We all know the saying from the little people that a journey of a thousand miles starts with one step.

So you have decided to get onto the Cloud boat and row to the horizon of hope, filled with cost savings, great collaboration and business mobility?

Let me just say that adoption of the cloud has been a much smoother sail for SMEs than it has been for huge corporates, for obvious reasons. Corporate management will take a while to appreciate the advantages since the downside is still too much for them to bear. I can understand their position. If I was running a billion dollar company I would also be pessimistic about putting my data on the so called ‘Cloud’.

Image from sahmcity.blogspot.com

Great. So you are an SME, seeking to take your first baby steps into Cloud computing. Walk with me and let’s get there together. The trick is to ensure that you ask the right questions. (more…)

If you are a savvy SME business owner, an IT Manager or generally in touch with internet trends then the maybe you and the words ‘Cloud Computing’ have crossed paths at some point.

My tag line has always been,’…coz the internet is the future’.

Well, Cloud Computing is the future of the internet. In this article I seek to put this grand phenomenon in perspective, and hopefully help you decide if it fits in with your 5 year business strategy.

So what is Cloud Computing anyway?

If you think about it really, anything you access on the internet is in the ‘Cloud’. The word ‘Cloud’ has been used unofficially in internet circles for years to mean virtual servers available over the Internet. Thus, your website is hosted on the ‘Cloud’. Your Gmail account runs on the ‘Cloud’. Your Facebook account is hosted on the Cloud and so forth.

There has been a silent metamorphosis whose culmination seems to be the combination of ‘Cloud’ with ‘Computing’ to create the current buzz word that is Cloud Computing. Google was a pioneer in this area when they came up with the concept of Google Apps. Basically, you could now run your email, calendar, word, excel and other utilities that would traditionally run on your local computer, from the internet.

Another pioneer in this area was SalesForce.com. As early as 1999 when the company was founded, their goal was to provide software for use on a subscription basis, as opposed to the traditional buying of licenses and installing the software on local servers. Their Customer Relationship Management software for instance was a big hit using this Model.

On the other side (hardware that is) you had idrive.com that allowed users to store their files such as documents and MP3 files online. This one of course took a while to kick off given the internet speeds back then but by 2002 idrive.com was a company to watch, raising over $30 Million in Venture Capital.

The rest as they say is history. Where we stand now, companies such as Oracle, Microsoft, Google, Soho OS etc are taking a dive into the deep end. The offering isn’t just software or just hardware anymore. It’s a whole operational framework. You can now run an Enterprise Operating System on which you install software, collaborate with colleagues, manage file storage and handle very sensitive data all on the internet.

That is what Cloud computing is. The integration between what you are used to doing online with what you do offline, to create one computing platform that runs, well, on the ‘Cloud’. (more…)

I’m grateful for websites such as Startupafrica.com and Afrinnovator.com who go out of their way to get African stories to inspire the rest of us into action and making a difference.

Africa needs more and more local entrepreneurs.

That is the key to a better future for us I believe.

Meet Mr. Obinna Ekezie

I first heard about about Obinna Ekezie upon reading this article on Startupafrica.com. Let me give you a summary of who this man is.

Obinna is a former Nigerian professional basketball player and former NBA star. With no history of Technology expertise, and purely based on a need he saw in the African market from a personal experience, Ekezie founded ZeepTravel, an online business allowing travel services for those going to and from America and Africa.

These are the guys who came up with Wakanow.com, the premier online travel booking service in Africa. I’ve always had this desire to see more and more Non-techies starting ventures in this field since their minds aren’t confined to the possibilities of technology. They simply want to create a working solution to a problem. I digress.

The following are excerpts from that interview which must definitely be on every entrepreneur’s finger tips. (more…)

“We can believe that we know where the world should go. But unless we’re in touch with our customers, our model of the world can diverge from reality. There’s no substitute for innovation, of course, but innovation is no substitute for being in touch, either.”
Steve Ballmer

The Internet Technology world is a Start-up world.

This in no way means that Technology companies are not suited to play in the leagues of world wide corporations (Google, Amazon, Facebook etc have defied this rule). What it means is that to succeed as an Internet technology company, the mentality of a 24 year old graduate student locked up in his dorm room plays a crucial role.

I’m talking about the culture of letting your mind roam with no limitations, dreaming up ideas that can only be referred to as delusional, trying things out without fear of failure and being obsessively curious about each and everything. That’s what a Start-up mentality is.

Eric Schmidt is quoted as having said that Google doesn’t have a traditional strategy process or planning process like you’d find in traditional technical companies. It allows Google to innovate very, very quickly, which he says is a real strength of the company.

That is one aspect of innovative success.

The other aspect, one that I think is more relevant for Africa and probably more important, is what Steve Ballmer says in the quote above. Innovation has to be in touch. When it comes to the Internet, the question of ‘Why?’ is more important than ‘Why not?’.

The internet world is one where the user says I want this and you ask yourself why would they want that? Sadly, lay people are the worst communicators of their needs. The only way to answer this question is by trying out one solution after another, letting them try it out until one goes ‘Yes! This is it!’

Internet Innovators cannot afford to congregate in Techie cliques, brainstorming ideas among themselves without incorporating the ‘Who are we doing it for?’ factor.

I had a chat a couple of weeks back with Brian Omwenga, a Project Manager at Nokia. The conversation was mean’t to be about Cloud Computing but somehow we veered into Innovation. I picked up an anecdote about how as part of Nokia’s localization strategy they get Farmers, Local ‘Duka’ owners, Local pharmacists, the local chief etc and bring them into their think tank to capture their views on a piece of technology that they are working on. This I believe is what will help Nokia reclaim the market share that they are currently losing by the day. (more…)

A couple of weeks back I initiated hash tag on twitter called #thewebinfiveyears. In retrospect, I think that was a foolhardy attempt on my part. The web is so versatile, so dynamic and so unbelievably fluid that what you envision today will sound like child talk in two years time.

Sometimes it’s good to let your mind run wild though; an exercise of the mind if you may. I got a few retweets and some of my couple of hundred followers joined into the madness. Below is a barely organized sample of those tweets.

Data & Telecoms

• Telecoms will have no choice but to collaborate with content providers on fairer terms to drive premium data usage #thewebinfiveyears
• Data access will be virtually Free on Mobile Phones #thewebinfiveyears
• Data based Value Added Services will be closer to matching SMS Based VAS in revenue potential #thewebinfiveyears
• #thewebinfiveyears will run on broadband well above 100MB in performance. (more…)