A digital Northern Ireland?
Northern Ireland has a huge opportunity to turn digital thanks to the cloud, according to Jeff Peel. agendaNi considers an economist’s view of the trends.
Cloud computing can transform Northern Ireland’s economy and public services, Jeff Peel contends. The managing director of Quadriga Consulting, he helped to set up the Northern Ireland Software Innovation Network and also consults for Oxford Economics.
Telecoms and the talent of developers are two of the province’s inherent advantages, he told agendaNi’s cloud computing seminar. With the Project Kelvin link and over 700 fibre points, 95 per cent of the population lives within 3km of the fibre network. A potential 40Mbps speed was possible.
As public sector employment stops growing, alternative economic models must be found. Citizens can create apps and mash-ups quicker than government. Social media users are also frustrated with the slower applications they find on official websites.
Peel sees government as a platform which enables citizens to use their own initiative, which therefore ties in with the Big Society: “Really, it’s about moving the centre of gravity in terms of services provision and information and data provision away from central service and central provision towards citizens themselves.”
Across the Atlantic, Omvia has developed www.recovery.org at a similar quality and lower cost, compared to www.recovery.gov
This infrastructure could also lead to better provision of public services, including in health e.g. cloud-based monitoring for chronic disease management. Cloud service brokers would also negotiate the relationship between end users and providers.
Speaking to agendaNi, he commented that a cloud-based computing model is “really a no-brainer in just about all aspects of business”. Cloud applications were easier to build and distribute than their hard-wired predecessors; the iPhone presents a “huge market opportunity” with its very low unit cost.
As an economist, he finds: “There’s a transformative aspect to the cloud in that it does allow regions or countries that have been traditionally disadvantaged to take part in a great market opportunity.
“Northern Ireland has traditionally been disadvantaged because in order to create world class computer products or software products, there’s a kind of natural necessity to have a significant local market.”
Within the cloud, the “old demarcation lines start breaking down” and the only thing that matters is a successful product. As geography “disappears” and leaves a “totally level playing field”, an almost perfect market appears.
“The cloud allows well-written, sensible, useful applications to be adapted globally. It’s no different for a Northern Irish company to a Lithuanian company.”
