National Cloud, Israel model for Italy?
Francis Walsingham's analysis
The so-called “national cloud” linked to the concept of sovereignty is a topic that has been under discussion for some time at the Italian and European level. The same Pnrr, the Recovery Fund – in the part elaborated by Minister Vittorio Colao – provides for its establishment, even if the modalities are not yet clear, since it is not conceivable the next day a State that simply built its own data centers, not being that "cloud" but simply a "hosting" devoid of the most advanced technologies now the prerogative of only a few American companies (Amazon, Google, Microsoft and little else).
There would also be some Chinese (Alibaba, Huawei, Tencent) , but if we talk about the cloud in relation to security it is certainly not conceivable – at least with a Draghi government that has overcome certain pro-Chinese passions of its predecessor – a collaboration. And precisely in this perspective of international collaboration, a model to follow for Italy in view of the realization of its "National Cloud" could however come from Israel, a country that makes it a reason for living on the concept of sovereignty.
In 2019, the Government Procurement Administration of the Israeli Ministry of Finance announced that it was preparing a tender "for the provision of public platform-based cloud services to government ministries and additional government units." Israel thus launched the Nimbus project, which aims to secure the provision of cloud services for the entire public sector, including the military. The possibility of managing the large-scale project was decided through a tender, the largest of its kind in Israeli history. The project is in fact worth billions of shekels and includes a number of layers, the most crucial of which is a public cloud that will allow Israel to provide a variety of services that will move to the cloud or start operating on the cloud.
Specifically, the project was divided into four sentences: the acquisition and construction of the cloud infrastructure, the formulation of the government policy for the migration to the cloud, the integration and migration to the cloud, and finally the control and optimization. cloud activity. The first part of the project saw Amazon Web Services and Google as winners of the tender . The consultancy firm Kpmg, on the other hand, won the tender for the second part of the project, the one linked to the consultancy and training of the “Cloud Center of Excellence”. As for the third party, small and medium-sized Israeli companies will be selected through another bidding process to help with the migration and integration of Israeli government systems into the cloud and the development of systems, according to Reuters . cloud environment. A fourth competition will be on cloud control and optimization. A program of which traces can also be seen in Colao's proposals.
To date due to the lack of a secure local cloud that was in line with Israel's strict security regulations, there has been a long delay in the transition of various government services to use this technology. US tech giants like Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle took part in the tender for the supply and the Israeli government recently announced the selection of two winners, Amazon Web Services and Google, with AWS as the leading cloud service provider. and Google as a secondary provider.
It is difficult to underestimate the impact of this choice on the Israeli ecosystem: it will in fact have effects on Israeli companies such as banks, insurance companies, telecommunications companies, pharmaceutical companies and even regulated companies. Furthermore, the government expects that the move of the entire Israeli state to a new local cloud will lead to more foreign investment in the country's infrastructure and an advantage for the local tech industry. An approach, the Israeli one, to the so-called “strategic procurement” capable of attracting investments.
Once AWS and Google officially sign the contract and pay the fees for the contract, they will begin building cloud infrastructure in Israel with an estimated initial investment of NIS 4 billion ($ 1.2 billion). Cloud services will be provided at Israeli-based infrastructures, which will keep information and data within borders according to strict security guidelines, as also stated by Israeli Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon. AWS is currently estimated to be building three data centers in Israel, while Google is grappling with building its first region in the country.
Microsoft, Oracle and IBM are thus defeated from the tender and the first two are considering an appeal for the award of the contract. Microsoft's defeat in the race also marks the end of an era in the relationship between the company and Israel. The Israeli government has in fact used Microsoft's services massively in recent years, to an extent that has also influenced the entire economy, creating a technological ecosystem around its services. It is thought that Microsoft's defeat may also be linked to delays in the implementation of Azure cloud infrastructures in the country.
This is how Israel sets itself at the forefront of the technological world – remarked observers of the sector – by creating a project for the transformation of its digital infrastructures that marries the priorities of the public sector with the enormous potential and very high security standards of the leaders of the international cloud sector. carrying on the concept of "national cloud" without autarchic and protectionist inflections. In fact, through the Nimbus project Israel meets its own technological gaps and creates a positive synergy between the private and public sectors that is destined to further consolidate its economy and its character as an innovative state, also thanks to the ecosystem of technological SMEs that will flourish by selling applications to the Israeli PA.
In the Pnrr Colao foreshadowed the possibility for the government to identify through a tender one or more operators who, in collaboration with a public or in any case Italian entity, can create the "national cloud" in which to house the data of the PA, from the most up to the most sensitive workloads, for which it is likely that you will move towards a dedicated infrastructure. A path very similar to that of Israel, bureaucracy and "relational capitalism" permitting.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/cloud-nazionale-modello-israele-per-litalia/ on Fri, 30 Apr 2021 08:09:24 +0000.