The biggest challenge is lack of local content itself. If there is local content then the other economies of scale can be worked out On 2/8/10, Murigi Muraya <mmskunkworks@gmail.com> wrote:
1. How does anyone know we do not have the skills? Maybe our techies are selling chips to supplement their incomes or are just depressed in bars and are therefore not easily found.
2. If we do not have have the skills what makes anyone think we cannot develop them in a mere 18 to 24 months? My suspicion is that you have looked into the resources major vendors (Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, HP, Dell, APC etc ) provide to help clients master their technologies.
By increasing our skills we increase our reliability - uptimes even up to 99.99%
3. Do you know what the cost of labor is in the West? 4 to 10 times what local techies are paid. Of course with skills increase that will reduce to just 2 or 3 times. Does this not somehow balance out energy and bandwidth costs. Bandwidth will fall further this year and energy costs in 2012.
4. The hardware costs are nothing compared to public funds being looted continually. FPE, Triton, Funds for Dams, etc etc
Is there more to say? Maybe later.
On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 7:42 PM, lordmwesh <lordmwesh@gmail.com> wrote:
Good review Wesley.
We can summarize Local Hosting problems vis-a-vis international hosting as 1. High quality hardware are expensive. Sourcing and importation. 2. Expensive energy, electricity, diesel for power backup (diesel is still expensive in Kenya than all western countries) 3. Expensive connectivity. Even with the advent of undersea fiber, the cost of bandwidth cannot rival that of the west, simply because of economies of scale 4. Lack of innovation to keep abreast with the pack 5. Level of security, both (physical the likes of alshabab, fire) and logical. I wonder if Russian hackers conspire to hit on our servers, which one would remain standing. 6. Human resources. Lack of top cream in systems administrators, and lack of enough people with the prerequisite skills. 7. Lethargic user support. The case studies are everywhere for all to see. 8. Inconsistent power and bandwidth providers. Even with SLA service providers always disappoint. Excuses are abound blaming el-nino for power outages and road contractors for data disconnectivity.
And finally x. The tendency of Local companies to overprice
Then the government blames the west for a biased balance of trade.
On 06/02/2010, skunkworks-request@lists.my.co.ke <skunkworks-request@lists.my.co.ke> wrote:
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