Above and Beyond... Collaboration!

Over the last year IBM announced a number of initiatives like Blue House and now Lotus Notes Hosted Messaging.  All these initiatives seem to be moving IBM towards hosted solutions and cloud computing.  All very good and exciting – if you live in a country where internet connections are fast and affordable.  Unfortunately, this is not the case in most developing (and specifically African) countries.

Internet connectivity remains one of the biggest challenges and limitations when deploying systems in Africa.  Even implementing simple applications like e-mail presents all sorts of challenges.  One of the sites I recently implemented in Ghana, previously had a hosted POP mail solution.  They experienced various random delays on incoming as well as outbound mail even though the SMTP server was hosted by their ISP.  We implemented a Domino server, and implemented the Google Message Security SaaS solution for virus and spam filtering.  Google Message Security (previously Postini) automatically spools incoming SMTP mail if the mail host can not be reached.  This has proven to be a real life-saver as there are almost daily occurrences where the spooler is activated.  The mail host becomes unreachable due to the limited bandwidth and even due to power interruptions.  When working from the site in Ghana, I can sometimes browse the internet (patience is the keyword), but trying to replicate my Lotus Notes mailbox or even using Sametime proves to be a futile exercise.

As much as the whole Software as a Service and Cloud Computing concept excites me, I am afraid it is not something that will gain momentum in developing countries any time soon.  Maybe the introduction of SEACOM in June 2009 will play a role in addressing the bandwidth challenges of countries in Southern and East Africa?