Inria, Montpellier
BIO : Patrick Valduriez is a senior researcher at Inria and LIRMM, University of Montpellier, France. He has also been a professor of Computer Science at University Paris 6 and a researcher at Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corp. in Austin, Texas. He received his Ph. D. degree and Doctorat d'Etat in CS from University Paris 6 in 1981 and 1985, respectively. He is the head of the Zenith team (between Inria and University of Montpellier, LIRMM) that focuses on data management in large-scale distributed and parallel systems (P2P, cluster, grid, cloud), in particular, scientific data management.
He has authored and co-authored over 250 technical papers and several textbooks, among which “Principles of Distributed Database Systems”. He currently serves as associate editor of several journals, including the VLDB Journal, Distributed and Parallel Databases, and Internet and Databases. He has served as PC chair of major conferences such as SIGMOD and VLDB. He was the general chair of SIGMOD04, EDBT08 and VLDB09. He obtained the best paper award at VLDB00. He was the recipient of the 1993 IBM scientific prize in Computer Science in France and the 2014 Innovation Award from Inria – French Academy of Science – Dassault Systems. He is an ACM Fellow.
Topic : Cloud & big data: opportunities and risks for developing countries
Cloud and big data technologies are now converging to promise cost-effective delivery of big data services. The ability to produce high-value information and knowledge from big data makes it critical for many applications such as decision support, forecasting, business intelligence, research, and (data-intensive) science.
Cloud computing, on the other hand, encompasses on demand, reliable services provided over the Internet with easy access to virtually infinite computing, storage and networking resources. Through simple Web interfaces, users can outsource complex tasks, such as data storage, system administration, or application deployment, to very large data centers operated by cloud providers.
Although cloud and big data have different goals (big data aims at added value and operational performance while cloud targets flexibility and reduced cost), they can well help each other by (1) encouraging organizations to outsource more and more strategic internal data in the cloud and (2) get value out of it (for instance, by integrating with external data) through big data analytics. For developing countries for instance, this provides new opportunities to better localize production and trade that are distributed in very wide areas.
However, the combination of cloud and big data is not without major risks. First, the current cloud data management solutions have traded data consistency for scalability and performance, thus requiring tremendous programming effort and expertise to develop data-intensive cloud applications with correct semantics. Second, it is often the case that useful data span multiple, proprietary clouds that do not interoperate. Third, data safety and data privacy get much harder to guarantee. In particular, web giants such as Apple and Google can now know more precisely what is going on in most countries than the countries’ governments themselves.
In this talk, I will review current cloud and big data technologies and discuss these issues. I will also discuss policy implications related to privacy protection, citizen access to data, intellectual property rights, skills and employment, etc.
NII QUAYNOR
BIO: Nii Quaynor graduated from Dartmouth College in 1972 with B.A (Engineering Science) and received a Ph.D (Computer Science) in distributed systems in 1977 from S.U.N.Y at Stony Brook.
Nii worked with DEC, U.S.A from 1977 till 1992 and returned to Ghana to establish the first ISP operated by Network Computer Systems (NCS) in 1993. Nii also established Ghana Dot Com (GDC) an ICANN Accredited Domain Registrar in 2006.
Nii had earlier in 1979 established the Computer Science Department at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana.
Nii is the Convener of AfNOG, a network technology transfer institution since 2000 and Founding Chairman of AFRINIC, the African numbers registry. He is also a Founding Member of AfricaCERT and WACREN.
Nii taught microprocessors with International Center for Theoretical Physics in several developing countries.
He is the Board Chairman of National IT Agency (NITA), a member of GhiPPS and National Identification Agency, Patron – ISOC Ghana Chapter. Nii served on several Boards including ICANN, UN ICT Task Force, IGF-MAG, GNA, ICANN Strategy Panel, Public Responsibility.
Nii remains the Chairman of GDC and a Professor of Computer Science at University of Cape-Coast, Ghana.
Nii received the Internet Society’s prestigious Jonathan Postel Service Award for pioneering work to advance Internet in Africa, December 2007. He was also inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in August 2013 for his pioneering role in the development of the Internet in Africa. Further, Nii received in Dec 2014 the Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah Genius Award for Information Communication Technology.
Topic: African Internet Technical Institutions
The Internet arrived in Africa in December 1991 at South Africa at a University and was followed by Egypt by a government research institution in 1992. The first commercial ISP in Africa started in Ghana in December 1993 and thereafter Africa never looked back. It took a decade for all the countries in Africa to attain full Internet connectivity and changed the continent for good
To support the technical operation of the Internet-networks important focused institutions evolved on the continent. These institutions addressed technical operation, coordination and community building activities. These have now come to be known as the African Internet ecosystem. The areas include numbers, names, research networks, technical capacity building and security
This presentation summarizes the institutions in the African Internet ecosystem, their roles and evolution
