<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:12pt"><div>Thanks Luvisia,<br><br>However, may I request all not to change the subject header for ease of discussions, we will flesh out the relevant content as we go along. So note inside the body of your discussion that you will focus on niche areas but do not change the subject header. <br><br>Thanks for your input, very insightful.<br><br>Much appreciated,<br><br>Nyaki (Moderator jointly with Walu)<br></div><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><font size="2" face="Tahoma"><hr size="1"><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">From:</span></b> Luvisia Bakuli <luvisia.bakuli@gmail.com><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> elizaslider@yahoo.com<br><b><span style="font-weight:
bold;">Cc:</span></b> eMatete@gmail.com; KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Monday, June 15, 2009 2:45:19 PM<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> Re: [kictanet] Niche Markets<br></font><br>
For those looking for niche areas, the following article might generate<br>some ideas. DBL<br><br>____________________ <br><br><br>June 15, 2009<br><br>I.B.M. to Help Clients Fight Cost and Complexity<br>By STEVE LOHR<br><br><br>In 2000, the Linux operating system was a hot technology, but it had not<br>spread much beyond scientists, researchers and computer programmers.<br>Then I.B.M. declared that it would back Linux with investment, research<br>and marketing, and the technology moved swiftly into the corporate<br>mainstream.<br><br>The same thing happened with the personal computer in the early 1980s,<br>when I.B.M. endorsed that upstart technology and entered the market.<br><br>Starting this week, I.B.M. is returning to the same playbook,<br>introducing some initial products and services and a roadmap for its<br>stable of corporate and government customers to comfortably embrace<br>cloud computing.<br><br>Cloud computing — in which vast stores of
information and processing<br>resources can be tapped from afar, over the Internet, using a personal<br>computer, cellphone or other device — holds great promise in the<br>corporate market. The cloud model, analysts say, has the potential to<br>cut the costs, complexity and headaches of technology for companies and<br>government agencies.<br><br>Already, <a target="_blank" href="http://Amazon.com">Amazon.com</a>, Google and <a target="_blank" href="http://Salesforce.com">Salesforce.com</a>, among others, offer<br>cloud-based Web services to companies, including e-mail, computer<br>storage and customer management software. But many big companies and<br>government agencies have been reluctant to get on board because of<br>traditional corporate-computing concerns like the security of data,<br>reliability of service and regulatory compliance.<br><br>“I.B.M. knows how to do all of those things,” said Frank Gens, chief<br>analyst for IDC, a technology
research firm. “Its strategy is all about<br>making cloud computing safe for enterprise customers.”<br><br>Even if I.B.M. succeeds in its bid to make cloud computing more<br>palatable for big corporations, there is no guarantee that it will be<br>the main beneficiary of the trend. After I.B.M. helped create the PC<br>industry, lower-cost competitors ended up dominating the business. <br><br>In the cloud market, I.B.M. plans to take a tailored approach. The<br>hardware and software in its cloud offerings will be meant for specific<br>computing chores. Just as Google runs a computing cloud optimized for<br>Internet search, I.B.M. will make bespoke clouds for computing workloads<br>in business.<br><br>Its early cloud entries, to be announced on Monday, follow that model.<br>One set of offerings is focused on streamlining the technology used by<br>corporate software developers and testers, which can consume 30 percent<br>or more of a company’s
technology resources.<br><br>The second set is virtual desktop services, in which personal computer<br>software, either from Microsoft or open-source alternatives, is run on<br>remote servers and piped to simple desktop machines equipped with<br>screens and keyboards. I.B.M. found in tests with clients that such<br>virtual PCs, with little desktop processing or storage, can use 70<br>percent less power than conventional PCs and reduce technical support<br>costs by up to 40 percent,.<br><br>Both the software development and desktop services are being offered as<br>an integrated bundle of hardware and software for a cloud running inside<br>a corporate or government data center, or as a cloud service hosted in<br>an I.B.M. data center.<br><br>Other offerings are planned, I.B.M. executives said, including clouds<br>fine-tuned for data storage, and clouds for business analytics, which is<br>software that analyzes data for patterns of customer behavior,
market<br>trends and other potentially valuable information.<br><br>I.B.M. calls its approach of fine-tuning hardware and software for<br>specific jobs “hybrid computing.” And it will open a Hybrid Computing<br>Research lab later this year, inviting industry and university<br>scientists to work cooperatively on new application-specific designs<br>intended to improve performance by 100 to 1,000 times compared with<br>today’s systems.<br><br>The fresh look at computer design is being prompted by the surge in<br>Internet data, from social networking to smartphone applications to<br>sensors monitoring food shipments and electrical use. By 2011, IDC<br>estimates, there will be one trillion Internet-connected devices, up<br>from 500 million in 2006.<br><br>“This huge explosion of data is driving a movement to design systems<br>around workloads because it is the only way to deliver the computation<br>needed, and it’s far more energy-efficient,”
said Kunle Olukotun, a<br>computer scientist at Stanford.<br><br>I.B.M. had an initiative, begun in early 2008, called Blue Cloud, which<br>mainly involved adapting its server computers for cloud technology. Most<br>major technology suppliers have cloud-related hardware and software<br>products, including Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and Dell.<br>But I.B.M., analysts say, is going further by offering simplified,<br>integrated stacks of hardware and software, as well as cloud services.<br><br>I.B.M.’s cloud strategy, the company said, is the culmination of 100<br>prototype projects with companies and government agencies over the last<br>year, and its research partnership with Google.<br><br>“The information technology infrastructure is under stress already, and<br>the data flood is just accelerating,” said Samuel J. Palmisano, I.B.M.’s<br>chief executive. “We’ve decided that how you solve that starts by<br>organizing technology
around the workload.”<br><br>One of I.B.M.’s test beds for cloud computing has been the Interior<br>Department’s National Business Center, a service center that handles<br>payroll, human relations, financial reporting, contracting services and<br>other computing tasks for dozens of federal agencies. The center runs<br>two large data centers, one in Northern Virginia and another outside<br>Denver.<br><br>Douglas J. Bourgeois, the center’s director, said he is introducing<br>several cloud-style applications over the next nine months including<br>Web-based training, and staffing and recruitment software. And in tests<br>with financial and procurement software, the cloud-computing environment<br>has delivered efficiencies of 40 to 60 percent in productivity and power<br>consumption, he said.<br><br>“For us, like other data centers, the volume of data continues to<br>explode,” Mr. Bourgeois said. “We want to solve some of those problems<br>with
cloud computing, so we don’t have to build another $20 million data<br>center.”<br><br><br> Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company<br><br><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>kictanet mailing list<br><a ymailto="mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke" href="mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke">kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke</a><br><span><a target="_blank" href="http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet">http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet</a></span><br><br>This message was sent to: <a ymailto="mailto:elizaslider@yahoo.com" href="mailto:elizaslider@yahoo.com">elizaslider@yahoo.com</a><br><span>Unsubscribe or change your options at <a target="_blank" href="http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/elizaslider%40yahoo.com">http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/elizaslider%40yahoo.com</a></span><br></div></div></div><br>
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