

International low-cost vendors hold 40% of the market and include Cloudflare, Liquid Web, DigitalOcean, and Wasabi.

Local vendors make up the remaining market share and include InterCloud, Aamra, Mir Cloud, BRACNet, PacECloud, Square InformatiX, Plexus and EyHost.

Among international first-line vendors, Huawei Cloud is witnessing rapid growth, particularly in the Bangladesh market.

Md Shajahan Ahmed, sales manager of Cloud Business Development (Bangladesh) at Huawei, said the Chinese tech giant is committed to its cloud services and solutions and is looking to accelerate digital transformation in the region through its presence.

Huawei Cloud currently serves a number of prominent customers in Bangladesh, including Robi, Ifad Autos Limited, bdjobs.com and Rokomari.com.

To have an edge over the global tech giants, local cloud providers offer cheaper packages, unlimited data transfer, data storage inside the country and payment in taka instead of dollars amid the ongoing greenback crunch.

Md Hasibur Rashid, director and chief marketing officer of InterCloud Limited that owns Brilliant Cloud, said it has low latency access and high availability nationwide.

He noted the company has backup infrastructure in Dhaka and Jashore, and customers can enjoy unlimited data transfer without any capping.

Policy support is all they need

As the cloud market grows, the share of international vendors is also increasing, which has negative consequences for the government amid the dollar crunch, according to local entrepreneurs.

They pointed out that when customers use cloud services from international vendors, payment must be made in foreign currencies, which has become a critical issue for now.

Local investors believe that if the government formulates a policy to keep data within the country's borders, it will be a major benefit for the local vendors.

Currently, there are no direct guidelines for businesses regarding the location of the data storage centres.

Besides, if guidelines were put in place mandating banks and other government organisations to store their data in the cloud, it would provide a significant boost to the local cloud industry, said Mir Cloud's Head of Business Toufique Ehsan.

As i commented previously on this. Absolutely imperative that BD adopts policy to ensure BD data remains within BD. The policy template ready available from EU to china.

Without this BD wont develop own datacentre and the data will simply flow to US.

The time is now.... BD cloud computing is tiny.... in perspective as per article, data storage by value is $25m per month for the country as a whole...... whilst I directly manage contract with Microsoft with current run rate of $0.5m per month for approximately 13PB of data storage for my company.

But cloud computing is more than data storage. Big money is in data processing, here I pay around $1m per month, so the ratio is 1:2 for storage vs processing. Realistically my company is behind the curve in terms of utilisation of data. The ratio should be 1:5 in my sector, the best data lead companies operate at above 1:10 ratio.

Here BD market is too immature to worth commenting on. Public sector can and should take the lead.... build a singular portal for tax, driving licenses, land registry and voter registration for a start if BD is serious about a digital BD.

 

[Bilal9]

As i commented previously on this. Absolutely imperative that BD adopts policy to ensure BD data remains within BD. The policy template ready available from EU to china.

Without this BD wont develop own datacentre and the data will simply flow to US.

The time is now.... BD cloud computing is tiny.... in perspective as per article, data storage by value is $25m per month for the country as a whole...... whilst I directly manage contract with Microsoft with current run rate of $0.5m per month for approximately 13PB of data storage for my company.

But cloud computing is more than data storage. Big money is in data processing, here I pay around $1m per month, so the ratio is 1:2 for storage vs processing. Realistically my company is behind the curve in terms of utilisation of data. The ratio should be 1:5 in my sector, the best data lead companies operate at above 1:10 ratio.

Here BD market is too immature to worth commenting on. Public sector can and should take the lead.... build a singular portal for tax, driving licenses, land registry and voter registration for a start if BD is serious about a digital BD.

You have some very good points.

There are few people in Bangladesh (other than maybe Palak) who even understand cloud hosting and processing (and the implications and impact). Forget having the vision for planning the future in this sector - they probably have no idea of what Amazon, GCP, Azure and other juggernauts offer and the implications of each.

This is the reason Indians are dominating this and other sectors there, even IT or cloud management. Local uneducated managers don't know how to sense Banya tricks and dhokeybaaji.

These IT ministry people in Bangladesh should be coming up with legislation to protect data privacy and security or Bangladesh citizens like what GDPR did for the EU. This will become increasingly important as a requirement by the UN organizations for e-Governance, as other countries are doing.

Instead Palak is busy firming up digital security legislation on how to tamp down opposition using the court system, as Hasina ordered him to do.

Just short-sighted people, the both of them. They should keep their eyes on the larger eight-ball.

Before you know it - the cloud infra will exceed manageable limits, and will see unplanned unsupervised (UNREGULATED) growth - like all other sectors in Bangladesh. Before we know it, it will become too costly to regulate/manage through govt. mandates. They need a local version of GDPR right now - to enforce security/privacy controls and rules on all cloud providers operating in Bangladesh.

 

[mb444]

You have some very good points.

There are few people in Bangladesh (other than maybe Palak) who even understand cloud hosting and processing (and the implications and impact). Forget having the vision for planning the future in this sector - they probably have no idea of what Amazon, GCP, Azure and other juggernauts offer and the implications of each.

This is the reason Indians are dominating this and other sectors there, even IT or cloud management. Local uneducated managers don't know how to sense Banya tricks and dhokeybaaji.

These IT ministry people in Bangladesh should be coming up with legislation to protect data privacy and security or Bangladesh citizens like what GDPR did for the EU. This will become increasingly important as a requirement by the UN organizations for e-Governance, as other countries are doing.

Instead Palak is busy firming up digital security legislation on how to tamp down opposition using the court system, as Hasina ordered him to do.

Just short-sighted people, the both of them. They should keep their eyes on the larger eight-ball.

Before you know it - the cloud infra will exceed manageable limits, and will see unplanned unsupervised (UNREGULATED) growth - like all other sectors in Bangladesh. Before we know it, it will become too costly to regulate/manage through govt. mandates. They need a local version of GDPR right now - to enforce security/privacy controls and rules on all cloud providers operating in Bangladesh.

BD GDPR is necessary now.

BD with its population generates loads of valuable data be it in the transport sector, financial transactions or sales data.

Properly harnessed these will lead to massive improvement in services and the business intelligence gathered will open infinite possibilities.

BD consumer data should not leave BD just like EU, US and china. It will safeguard and incubate homegrown tech, otherwise very soon we will have buy our own data from others. Let us hope there are some in the government who understand this and takes action.

Whilst the market is tiny now but cloud is the future and properly supported it will grow massively.

Likes of GDPR and chinese version also at its core started with digital security, BD has ready made template that it could follow.

 

[Pranaayam]

As i commented previously on this. Absolutely imperative that BD adopts policy to ensure BD data remains within BD. The policy template ready available from EU to china.

Without this BD wont develop own datacentre and the data will simply flow to US.

The time is now.... BD cloud computing is tiny.... in perspective as per article, data storage by value is $25m per month for the country as a whole...... whilst I directly manage contract with Microsoft with current run rate of $0.5m per month for approximately 13PB of data storage for my company.

But cloud computing is more than data storage. Big money is in data processing, here I pay around $1m per month, so the ratio is 1:2 for storage vs processing. Realistically my company is behind the curve in terms of utilisation of data. The ratio should be 1:5 in my sector, the best data lead companies operate at above 1:10 ratio.

Here BD market is too immature to worth commenting on. Public sector can and should take the lead.... build a singular portal for tax, driving licenses, land registry and voter registration for a start if BD is serious about a digital BD.

It's $25 million per year not month.

You have some very good points.

There are few people in Bangladesh (other than maybe Palak) who even understand cloud hosting and processing (and the implications and impact). Forget having the vision for planning the future in this sector - they probably have no idea of what Amazon, GCP, Azure and other juggernauts offer and the implications of each.

This is the reason Indians are dominating this and other sectors there, even IT or cloud management. Local uneducated managers don't know how to sense Banya tricks and dhokeybaaji.

These IT ministry people in Bangladesh should be coming up with legislation to protect data privacy and security or Bangladesh citizens like what GDPR did for the EU. This will become increasingly important as a requirement by the UN organizations for e-Governance, as other countries are doing.

Instead Palak is busy firming up digital security legislation on how to tamp down opposition using the court system, as Hasina ordered him to do.

Just short-sighted people, the both of them. They should keep their eyes on the larger eight-ball.

Before you know it - the cloud infra will exceed manageable limits, and will see unplanned unsupervised (UNREGULATED) growth - like all other sectors in Bangladesh. Before we know it, it will become too costly to regulate/manage through govt. mandates. They need a local version of GDPR right now - to enforce security/privacy controls and rules on all cloud providers operating in Bangladesh.

I hope you'll invest billion of dollars in Bangladesh on Cloud storage given the economics. I don't think anyone from outside will be interested in investing in Bangladesh when consumption and potential is so low.

BD GDPR is necessary now.

BD with its population generates loads of valuable data be it in the transport sector, financial transactions or sales data.

Properly harnessed these will lead to massive improvement in services and the business intelligence gathered will open infinite possibilities.

BD consumer data should not leave BD just like EU, US and china. It will safeguard and incubate homegrown tech, otherwise very soon we will have buy our own data from others. Let us hope there are some in the government who understand this and takes action.

Whilst the market is tiny now but cloud is the future and properly supported it will grow massively.

Likes of GDPR and chinese version also at its core started with digital security, BD has ready made template that it could

No one in their right mind, would want to invest in data storage even if you enforce localisation law. It will unnecessarily become hassle for multi nationals, they would much rather leave the country than obey. Economics just wouldn't work out. Bangladesh is not a huge consumption market like US, China. Even India had to compromise on its own data localisation law. I think you Bangladeshis over estimate your value for MNC's.

AWS, AZURE, GCP are the most often used clouds in the industry. I don't think anyone would want to change their softwares to accommodate your local cloud storage provider. And I dont think any of major cloud providers would want to set shop in Bangladesh.

GDPR is a European law. No single country in Europe could've come up with it on its own.

 

[Bilal9]

Information is the oil of the 21st century​

Here is the piece (interview) with Gartner research head Peter Sondergaard. Every educated Bangladeshi poster should read and view these video and text pieces (whether they like me as a poster or not) because it has forecasted the impact of Information Technology applicable on our daily lives in Bangladesh, whether for our budding IT industry or as users of eGovernance in our daily lives.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Peter Sondergaard, global head of research at Gartner

One-third of existing knowledge worker jobs will disappear by 2025 as the era of the digital machinist gives rise to the era to the digital humanist, says Gartner’s global head of research Peter Sondergaard.

As research organisations go, Gartner’s viewpoint is the one sought and respected the most in the global technology industry. Everyone from CIOs to IT managers, CEOs and digital strategists base much of their decisions and directions on the signals that come from Gartner’s army of experts.

At the helm of this knowledge network is Sondergaard, a 30-year IT industry veteran who co-ordinates a global organisation of more than 900 experts across IT, supply chain and marketing.

The company’s client base spans 13,300 organisations across more than 80 countries and initiatives driven by Sondergaard have contributed to high levels of revenue for Gartner of more than US$1.3bn in 2013.

Sondergaard was in Dublin this week, where he addressed an Irish Internet Association seminar on future trends, energy-efficient and cost-effective IT.

As Sondergaard explained it, the entire IT industry is in the midst of a transition from connecting businesses and people to connecting things in new and innovative ways. And while Google and Amazon have become household names, the next household names of the coming decade may not have even started up yet.

“This transition essentially makes technology invisible. It is everywhere around us and the systems will have information that will become the oil of the 21st century, making us more knowledgeable, valuable and creates opportunities for new kinds of businesses.”

The IT industry up to now has been led by companies that connected businesses with people. Sondergaard said the next Apple or Google will thrive by connecting businesses, people and things.

IT innovation time cycles are getting shorter​

“We are seeing the time cycles shorten in terms of the innovation of technology, so where 20 years ago we were used to five or 10-year shifts, these have now shrunk to be two-year shifts in technology. We can see this with mobile phones, where even a device someone bought six months ago could be out of fashion.

“But the big upheaval will come over the course of the next 10 years because of the smart technologies that are coming in that will allow us to automate decisions that human beings or knowledge workers would make today.

“We believe there is a high likelihood that a third of all knowledge-worker jobs today will in fact disappear by 2025. That creates opportunity for new jobs, but the flip side is it could also create a level of social disruption thanks to technology.”

The safe haven, he reasoned, is in programming skills, because we have moved beyond programming IT systems to now programming cars, dishwashers and all kinds of devices.

Information is the oil of the 21st century​

“Information is the oil of the 21st century. It is really what makes the world tick and so this is where analytical, statistical knowledge, the ability to analyze and put together information in a non-linear manner also becomes a really important skill set.

“There is also the whole aspect of design and usability; the kind of capabilities you tend to find in game designers who know how people interact with systems.

“There is a fundamental friction right now that is caused by technology. On the one hand you have the digital machinist, people who can automate everything in sight, but also the digital humanist because we think that systems need to be designed around what people want and need and can accept. Skill sets such as user experience (UX) and design principles will become really valuable.

“We don’t have enough of those, it requires a different adaptive skill set and that kind of skill set we would probably want to see more of from an educational perspective in schools because we will need that to really allow for the appropriate integration of technology and human beings in the future.

“And so the aspect of the digital humanist is in our mind a really important principle to consider alongside the digital machinist which has been prevalent for the last 30 or 40 years.”

 

[mb444]

It's $25 million per year not month.

I hope you'll invest billion of dollars in Bangladesh on Cloud storage given the economics. I don't think anyone from outside will be interested in investing in Bangladesh when consumption and potential is so low.

No one in their right mind, would want to invest in data storage even if you enforce localisation law. It will unnecessarily become hassle for multi nationals, they would much rather leave the country than obey. Economics just wouldn't work out. Bangladesh is not a huge consumption market like US, China. Even India had to compromise on its own data localisation law. I think you Bangladeshis over estimate your value for MNC's.

AWS, AZURE, GCP are the most often used clouds in the industry. I don't think anyone would want to change their softwares to accommodate your local cloud storage provider. And I dont think any of major cloud providers would want to set shop in Bangladesh.

GDPR is a European law. No single country in Europe could've come up with it on its own.

No software change is necessary to accommodate local laws, you just need to hold the data in the jurisdiction concerned. All it needs are datacentres in country. BD have enough DC to accommodate, with laws correctly applied would lead to growth in DCs.

It is quite irrelevant what india may have done. BD has huge amount of unharvested data and should follow China and Russia model. MNC will follow local laws or step off from the country concerned, its no big deal.

BD must protect its data, particularly consumer data and laws must be enacted before the inevitable explosion of data mining. BD citizen data must never leave its shores, it should be considered as a precious natural resource for that is what in reality it is.

 

[Pranaayam]

No software change is necessary to accommodate local laws, you just need to hold the data in the jurisdiction concerned. All it needs are datacentres in country. BD have enough DC to accommodate, with laws correctly applied would lead to growth in DCs.

It is quite irrelevant what india may have done. BD has huge amount of unharvested data and should follow China and Russia model. MNC will follow local laws or step off from the country concerned, its no big deal.

BD must protect its data, particularly consumer data and laws must be enacted before the inevitable explosion of data mining. BD citizen data must never leave its shores, it should be considered as a precious natural resource for that is what in reality it is.

No software change required? I mean how do you think data gets stored in any particular data center? They would call storage server from software with its particular storage end point. If Bangladesh mandates localisation, then software will have to point to data centers in Bangladesh. That would be a hassle given you don't have data centers of the main cloud service providers. You will never have them given the low potential.

 

[Bilal9]

No software change required? I mean how do you think data gets stored in any particular data center? They would call storage server from software with its particular storage end point. If Bangladesh mandates localisation, then software will have to point to data centers in Bangladesh. That would be a hassle given you don't have data centers of the main cloud service providers. You will never have them given the low potential.

Obviously you have no idea about local e-Governance, and Fintech initiatives in Bangladesh - hence your negative comments.

Low potential ?

In a country of 170 Million people ? Which is half the population of the US ?

Bangladesh - despite its size has the second largest pool of freelancers globally and actually exceeds India in some sectors.

Coding is not the only game in town when it comes to online access and services business.

And we don't have to beg AWS, Azure and GCP to open datacenters in Bangladesh, when we can spend money and build our own.

 

[mb444]

No software change required? I mean how do you think data gets stored in any particular data center? They would call storage server from software with its particular storage end point. If Bangladesh mandates localisation, then software will have to point to data centers in Bangladesh. That would be a hassle given you don't have data centers of the main cloud service providers. You will never have them given the low potential.

Data centres exists in BD as I have already said. How much effort do you think is involved in repointing or in that matter spinning up clusters to process data within BD setup - nothing at all.

To answer your first point..... yes no software change is necessary. You have to configure your solution to say where your data is, pointing to a DC in BD is no greater effort than in pointing to US. Additionally you get charged for data movement, everytime BD data leaves or re-enters BD it will be charged. Furthermore given where the ultimate destination is and how many global zones the data crosses has bearing on storage and compute costs.

Just lead a project to hive off my companies Russia business from the rest of the world. In 2 months we moved off Azure and AWS to Yandex with approximately 3PB of data. Russia never allowed its data to leave its jurisdiction, its data stayed in its own data centres. Switching cloud providers is easy if you control the data.

Why should BD care for what is easy for MNC? As i said they do not need to come to BD if they do not want to. There are many players in the market who are nimble enough to accommodate jurisdictional ring fencing.

 

[sonargon]

I work in this field and am quite familiar with it. To be honest international vendors will continue to dominate this space in the future - e.x AWS, Azure, GCP. I don't have much faith in local cloud vendors - providing cloud services/infrastructure means providing good support to developers who use them and having a proven track record of reliability and resiliency. This is where the international vendors excel (even though they still suck in many ways).

I could see local vendors possibly being successful if they combined their efforts with active outreach to students and software professionals in Bangladesh. If they were to provide some free training and support to interested peoples then I can see local people preferring to use these services. Such things happen in Japan - where many developers use natively developed software tools/infrastructure/libraries even though they are vastly inferior to western and international counterparts. Why? Because they all learned those first via word of mouth and in-person training and now feel more comfortable with them.

A possibly lucrative option in Bangladesh would be to re-sell AWS Cloud Services with some sort of native localization and support. Most people are only just requiring VM, Blob Storage, Database Storage, DNS and CDN for web-hosting rather than every single AWS/Azure cloud service.

BTW Cloud Services are great but nothing special! These cloud providers are just re-selling you free open-source software that they host on their own infrastructure at an extremely high markup. You are paying for reliability and support which is what they guarantee in the SLA (Service Level Agreement). You can mirror all the services they provide on your own self hosted linux server. All the open source software they use are free to download, run, and modify for your own purposes.

 

[mb444]

I work in this field and am quite familiar with it. To be honest international vendors will continue to dominate this space in the future - e.x AWS, Azure, GCP. I don't have much faith in local cloud vendors - providing cloud services/infrastructure means providing good support to developers who use them and having a proven track record of reliability and resiliency. This is where the international vendors excel (even though they still suck in many ways).

I could see local vendors possibly being successful if they combined their efforts with active outreach to students and software professionals in Bangladesh. If they were to provide some free training and support to interested peoples then I can see local people preferring to use these services. Such things happen in Japan - where many developers use natively developed software tools/infrastructure/libraries even though they are vastly inferior to western and international counterparts. Why? Because they all learned those first via word of mouth and in-person training and now feel more comfortable with them.

A possibly lucrative option in Bangladesh would be to re-sell AWS Cloud Services with some sort of native localization and support. Most people are only just requiring VM, Blob Storage, Database Storage, DNS and CDN for web-hosting rather than every single AWS/Azure cloud service.

BTW Cloud Services are great but nothing special! These cloud providers are just re-selling you free open-source software that they host on their own infrastructure at an extremely high markup. You are paying for reliability and support which is what they guarantee in the SLA (Service Level Agreement). You can mirror all the services they provide on your own self hosted linux server. All the open source software they use are free to download, run, and modify for your own purposes.

Have to be honest do not know BD scenario at the coalface as never worked there but i am assuming BD will soon reach a point where companies will seek to exploit market data. I am thinking the likes of Uber alternates, mobile banking platforms, amazon type startups etc

Exploitation of big data is going to be big business very soon in BD. Likes of MS can be made to invest only if BD geofences its data now.

Otherwise it really is not rocket science to put an alternative service together. BD already have the basic infrastructure.

 

[Chute]

I work in this field and am quite familiar with it. To be honest international vendors will continue to dominate this space in the future - e.x AWS, Azure, GCP. I don't have much faith in local cloud vendors - providing cloud services/infrastructure means providing good support to developers who use them and having a proven track record of reliability and resiliency. This is where the international vendors excel (even though they still suck in many ways).

I could see local vendors possibly being successful if they combined their efforts with active outreach to students and software professionals in Bangladesh. If they were to provide some free training and support to interested peoples then I can see local people preferring to use these services. Such things happen in Japan - where many developers use natively developed software tools/infrastructure/libraries even though they are vastly inferior to western and international counterparts. Why? Because they all learned those first via word of mouth and in-person training and now feel more comfortable with them.

A possibly lucrative option in Bangladesh would be to re-sell AWS Cloud Services with some sort of native localization and support. Most people are only just requiring VM, Blob Storage, Database Storage, DNS and CDN for web-hosting rather than every single AWS/Azure cloud service.

BTW Cloud Services are great but nothing special! These cloud providers are just re-selling you free open-source software that they host on their own infrastructure at an extremely high markup. You are paying for reliability and support which is what they guarantee in the SLA (Service Level Agreement). You can mirror all the services they provide on your own self hosted linux server. All the open source software they use are free to download, run, and modify for your own purposes.

Great little write up here.

I hope you get the word out to those in this ecosystem in BD.

Your last paragraph is key, we need people to take initiative in building reliance/trust in local information system providers.

BD should leverage some resources here as early as possible as this sector is really going to grow fast soon and we should not be parting away costs wastefully to outside BD that which we are easily capable enough to do ourselves.

 

[sonargon]

Have to be honest do not know BD scenario at the coalface as never worked there but i am assuming BD will soon reach a point where companies will seek to exploit market data. I am thinking the likes of Uber alternates, mobile banking platforms, amazon type startups etc

Exploitation of big data is going to be big business very soon in BD. Likes of MS can be made to invest only if BD geofences its data now.

Otherwise it really is not rocket science to put an alternative service together. BD already have the basic infrastructure.

Its interesting. Few years ago (around 2017) "big data" was a buzzword. We kept hearing how "big data" is the future, etc. Today you don't hear about it as much. Reason for that is because "big data" did end up becoming the future and delivering on its promises. During that time-frame many "big data" solutions matured and became readily available. These solutions came from Silicon Valley/Social Media companies who solved some of the engineering challenges around "big data" infrastructure and open-sourced their work.
So yes, the time for big data is now. Today there are many widely available solutions that allow us to support "big data" at scale. And of course "big data" is needed if you want to do things like AI/ML. It all leads into one another.

I hope you get the word out to those in this ecosystem in BD.

Inshallah' I recently started taking initiative on this. I have found some enthusiastic students that I train for free remotely. I provision them individual sandbox linux server environments hosted in Asia pacific region that they can connect to and use for web hosting/experimentation (at no charge). I am trying to teach them the basics of backend web development, web infrastructure, server administration, and networking from a hand-on perspective. If they can understand the fundamentals they will also understand distributed computing (aka cloud services).
They will be able to apply their skills to build professional grade web platforms and move on from just doing free-lancing web-design work.