Forum 27 Thursday 27.10.2011 11:00-12:30 DebateSpace #1 Thursday 27.10.2011 09:00-10:30 DebateSpace #2 Many years ago, forward-thinking speculative investors provided the necessary resources to develop canals, railways and electricity as the enablers of the industrial revolution. Today, the information revolution is electrifying our digital economy. Countries need to accelerate the upgrade of broadband infrastructure to meet the burgeoning needs of their evolving knowledge economies, and to accommodate the way their citizens are learning, working and playing. In some places around the world, large-scale speculative investments are being made in next-generation broadband infrastructure. What lessons can be learned in making these investments and how can we quantify the real value of these investments? What role could PPPs have in driving change? The rapid spread of cloud computing has drawn significant attention and scrutiny in the media over recent months. It has also raised policy questions concerning how people, organizations, and governments handle information and interactions in the cloud environment. While moving to the cloud offers recognized benefits of cutting capital expenditure and enabling the more efficient use of computing resources, questions of information security, data privacy, interoperability, reliability and liability persist and need to be considered carefully and addressed rigorously. Lack of interoperability and portability between providers makes it difficult to migrate data from one service to another - good for cloud service providers, but not necessarily good for end-users. What happens if the business goes bust, or decides to change? Forum Session Forum Session Heads in the Cloud Investment Revolution