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Sustainable infrastructure: WiMAX, Virtualization for startups!



I will be presenting some "Next-Gen" infrastructure to some of the delegates from Uganda (where we are doing a project for 5 Universities) in next two weeks. I will be talking about some real kick ass infrastructure. Money is a definite issue so we will be proposing a prototype "Virtualized Infrastructure" for the pool of 5 Universities.

The developing nations are picking up the threads by adopting the roadmap for a wireless infrastructure. Look at the nations where WiMAX is getting adopted. So what are these developing nations up to?

  • GigaOm was on a road trip and saw an emerging "Wireless Peru" going full blast with it.
  • Intel is going full blast with its WiMAX trial in India
  • And there are a dozen alleged trials in the offing
  • Uganda already has one setup in Kampala (We'll be travelling there in November to discuss and explore the possibilities of setting up robust but cheap, sustainable yet high-performance Infrastructure.) They will be expanding that pretty soon as the economy takes the flight. Heck the whole of Africa will be WiMAX'ed pretty soon. Challenges lay ahead, this article (and the author) speaks of the case studies conducted in that continent.
  • In South America as well. Brazil, Argentina (the lasses are hot too), Colombia, Venezuela.... I better stop it right here as you did get the idea.

Intel is deep into this, you'll see that they have their teeth dug in deep in all these (also in India etc) countries. There are enough ventures to do it. But one thing is forgotten by a lot of folks. well its not really forgotten its just that its the "money making frenzied folks" making the kill and moving on to other terrains. What about the infrastructure? Sure the whole WiMAX will help start roll out an infrastructure where things like IPTV, VOIP and god knows what not will take off. But what about the enterprises?What about schools? What about colleges? Do we really just want people to merely download tons of movies on the fast wireless network or do we want to also help setup infrastructure. A lot of Universities in India, Africa (the one that I have had time to gather information in my ongoing research) says that they have rather poor infrastructure (if not having none!, which is no surprise to me either).

Western nations look (down) at these countries to satisfy their end-2-end markets but its the infrastructure (by that I also mean roadways, etc) that will set these nations really free. A robust infrastructure will lead these nations to act appropriately to the market developments. Sure right now its nothing, but tomorrow it might just be too much of good-for-nothing stuff.

Money always seem a big challenge when it comes to setting up enterprize scale infrastructures (and now we're talking plain IT: Servers, appliances (mobile pcs, pdas, phones, and more) ). Imagine both in the business communities and in educational institutions, buying just two big servers (like this one , for instance) and packing up an enterprize with enough virtual servers to run every possible application, will help push standards, processes, work ethics, into the organization. Virtualization will help them achieve all that with no additional overhead. No additional staff. And every incoming staffer will be fully trained for all the necessary technical and organizational skills that the organization might need. Bottom line is we will create and spread a lot of intelligence across the globe.

To end it all, I see a great future for these developing nations. I wished, for once, we too were a developing nation.

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