IT and Society: Russia is looking forward to its national cloud platform

At the CNews Forum 2010, launched in Moscow on November 10 2010, Ilya Massukh, Deputy Minister of Communications and Mass Media, delivered a report which highlighted the services which were to appear in the govt cloud platform and constituents it would have.

Cloud platform users will have access to facilities related to govt services, in particular, medicine, housing and communal services, energy, transport and other applications. What is more, there will be an online service to enable work with documents. “Presently there are practically no such technologies in Russia, therefore this niche is being actively occupied by foreign companies, such as Google” – stated I. Massukh.

For the platform introduction it is expected to create a geographically distributed infrastructure, which would include a unified software environment of team developments and a repository of software distribution. Besides, this infrastructure is supposed to include a secure web platform which would render network services and support centers for users and developers.

The national cloud platform funding has been specified in the “Information Society” govt program.