Dear Ed,<div><br></div><div>Does OLPC 1.75 cost $150. For 100,000 pieces it currently costs $209. And more for smaller orders as the manufacturer responds to scale and taking smaller orders adds up costs.</div><div><br></div>
<div>But Novatium costs $844 over a five year period and that is way more than $209 and does not offer any computing capability on hand and without being connected.</div><div><br></div><div>That's too constraining as well. </div>
<div><br></div><div>The India of Novatium seems to be the 5% privileged people who are not-too-privileged.. As no one who can afford to buy a computer will find it easy to use Novatium approach and will see little value in it.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Its the BSNL model, not a business model.</div><div><br></div><div>BSNL offered it to OLPC as well but we declined it as its a money making model that does not touch education.</div><div><br></div><div>
If BSNL agreed to do it for the village schools offering broadband at $10 per month per class, which should not be a problem, that may help schools adopt OLPC and broadband with barriers lowered enough to take computing power to every household as children take their OLPC tablet home.</div>
<div><br></div><div>That will be affordable and a complete solution. <br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 10:12 PM, Edward Cherlin <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:echerlin@gmail.com">echerlin@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
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<p></p><div dir="ltr">There are some interesting innovations in the Novatium proposal, such as the use of the mobile phone network to access a cloud computing service, but there are also several important pieces of the story missing.<br>
<br>1. The notion that this service can reach every home in India under present conditions is laughable. What fraction of villagers can pay $108 up front and $9 monthly? What fraction of villages has mobile phone service? Of course, if the first Novatium installation in a village were available for general use at a modest hourly rental in the manner of the ITC e-choupal project, that would enable many villagers to make enough extra money to buy the service themselves, exactly in the manner that phone ladies in Grameen-style microfinance programs rapidly enable many in their villages to buy mobile phones.<br>
<br>2. What will the phone charges be?<br><br>3. What about computing in schools?<br><br>Let us compare prices with a One Laptop Per Child XO-1.75, which costs school systems $150 to buy, and thereafter incurs only costs for electricity and in some cases repair or replacement. This Novatium service will cost more than that within six months, and cannot be taken to school or to a friend's house. Certainly one can go to a friend's house and use the friend's family's service, but in the case I am considering that only works for one user at a time.<br>
<br>The problem is not that there is something wrong with the Novatium service, which appears to be a technical triumph, and may show some market strength as well. The problem is that its capabilities are being oversold.<br>
<br>On the other hand, consider what would happen if Novatium's mobile phone partners did build out their network to every village, and if OLPC XOs and school servers could use that network. Now we have the best of both worlds, where computing for children can be provided by governments, and computing for adults is available to anyone who can afford it, by the month or by the hour. Nobody loses out, even though some have more convenience than others.<div>
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<br><div class="gmail_quote">2011/7/22 Frederick FN Noronha फ्रेडरिक नोरोन्या *فريدريك نورونيا <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:fredericknoronha@gmail.com" target="_blank">fredericknoronha@gmail.com</a>></span><br>
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Computing power to every home</td></tr><tr></tr><tr><td style="font-family:Arial;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold">STR Team / Mumbai July 11, 2011, 0:01 IST</td></tr><tr><td>
</td></tr></tbody></table><p style="font-family:Arial;font-size:12px"></p><p style="font-family:Arial;font-size:12px"><img alt="" height="120" hspace="5" align="left" border="1" width="180">A serial entrepreneur’s vision to drive PC adoption in India promises to bring computing power to every household through the innovative use of cloud computing. Novatium, a computing services company founded by Rajesh Jain in 2004, offers a thin client-based computing solution, which is delivered as a utility service to households and requires very low energy to function. The company has filed 10 patents in the areas of utility-based computing services. Read how the company is making computing affordable for everyone in the concluding part of India Brand Equity Foundation’s series Innovations from India: Harbingers of Change.</p>
<p style="font-family:Arial;font-size:12px">Empirical studies have revealed that the internet and other information and communication technology (ICT) based tools can help create a deeper impact since they can touch social, economic and environmental aspects of human society in many ways. The internet can help social priority sectors such as education, healthcare and rural development by mitigating the demand-supply gap (in case of education), enhancing access for life-saving service (in case of healthcare) and generating opportunity of new income (in case of rural development). It can help the government realise additional tax revenues of two to five per cent over and above the existing tax revenues. The internet and other ICT-based interventions can help deliver a low carbon foot-print based economic growth, leading to savings of 7.8 giga tonnes of CO2.</p>
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</tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></div>In contrast to the potential benefits, ICT has not achieved the level of impact that it could have across the developing/emerging world. In addition to conventional concerns (such as cost of PCs, lack of connectivity, and so on) there have been concerns among household users regarding the management of upgrades to existing software, piracy in software, handling of virus attacks and the breakdown of systems (often termed as a ‘hard drive crash’).<p style="font-family:Arial;font-size:12px">
</p><p style="font-family:Arial;font-size:12px">Rajesh Jain found a solution to these concerns — a computer interface with no responsibility behind it. Jain founded Novatium in October 2004 (it began formal operations in January 2005). He is also known for his web portal Indiaworld.com which he set up in 1995 (and went on to add <a href="http://bawarchi.com" target="_blank">bawarchi.com</a>, khoj and <a href="http://khel.com" target="_blank">khel.com</a> to his repertoire), and sold to Satyam Infoway in 1999 for $115 million — one of Asia’s largest internet deals at the time. Today, Jain is the managing director of Netcore Solutions.</p>
<p style="font-family:Arial;font-size:12px">Novatium was set up with the efforts of Ray Stata (chairman of Analog Devices, which designs, produces and markets analogue, mixed-signal and digital signal processing equipment) and Rajesh Jain. Both Stata and Jain made an investment, which together was worth $20 million, to set up Novatium.</p>
<p style="font-family:Arial;font-size:12px">The key drivers that led Novatium to develop the innovative service were to provide consumers with simple computing, coupled with an obsolescence-proof service. Novatium eventually set out to solve three problems concerning PC adoption in emerging markets and those are: (a) Affordability: Use the business model of the mobile industry, and also reduce the power consumption; (b) Desirability: Develop on the concept of computing as a utility and provide a desktop-like experience; (c) Manageability: Eliminate the issues pertaining to desktop management, eliminate viruses and spyware and enable instant turn on/off of the service based on individual needs.</p>
<p style="font-family:Arial;font-size:12px"><font color="#800000"><b>An easy, practical service</b><br></font>Novatium incorporated the following key features into its computing utility service:</p><p style="font-family:Arial;font-size:12px">
<b>Computing as utility.</b> The organisation developed a model whereby the computing capability of personal computers can be provided as a utility service, similar to water and power supplies. The model is based on the concept of thin client application. Generally, the software on which a PC depends (such as the operating system) resides in the machine. In a thin client solution, the software actually resides in a remote location (such as the server of the service provider). The user sees only an interface (a window similar to a website’s). The user’s commands and requirements are executed by the remote server. Connectivity is required for a thin client solution to work, and this can be achieved through the internet or other private networks.</p>
<p style="font-family:Arial;font-size:12px"><b>Simple and innovative service interface.</b> The user gets only a screen, a keyboard and a mouse. All the computing is done at the server level. The software, hardware and connectivity are all on the server, which are managed by Novatium. The product has no storage, no hardware, no software, and hence no maintenance and no upgradation issues. The most interesting innovation here is that the heart and brain of the machine run on mobile phone chip technology.</p>
<p style="font-family:Arial;font-size:12px"><b>Versatile technology.</b> Compared to other thin clients, Novatium has certain advantages. Its thin client solution can run on multiple operating systems such as Linux, Windows, Solaris and Mac.</p>
<p style="font-family:Arial;font-size:12px"><font color="#800000"><b>Value-driven innovation</b><br></font>Based on the results that the service has been able to achieve, the impact of this service is very encouraging, for instance:</p>
<p style="font-family:Arial;font-size:12px"><b>Computing at a reasonable price.</b> Novatium’s offering include Nova Navigator (earlier known as Nova Net PC) and Navigator Plus. The prices start at $108 without a monitor (includes keyboard and mouse) and $184 with a monitor. The device works like any conventional computer except it has no hard disk (a hard disk option can be availed of at an additional cost). The device is connected to a central server from where users can access regular Windows and Office software packages. The basic price for a Windows package starts from $11 a month, while for the Linux suite, the price starts at $9 a month. The other offerings include Nova Neon (a laptop like device with the same service model) and Nova cNergy (a pendrive like device which lets any regular desktop or laptop gain access to Nova Computing Services). The broadband charges have to be paid separately.</p>
<p style="font-family:Arial;font-size:12px"><b>Scalable model.</b> The service has been able to reach a customer base of 40,000 users in the first half of 2010, from a user base of 150 in 2007. The service has delivered 1.2 million domestic usage days.</p>
<p style="font-family:Arial;font-size:12px"><b>Easy and convenient solution</b> There are USB ports for peripherals and there is no need for a UPS system. In case of a power failure, there will be no data loss, since everything will be safe on the server. The device provided by Nova uses 5 watts of power. It doesn’t have any moving parts, and is very rugged.</p>
<p style="font-family:Arial;font-size:12px"><b>Driving innovation in utility-based cloud computing solutions.</b> Novatium has a total of 10 global patents. Two of the patents are titled ‘Providing Utility Computing in a Cloud Computing Environment’ and ‘DUDM’ (Desktop Utility Delivery Model).</p>
<p style="font-family:Arial;font-size:12px">Currently ,the service is present in over 100 cities in India and it also has a presence in Mauritius and Thailand. On the anvil are plans to expand the service to other global markets as well.</p>
<hr><p style="font-family:Arial;font-size:12px"></p><p style="font-family:Arial;font-size:12px" align="right"><i>Reprinted with permission from IBEF</i> (<a href="http://www.ibef.org/" target="_blank">www.ibef.org</a>)</p>
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