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Author: imel

SA ISP’s don’t know how to spell Cloud

SA ISP’s don’t know how to spell Cloud

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A few weeks ago I attended the annual #SATNAC conference in George. One thing became abundantly clear very quickly.

The South African ISP’s & Telecoms providers that attended, talked and exhibited there are seriously out of touch with the cloud reality. These included the likes of Telkom, Huawei, Alcatel-Lucent & Ericsson & Nokia.

All of them mentions the “internet tsunami”, talking of an overwhelming demand for data and connectivity. None of them realises that the demand is actually for services. There response is entirely based on data volume and how to scale it.

A further failure is the absolute lack of realization that cloud services and virtual server hosting is not the same thing. Moving your physical server to a hosted virtual server (VPS) does not mean you have now cloud enabled your applications. It simply means you have moved your hosting.

We are still seeing virtually all local ISP’s tout VPS as cloud services. It is not the same thing.  Allowing users to increase or decrease the capacity of the VPS still does not make it a cloud. VPS is simply one of the building blocks of a complete Cloud infrastructure.

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The Garden Route, the best kept secret of the South African BPO Industry

The Garden Route, the best kept secret of the South African BPO Industry

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The Garden Route is open for business. Serious technology business.

This is the second in a series of posts identifying and substantiating several ICT projects to stimulate and grow the Garden Route ICT industry.

It is undeniable that the Garden Route offers a superior lifestyle and great infrastructure. This combined with a talented and motivated workforce, strong ICT skills pool and an effective and efficient local government makes it a top investment destination. In fact, two of the Garden Route towns have recently being identified by FinWeek’s as two of the top 10 of SA’s best places to do business.

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The Garden Route is open for Business!

The Garden Route is open for Business!

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Ask anyone outside the region what the Garden Route is all about and they will tell you it is a place of beaches, lakes, rivers, mountains and forests. Ask them about the business that happens in the region and they will give you a blank stare.

This is the single biggest obstacle the region face in growing the local economy. Overcoming this must be the first step in any economic development initiative planning on attracting more business to the region, even tourism business.

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ICT intervention for growth: The Garden Route software factory

ICT intervention for growth: The Garden Route software factory

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The Garden Route is open for business. Serious business, software business.

This is the first in a series of posts identifying and substantiating several ICT projects to stimulate and grow the Garden Route ICT industry.

In a previous post I gave some background as to the startup scene within the Garden Route. The area is full of promise and talent, and serious startups are already operating from the area, with others relocating to take advantage of the superior lifestyle and great infrastructure.

The Garden Route is the ideal place from where to run a software factory. Over R750 million worth of software development work is exported form the Western Cape alone to India and other off-shore destinations. The Garden Route has the skills, capacity and experience to attract a significant number of these currently off-shored projects. The close proximity to Cape Town combined with the skills base and business experience should make the shift from India to the Garden Route and obvious one.

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The Garden Route startup scene

The Garden Route startup scene

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The Garden Route is open for Business!

We are seeing this more and more, as the Garden Route evolves from a sleepy holiday destination into a serious player in the economy, manufacturing everything from aircraft to furniture to electronics, and everything in between.

Combining this with a serious skills base we have a highly credible business destination.

We are fortunate that the Garden Route has it’s own pool of talent, both in the technology sector as well as on the business and mentoring side.

The ICT sector is particularly active, with well over 100 ICT companies operating from George and surrounds alone. These includes a mix of software, hardware, training and consultancy, providing a nice mix any startup would need in order to succeed. Regular industry get togethers like geek breakfasts result in a well connected network of entrepreneurs.

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George Chamber of Business – looking back at 2011

George Chamber of Business – looking back at 2011

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It is my pleasure to present this report to the membership of the George Business Chamber.

The Chamber has enjoyed a very positive term resulting in a growth of membership, an enhanced community profile and services provided for the members. In addition to consolidating its financial position, the organisation has successfully developed its internal capability, providing a strong foundation for continued growth.

Exceeding 300 members was a notable achievement for the Chamber .The growth of the Chamber continues to strengthens our undertaking to be the leading voice of business in the region.
Regular interactions with key people has been, and continues to be, a fundamental necessity.

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Tech4Africa – The end of the rural disconnect and isolated thinking

Tech4Africa – The end of the rural disconnect and isolated thinking

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Tech 4 Africa“TECH4AFRICA is the premier mobile, web & emerging technology conference, bringing global perspective to the African context.”

Looking at the speaker lineup and focus areas you could easily be mistaken that tech4africa is for high tech city folk alone, but there is another side, which I would like to call “the end of the rural disconnect“.

As a technologist living in the Garden Route I experience on a daily basis the pain caused by poor connectivity, disconnected services and isolated thinking.

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Making the case for a Garden Route ICT Incubator

Making the case for a Garden Route ICT Incubator

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The Garden Route has a significant collection of great ICT talent.  The Garden Route IT Consortium has been working at unifying the local industry but, this has had limited success due to the economic difficulty most local ICT startups face in growing a sustainable business in this region.

Now it is time to take it one step further. By creating an ICT incubator we can use economies of scale to help these startups get their products designed and developed for less, get to market easier, etc. Collective design, manufacturing, procurement, marketing, and admin makes great economical sense.

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Custom bandwidth monitoring in Radius Manager

Custom bandwidth monitoring in Radius Manager

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“I could not possibly have used so much bandwidth” is a phrase I hear often. Until now it has been cumbersome and sometimes impossible to show hotspot and wireless users their own usage history using the standard radius manager reports.

As a result I decided to write a small set of scripts to monitor and display bandwidth usage of radius manager accounts.

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Rural economic development – is ICT the missing link ?

Rural economic development – is ICT the missing link ?

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It is a well known fact that the rural parts of South Africa is far worse off economically than the more populated city areas. This is especially so today, as the cities are developing at a ever increasing pace, leaving the rural country side further and further behind every day.

How can this ever widening gap be brought back under control?  Why should we even care?  What has this got to do with ICT?

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