The start of cooperation is a milestone event for Ukraine / REUTERS
The cooperation will help engage experienced IT specialists in the development of domestic cloud technologies.
Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation and the American technology corporation Microsoft have signed a memorandum of cooperation, providing for the joint development of cloud-based data storage services in Ukraine.
Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov and Country Manager of Microsoft in Ukraine Jan Peter De Jong signed the document in Kyiv, an UNIAN correspondent reported on October 2.
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Fedorov says the start of cooperation is a milestone event for Ukraine.
"For the first time in history, Ukraine is launching a business relationship with a company with a capitalization of over one trillion dollars," he said.
"One of our ministry's priorities is the digitalization of all public services in two and a half years. This cannot be done without a data center that will store our data, as we are focusing on data storage in our country. The Microsoft project may be the first one that will allow us to achieve this ambitious goal," he added.
Fedorov also says that the Finance Ministry is considering the option of transferring services of Diia 2.0, an updated mobile application for digitized documents, to Microsoft cloud services.
According to the official, the cooperation will help attract experienced IT specialists to the development of domestic cloud technologies.
"As part of our cooperation, we plan to attract over 100,000 experienced professionals to the program [development of cloud technologies in Ukraine] in the next three years," he added.
Country Manager of Microsoft in Ukraine Jan Peter De Jong, in turn, noted that the cooperation would help accelerate the digital transformation of Ukraine's public sector.
Cloud storage is a service model when data is stored on numerous servers distributed on the network, provided for use by customers mainly by third parties. Data is stored and processed in the so-called "cloud," which represents, from the client's point of view, one large virtual server. Physically, such servers can be located far from each other geographically.
On September 22, 2020, Ukraine's Infrastructure Ministry, the state enterprise "Industry Center for Digitalization and Cybersecurity," and Microsoft Ukraine, part of the Microsoft holding, signed a memorandum of cooperation in the digital transformation of Ukraine's transport sector.
Also in September, the State Service for Special Communications and Information Protection announced cloud service providers (companies providing remote data storage) might become part of critical infrastructure.