Interconnectivity: HEC inaugurates cloud data centre

Aims to facilitate universities to increase efficiency, productivity and collaboration

The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has inaugurated a cloud data centre to increase efficiency, productivity and collaboration among universities and reduce costs by using centralised IT infrastructure.

Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Reforms Ahsan Iqbal inaugurated the centre at the HEC headquarters in Islamabad on Thursday, said a press release.

Chinese Ambassador Sun Weidong, HEC Chairman Dr Mukhtar Ahmed, vice-chancellors of different universities and others were also present.

The centre aims to facilitate Pakistani universities to become part of a world-class research environment while making use of internet and web-based technologies as strategic tools.

The data centre will provide services such as virtual data centres, virtual desktop infrastructure, safe campus central solution and central surveillance, unified communication and shared services, storage as a service and training as a service.

Iqbal termed the centre a backbone of infrastructural and technological development of universities in the digital age.

“It is our responsibility to provide our new generation with good learning opportunities, as we have to make the country an Asian tiger under Vision 2025,” he said.

The minister said that innovation has become a ‘currency’ and it was the universities where creativity touches its zenith. “Turning around a country is a complicated and challenging process, but it is not an impossible journey,” he said.

Iqbal said that the 21st century was the century of economic ideologies and Pakistan needed to overcome its political instability to make socio-economic progress. He said that the nation needed to follow the slogan of “working harder, better and smarter” to strengthen its economic muscle.

Dr Ahmed said that the launch of the centre was a leap forward in linking universities through fast and effective technologies.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 22^nd, 2016.