Moses Kemibaro

It seems that local digital content is gaining momentum as all sorts of initiatives are being put into place. It will be interesting to see how far this goes and how much innovation will take place whether its mobile applications or good old fashioned PC web sites. The truth is that since all the cables went live including EASSy which was supposed to go live last week, everyone has been scrambling to get a piece of the action. Its quite impressive already how many interesting local content projects are taking off and shaping up into businesses already. One of these is a Kenyan dating web site that was set-up by a good friend of mine at http://www.dating.co.ke

Dating.co.ke is a fairly new and completely free Kenyan online dating web site. At this time, the web site is not yet monetizing traffic either through advertising or subscriptions. My friend took me through the web site and to be quite honest its of very high quality and quite easy to use. As of this writing, the site has almost 1,000 signed up members of whom at least 100 sign-in on daily basis. According to my friend the web site has been growing at a rate of 10 new users a day.

I’m really keen to see how the site does since as far as I can tell no one has really cracked the online dating market in Kenya (just yet) although International dating web sites do very well in Kenya apparently. Typically, according to my friend, international dating web sites tend to do well here because its Kenyans who want to date Foreigners and vice versa. However, he thinks that dating.co.ke has a better chance of success being locally focussed as its Kenyans meeting other Kenyans on the web site. I think he is right since context and relevance are always good formulas for longevity when it comes to content. Anyway, have a look and give it a spin at http://www.dating.co.ke

This blog was quoted in today’s edition of the Daily Nation under the Smart Company pullout for a post I did last week on Safaricom and Huawei launching the first Android phones in Kenya this evening. You can read the full article here>

PS Ministry of Information and Communication Dr. Bitange Ndemo, has a chat with Collins Mamdoo COO of Internet Solutions (IS Kenya) during the breakfast seminar held to educate CIO’s on Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery processes.

On 14th of July 2010 this week, I attended a Disaster Recovery (DR) and Business Continuity (BC) Seminar by converged communications provider Internet Solutions Kenya (IS Kenya). The seminar sought to educate the public on the importance of deploying strong and dependable ICT infrastructure and secure planning in order to protect businesses against losses brought on by natural disasters, catastrophic events or sabotage. The well-attended breakfast seminar was held at The Norfolk Hotel and officiated by Permanent Secretary in Ministry of Information and Communication Dr. Bitange Ndemo and Internet Solutions’ Director of Sales E.A, Mr. Loren Bosch. Below are some of the notes I picked up at the same:

• Loren of IS Kenya noted that their core focus is on client service for all its offerings. The pillars of the IS Kenya business are connectivity, communications, cloud computing and carriers. The trend in the market today is that initially customers had been keen on the new undersea cables going live and that what meant for the ICT aspects of their business. Going forward, customers needs are evolving so that their focus is gradually shifting towards reliability, redundancy, security and disaster recovery where their ICT infrastructure and services are concerned.

• Loren noted that IS Kenya currently has connectivity to both TEAMS and SEACOM which are high speed undersea cables connected to Kenya. IS Kenya will also have connectivity to the EASSy cable which will be going live this weekend. Therefore, their network and bandwidth is resilient and diverse at the same time. They offer last mile connectivity on a diverse range of services and technologies including fibre, kenstream, wimp, motorola canopy, 3G & 2G, Satellite. They also offer Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and have references for their offerings. Their network is national and they can deliver services wherever required in Kenya. Backhaul and last mile are all covered.

• The market needs in Kenya are shifting towards integrated Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as well as Large Enterprises. However, in the case of SMEs, they are asking for cloud computing based solutions whereby they do not need to acquire and manage their own ICT infrastructure. As a result, IS Kenya’s next seminar in a couple of month’s will be focussed on the growing need for cloud computing solutions in Kenya.

• Before TEAMS and SEACOM went live, satellite connectivity to Kenya was very slow with latencies of 600 Milliseconds. This has changed significantly and as a result its now possible to do so much more for businesses with high speed bandwidth available country-wide. Also, peering within Kenya means that bandwidth is now kept local and does not require international connections to move data locally. IS Kenya has set-up a data center in Kenya that has firewalls installed. Data is publicly accessible and applications can be hosted as is already the case for email, anti-spam, calendaring and collaboration.

• The key barrier to disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC) solutions globally for
  

  PS Ministry of Information and Communication Dr. Bitange Ndemo addresses the media at the just concluded Internet Solutions seminar for “Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Process”. Looking on is and Internet Solutions, Director of Sales E.A, Mr. Loren Bosch.

  businesses is the large capital expenditure required to deploy them, not to mention the high level of planning needed. It tends to be a grudge purchase like is the case for insurance since the value of the investment is only realized when a problem occurs. Once deployed, DR and BC solutions need to have an ever evolving plan that follows the “crawl, walk and run” approach – its gradual.

• PS. Ndemo noted that where the Government of Kenya is concerned right now is data and systems areas of ICT services. He noted that EASSy was scheduled to go live on Friday the 16th July 2010. He also noted that the National Terrestrial Fibre Network is now in place for the last mile. The Government has also built a data center and plans to work with the private sector so as to realize its full potential, especially where DR and BC solutions are concerned. He noted that productivity in Kenya needs to improve using technology with low tolerance levels for inadequate ICT services in the marketplace – this is the only way that Kenya will catch up with other leading global economies.

• The Government in Kenya has digitized key services such as the land registry which makes it fast, simple and convenient to do unlike what was the case years ago. PS. Ndemo noted that other countries such as South Africa are now looking to Kenya as a possible location for their own BC and DR plans so as to create as much redundancy as possible for their data. PS. Ndemo noted that since the supply of bandwidth has grown then the demand should also grow. However, He noted that ISPs need to lower the cost of bandwidth if it is to affordable for all Kenyans.

• PS. Ndemo said that this would ensure new kinds of services and products being possible nationwide, such as e-learning in rural Kenya. he noted that is some countries bandwidth has become a basic human right in their legislation. He noted that EASSy for instance will have 1.2 Terabytes of bandwidth which would make telepresence  services viable. In closing, PS Ndemo suggested that attitude and culture must change in Kneya by testing and mitigating risks in ICT services and especially BC and DR.

The Android powered Huawei U8220 which Safaricom is expected to launch.

Its official. Kenya is about to get its first android mobile handsets next week courtesy of Safaricom. I have found out from reliable sources that Kenya’s first android mobiles will be a Huawei handsets and Safaricom will be the launch partner for the same. This is therefore the first confirmed instance where we will (finally) have a androids in Kenya following other announcements some months ago from LG and Samsung that they too would be launching android powered handsets in either June or July 2010. So far, neither of these brands have come to market with an android offering so we will just have to wait and see.

Whatever the case, its exciting news since androids are all the rage globally and the phones are making a serious run at Apple’s hugely popular iPhone. Whats interesting to note is that Motorola’s mobile division is resurgent following their decision to adopt android for all their new smart phones including the runaway success, Droid. Android, being open source is also being snapped up by most mobile device manufacturers and is fast becoming the “de facto” mobile operating system for smart phones. In fact, one could say that android has the distinct potential of becoming the windows of mobile phones in the next few years if it continues to gain adoption as is currently the case.

Its been a great day in Mombasa today where I met a new client and also took in the old sights and sounds of my home town. Mombasa has so much culture and history to it and its often possible to lose touch with the same as one works the daily grind in fast and furious Nairobi. It was interesting to be next to the beach and view the expansive Indian Ocean which prompted me to make this post as I wait to catch my flight back to Nairobi.

News has (now) come to light today that SEACOM may be down till the 22nd July 2010. The current outage on SEACOM has massively disrupted Internet connectivity, especially in South Africa where MWEB and Internet Solutions (IS) have been using the undersea cable almost exclusively. The truth is Kenya hardly felt the SEACOM speed bump since we have the back-up of another high speed undersea cable – TEAMS.

As I looked out to the Indian Ocean today it was interesting to imagine all the high speed undersea cables that now connect Africa to the rest of the world. However, as the SEACOM outage of the past week or so continues, it becomes strikingly clear that we need more high speed undersea cables in Africa to ensure redundant routes when one of them inevitably fails. I find it hard to imagine that any Internet Service Provider (ISP) would still use one cable almost exclusively to the detriment of their customers.

The current SEACOM outage is the second major one since April 2010 when it went down for the better part of a week. Therefore, considering that EASSy will be going live in a month or so, we can expect that this will push customers to them for additional bandwidth beyond SEACOM. It also goes to show that high speed undersea cables are indeed not immune to failure and the more we have of them the better for all of us. Ultimately, more cables means more reliable International bandwidth.

However, as Africa gets even more connected and broadband becomes the order of the day, it also becomes key that we have better Intra-Africa bandwidth that relies on national fibre backbones as well as satellite bandwidth, when required. The idea in this respect is that more and more bandwidth can be kept local and regional by bypassing the undersea cables as and when required in and within Africa – we don’t have to be completely and hopelessly cut-off when the cables do fail.