ICT Leap-frogging Enabled by Cloud Computing for Emerging Economies: A Case on Streamlining India’s Grain Supply Chains

Abstract

Rather than looking for an application of cloud computing in emerging economies, we sought to streamline the grain supply chains of India but discovered cloud computing as a key component of a promising solution. Cloud computing was motivated in developed nations for various reasons. Although unintended, it enables use of computing without user-side hardware, software and the concomitant financial and knowledge requirements, except for the need for a “web-terminal” and access to the internet. Emerging economies can fully capitalize on this to start an “unintended revolution” and leap-frog developed nations by skipping completely the several major computing architectures gone through in developed nations. An analogy is the leap-frogging having been taking place with wireless telephony. We briefly introduce our research into streamlining India’s grain supply chains and then discuss in detail on how cloud computing can play a pivotal role. Although the focus is on the portion of the supply chains between wholesalers and consumers, we discuss how cloud computing and ICT in general can streamline the entire supply chains and how they offer leap-frogging opportunities for the entire society. Since the proposed use of web-terminals for accessing the cloud was unintended, we point out several high-impact research subjects.