Rural ICT D Development t (RICTD) Int ternational Co onference 201 13, Malacca, M MALAYSIA, 25 5 - 27 Jun 20 013

Clou ud Powere ed Rural Telecenter T s A Mod del for Sus stainable T Telecenter rs
1 Osma an Ghazali1, Baharudin Osman O , Aziz zah Ahmad1 , Azizi Abas1, Abdul Ra azak Rahma at1, 1,2 Moham med Firdhous s , 1 ITU U-UUM ASP P CoE for Ru ural ICT Dev velopment, U Universiti Ut tara Malaysi ia, Malaysia a. {osm man, bahaos sman, azie, azizia, a arazak k }@uum.ed du.my, mfirdh dhous@intern networks.my y 2

Faculty y of informat tion Technol logy, Univer rsity of Mora atuwa, Sri La anka Mohamed. .Firdhous@u uom.lk

Ab bstract
ICT has s been identifi ied as the grea at equalizer th hat can succes ssfully bridge the gap betw ween rural an nd urban population. Almos st all the gover rnments with th he aid of nat tional and int ternational or rganizations are engaged in implemen nting rural ICT project ts. Telecenters rs is a common n feature of all the rural IC CT developme ent projects. The telecente ers provide th he common pl lace for intend ded users to acc cess the services provided by b these proje ects. Telecente ers all over th he world are faced with sus stainability iss sues due to lac ck of financin ng and qualifi fied human res sources to ma an them. In this paper, we propose a cloud rur ral telecenters s that effective ely reduces the e financing an nd human res sources requi ired to run telecenters. t Th he paper also o discusses in detail d how the proposed p mod del would incr rease sustainab bility of telecen nters. s: Cloud Comp puting, Rural IC CT, Telecenter Keywords

1. Introd duction
Informa ation and Com mmunication Te echnology (ICT T) has been id dentified as the e enabling tech hnology that ca an effectively y reduce the ga ap between the rural and urba an population n (Songan, Ha amid, Yeo, Gn naniah, & Ze en, 2008). The e gap existing g between the rural and urba an population n includes the in nequality expe erienced by these two groups s in terms of access a to educa ation, healthcar re, better mar rkets for their r products and services, an nd public ser rvices offered d by the go overnment. Th he situation is s more aggrava ated by the fact t that majority of the world population p resi ide in rural areas. Hence, it ca an be seen tha at the poor people living in th he rural areas are a more affec cted by the ineq quality than their counter par rts living in ur rban areas. Through the effective use of IC CT the effect of these prob blems can be mitigated to a

greater r extent (Kang g, 2009). In ord der to provide better access to ICT for th he rural popul lation, governm mental and have non-governm mental org ganizations implem ss the world. O mented several l projects acros One of the mo ost important c components of f these projects s is the telecen nters (Soriano, 2007). Telece enters provide public access to computer rs and the int ternet for gat thering inform mation, commu unicating with others and le earning new sk kills. Due to h high price of c computers and d other equipm ment required d for acces ssing the in nternet, telecen nters are the o nly option for r many people living in rura al areas to acce ess these techn nologies. Telec centers have e experienced var rying levels of f success and fa failures since t their establishm ment in variou us parts of the world (Bailey y, 2009). The issues identifie ed for the failu ures of telecen nters include cost of hardwar re and software e, lack of hum man resources a and lack of financing for con ntinued capital l and operation nal expenditure es. In t this paper, we e take an in de epth look at h how to improv ve the viab bility of rur ral telecenter rs by incorp orating cloud t technology. Th he advantages of the incorp orating clou ud computing g with tele ecenter techno ology are in nitially invest tigated from both technic cal and fina ancial perspe ectives. Finall ly an implem mentation mo odel for th he cloud po owered telecen nters is provide ed along with a description o of how the pr roposed mode el addresses th he issues fac ced by traditio onal telecenter rs.

2. Th he Role of Telecenters in Rural ICT Devel lopment

Mo ore than 50% of the world population liv ves in rural a areas and in de eveloping coun ntries the prop portion of rur ral population far exceeds that of their urban counte er parts (UN, 2011). The rural populat tion is ted to very ser subject rious problems s in terms of po overty,

Rural ICT Development (RICTD) International Conference 2013, Malacca, 25 - 27 Jun 2013 unemployment, lack of access to markets for their products and services, inadequate infrastructure, limited access to basic needs such as clean water, affordable healthcare, education etc. (Akumiah, 2007). Compared to their urban counterparts, access to modern technologies including ICT is also limited in rural areas (Molawa, 2009). In order for these people to come out of the current situtation, they must be empowered with new skills, better opportunities, new avenues for enhacing their skills and better markets for their products and services. Since the ICT can be used to overcome many of the barriers currently faced by these people, it is considered a great equalizer. ICT can be used to create new opportunities for the disadvantaged people by providing better access to access to information, educational training in computers and employment opportunities (Kuriyan & Kitner, 2009). In order to provider better ICT services to the rural population, both governmental and non governmental organizations have implemented several ICT projects throughout the world. One of the most common aspect of all these projects is the implementation of telecenters, when the projects are targetted towards the general population. Telecenters provide the access to ICT services at a common place in a selected region that is accessible to a wider range of the target group. Telecenters have been accepted as the most promising model for providing equitable access to ICT services at affordable cost to a larger audience leading all the development efforts targetted towards that group (Parkinson & Lauzon, 2008). Even the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) of the United Nations has recognized the telecenters as the best delivery model of achieving universal access to ICT at the lowest cost (Manner, 2004). The main features of the telecenters include providing the physical space and equipment, a supportive staff that often aims at welcoming to all, regardless of experience, and by frequently subsidizing the costs of service provision reducing the financial burdens faced by potential users. They also try to be more relevant to the communities they serve by developing informationbased services in response to the needs of the community (Parkinson & Lauzon, 2008). In this section, we take an in depth look at various implementation of telecenters across the world with special reference to the factors affecting their sustainability, successes and failures. Parkinson and Lauzon (2008) have investigated the impact of internet on local social equity by conducting a study on a telecenter in Columbia. The main finding of the study is that the telecenter does not improve the local social equity through its services. They have also found that there is no marked difference between the users of telecenters and other internet users and the main use of the telecenter was to improve the formal employment options of the users. As far as the telecenter was concerned, it was established by a local non-governmental organization with funding for period of three years. During the period of operation of the telecenter, it was observed that though the telecenter is expected to pay for itself through the generated income, the total income was not even sufficient to cover half of the operating expenses let alone expected capital expenses in the future. The other main issue affected the operation was the stability of the internet connection. The internet connection was through a dial-up phone line, once connected it would be shared by all computers in the center. The staff manned the telecenter also lacked the technical skills for managing services and applications that would enhance the services provided. The owners/providers of the telecenter were unable hire better qualified professionals to operate the center due financial constraints. Hedberg (2010) has carried out an in depth study on how a telecenter can provide meaningful access for its community using Tunjang telecenter in Kedah, Malaysia as the case. The telecenter was established by the National IT Council on the request of the community for enhancing the IT skills of the students and members of the community. The telecenter provided IT training for the students during school hours and the others during other times. The main services provided were internet access and the training on Microsoft application packages. The demand for the services was overwhelming at times 2-4 persons sharing a single computer. The internet connectivity was provided through a slow dial-up connection that must be shared by all of the 20 computers in the telecenter. The main shortcoming observed was the lack of knowledge in maintenance of the computers by the computer administrators and funding for continuous improvement of the system to meet the demand. The specific issue identified included lack of funding for the replacement of computers at the end of life span and the renewal of software licenses. Aguila-Obra, Camara, and Melendez (2002) have presented the economic and organizational characteristics of telecenters. They have carried out an empirical study on a selected sample of 27 telecenters across the entire Spain with the aim of studying how the telecenters were set up. They have identified that almost all the telecenters were public sector initiatives as subsidized pilot projects. The main concern raised in the conclusion of the study is the sustainability of the telecenters after the expiry of the subsidies. The study shows that even in developed countries the financial viability of telecenters in the medium and long run is an issue in the absence of continuous funding from an

Rural ICT Development (RICTD) International Conference 2013, Malacca, 25 - 27 Jun 2013 external source such as governments or nongovernmental agencies. Best and Kumar (2008) have studied the sustainability failures of rural telecenters in Tamil Nadu, India. The main observation of the study was the shorter operational life span of the privately operated telecenters compared to that of the NGO funded ones. Though both types of telecenters were operated in the areas with similar characteristics, the privately owned and operated ones did not enjoy any external funding and had to raise their own money for both capital and oprational expenditures from the telecnter operations themsleves while the NGO supported telecenters had the donor fundings for initial operations for a fixed period of times. The other reasons for the failures of the telecenters other than the lack of funding were lack of voice telephoney facilities, bad customer support from the network provider, lack of prior computer training and the unsatifactory internet connectivity. The most imporatnt constraints affecting the the availability and accesibility of ICT in rural communities in Nigeria include the high cost of facilities, unavailability or lack of infrastructure, lack of skills and awareness, lack of information policy and its implementation, language barriers, little or no government support and political instability (Ogbomo & Ogbomo, 2008). Three main types of factors called enablers, inhibitors and hygine factors dircetly affect the quality of service delivery in rural ICT projects (Sewchurran & Brown, 2011). The enablers are a must for successful delivery while the inhibitors would negatively affect the quality of service if present. The third set of factors, namely the hygine factors plays a special role in service delivery. Hygine factors may not play a postive role if present, but will negatively impact the services if absent. The factors that improve the quality of service delivery include identified service uptime and availability along with presence of a service level agreement (SLA). From a technical point of view, in order to achieve a ceratin level of service quality with predictable uptime and availabilty it is necessary to have sufficient computing, human and other resources to meet the customer requirements. If disaster management and mitigation is also taken into account, it is necessary to duplicate the entire system in another location. All these would add to the cost of service delivery. The best way to meet all these requirement is to collaborate with other service provider and have a common shared data center where the applications of multple service providers are hosted. From the above discussion, it can be seen that the telecenter implementations all over the world suffer from several issues. The main issues, as depicted in Figure 1, that affect the sustainability of telecenters can be summarized as lack of finacial resources for capital and operational expenditure, lack of skilled human resources for managing the telecnters, and lack of good internet connection.

Figure 1: Factors affecting sustainability of telecnters

Hence the sustainability of telecenters can be improved by properly addressing the issues identified above. In order to address the lack of financing, we propose to reduce the cost by collocating services and use low cost equipment where possible. The lack of qualified staff can also be addressed by colocating the services and letting only the minimum routine services to be carried out by the telecenter staff. The telecenter staff can be easily trained on the routine services. The internet connection may not be an issue anymore as the high speed broadband connections at reasonable cost are becoming very common with the introduction fourth generation (4G) services all over the world.

Figure 2. Capacity-utlization curve (AWS, 2012)

3. Cloud Computing
Cloud computing has brought a revolutionary change to distributed computing by delivering computing resources as services over the Internet (Buyya, Yeo, & Venugopal, 2008). The cloud computing not only provides computing resources as services but also employs a business model where the resource usage is charged based on utility similar to electricity, water, gas and telephony. Due the innovative distribution of resources and charging model, the users are able to maximize the return on their investments on computing. Figure 2 shows the capacity-utilization curve developed by Amazon Web

Rural ICT Development (RICTD) International Conference 2013, Malacca, 25 - 27 Jun 2013 Services that shows the resources allocation pattern against demand for cloud computing as well as traditional distributed system. From Figure 2, it can be seen that the resource allocation under traditional computing model occurs in a step wise manner resulting in both under utilization as well as over utilization of resources. On the other hand under cloud computing, resource allocation strictly follows the demand pattern in both short and long terms. The above resource allocation that closely follows the demand pattern is made possible due to the innovative hosting technology employed by cloud computing systems. Computing resources in cloud systems are hosted on virtual computers created by a virtualization software running on the physical hardware (Bento & Bento, 2011). The virtual computers can be brought up and removed on demand on the fly within a short time of the arrival and departure of customers. A single physical system can host many virtual computers simultaneosly with different configurations increasing the utilization of the entire physical system. The isolation and security between the parallel virtual systems hosted simultaneously is provided by the virtualization software (Li, Li, & Jiang, 2010). The virtual computers require to hold physical resources only when active. All the physical resources are released, once a virtual computer has completed its work and removed from the system. Hence the service provider can market his single physical system to many customers increasing the utilization of the physical system while reducing the per user cost. Hence virtualization provides advantages to both cutomers as well as service providers. The customers and service providers sign a service level agreement (SLA) prior to the beginning of services (Wu & Buyya, 2012). The SLA stipulates the conditions to be met by both parties, viz the customer and the service provider. The SLA is a legally enforceable document making both parties to be bound to the conditions laid in it and the violators will be made to compensate the other party for the damages incurred. Also the SLA formally defines the technical meanings of performance parameters and the agreed values for them in terms of maximum, minimum, average, accaptable and unacceptable in regards of services provided (Wang, Wang, Wang, Chen, & Santiago, 2007). implemented by large corporations for the exclusive use of their employers, shareholders, customers and suppliers. The entire cloud system including hardware, software and other resources are owned by the organization implementing the system. The main advantage of private cloud systems is that they can pool all the resources distributed across many departments, divisions and locations in one place and distribute them based on real demands. Private cloud would also increase the efficiency and utilization of the physical resources and help apportioning of the cost based on actual usage. Public cloud systems are implemented by commercial cloud service providers and sold their services to any prospective customer for a charge. Public clouds help customers outsource their entire computing requirement to a third party and concentrate on their core business activities. Also, public cloud help the customers reduce the cost of computing. Hybrid cloud system is a combination of both private and public systems. By setting up a hybrid cloud, it is possible to reap the advantage of both public and private cloud systems. An organization may choose to setup a private system to meet its base demand and the private cloud system to meet the demand fluctuations or the private cloud may host its senstive information and the rest can be hosted in the public cloud. A community cloud is a public cloud implemented collaboratively by a few organizations with similar interest. The use of community cloud is limited only to the stakeholders of the organizations that implemented the system. Many government cloud systems use the community cloud deployment model due to its suitability (Marinos & Briscoe, 2009). Also, community cloud model is suitable for centralizing the operation of telecenters as they all are bound by the same objective of enhancing the quality of life of the rural community and share similar functions.

3.3 Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloud Computing

Several researchers have identified the advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing from both customers and service providers perspectives. The main advantages and disadvantages are summarized below: Accoding to (Mirashe & Kalyankar, 2010; Badger, Grance, Patt-Corner, & Voas, 2012) advantages of cloud computing are lower-cost computers for users, improved performance, lower infrastructure costs, fewer maintenance issues, very modest software tool footprint, lower software costs and efficient use of

3.2 Cloud Computing Delivery Models

Presently cloud systems have been implemented in four different ways. They are namely, private clouds, public clouds, hybrid clouds and community clouds (Bamiah & Brohi, 2011). Private clouds are

Rural ICT Development (RICTD) International Conference 2013, Malacca, 25 - 27 Jun 2013 software licenses, instant software updates, latest version availability, increased computing power, unlimited storage capacity, increased data safety, easier group collaboration, centralized management and data, platform responsibilities managed by providers, and savings in up-front costs. Accoding to (Mirashe & Kalyankar, 2010) disadvantages of cloud computing are it requires an internet connection at reasonable speed, and security issues. Table 1 shows the sustainability issues of telecenters and how cloud computing could be used to overcome them.
Table 1: Comparison of telecenters with cloud systems Telecenters issues Cloud computing answers Lack of Financing Low cost computers can be used Lower software costs Lower infrastructure costs Savings in up-front costs Lack of qualified human Platform responsibilities resources managed by providers Centralized management Fewer maintenance issues Instant software updates by provider Lack of good internet Can be accessed with reasonable connection internet connection Broadband access becomes widespread with 4G systems

that they can be shared by all the users. The cloud data center would provide the required horse power for all the telecenter computing requirements along with the software applications. Figures 3, 4 and 5 show the typical arrangement of a telecenter, cloud data center and a combined system.

Figure 3: Typical telecenter architecture

Figure 4: Cloud data center architecture

From Table 1, it can be seen that the issues that hamper the successful implementation of telecenters can be easily overcome by deploying cloud powered telecenters. Section 4 discusses cloud powered telecenter implementation model in detail.
Figure 5: Distributed cloud powered telecenters

4. Cloud Powered Telecenters

The most appropriate cloud deployment model for the implementation of telecenters would be community cloud model. The stakeholders of a community cloud system is bound by common goals such as serving a community, and common characteristics including the type of usage and resources required. Hence all the resources requirements of the telecenters in a region can be pooled in a single cloud data center. The data centers themselves can be implemented using low cost commodity hardware installed only with the operating system and a web browser. These computers must be connected in a low cost local area network which in turn be connected to the cloud data center via a broadband connection. The cloud data center is a fully fledged data center that is installed on state of the art computers or can be installed on off the shelf commodity computers connected in a cluster. Also, the software required by all the telecenters in the region would also be installed centrally in the data center, so From Figure 5, it can be seen that in the proposed model, the telecenters in a given region are connected to a centralized cloud data center. All the telecenters will share all the resources in the cloud datacenter. Sharing of resources including hardware, software and human resources would increase the effectiveness of the resources while reducing the cost. Since the high end operations including the software maintenance are concentrated at the data center, only a few highly skilled technical personnel would be required at the center. At the telecenters only the administration of the low cost commodity computers and other simple equipment need to be managed. This can be carried out by semi-skilled professionals. Also, it should be noted that it is proposed to interconnect the regional data centers with high speed connections. This would help in forwarding connection to other data centers for load balancing purposes and disaster recovery situation. Hence the proposed architecture is more rugged and

Rural ICT Development (RICTD) International Conference 2013, Malacca, 25 - 27 Jun 2013 disaster resilient compared to individual stand-alone telecenters providing better services at lower costs.
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5. Conclusions
In this paper, we have taken an in depth look at problems associated with existing telecenters. The main problems faced by the telecenters are financial viability and lack of human resources to manage them. As a solution for this, we have proposed a cloud powered telecenter model, where all the processing is carried out at the centralized cloud data centers, while the telecenters only provide a user interface on low cost computers. The proposed model drastically reduce the per user cost of telecenter operations as most of the cost is shared by many telecenters operating in the region and the cost of commodity computers at the telecenters is very low. Also, the human resource problem is also solved as each and every telecenter does not require high skilled professionals. Only the professionals are required at the data centers which is only one per region. Also the disaster resileince of the systems is also increased by interconnecting regional telecenters together.

References
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