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

Cloud computing enables use of computing without user-side hardware, software and associated financial and knowledge requirements, except for the needs of a simple 'web-terminal' and access to the internet. Emerging economies can fully capitalize on this to start a '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, that has taken 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 also discuss how cloud computing can streamline the entire supply chains and how it offers leap-frogging opportunities for the entire society. The proposed use of web-terminals for accessing the cloud for all computing needs is new, and we point out several high-impact research subjects. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4038/icter.v4i2.4675 International Journal on Advances in ICT for Emerging Regions 2011 04 (02) : 37 – 5