Manthan

Sify and Microsoft have entered into an alliance to promote the usage of licensed Microsoft products at 3500 Sify IWay cyber cafes throughout India.

Sify will offer its cyber café subscribers access to licensed Microsoft Office software to begin with, so that they can use the café as a virtual office for their needs. This will include training them in the use of MS Office for Microsoft Office certification to increase their productivity and skills.
The alliance will also include other Microsoft Certification program, affordable utility computing for the middle class and content for online education through the Sify I-way cafe chain.
“Our alliance also encompasses providing low cost utility computing for the masses that is affordable and easy to use,” said Raju Vegesna, chairman and chief executive officer, Sify.

Here are a few things one should understand about how SIFY cyber cafe operate

• Sify has over 3500 VoiP enabled cyber cafes called “Sify Iway” in most the major cities (149 cities) and towns of India. These are franchise run cyber cafes where SIFY provides the network and billing software to run the cyber cafes.
• Just like prepaid mobile, IWAY provides you prepaid broadband access with a roaming user ID which you can use in any Sify IWay cyber cafe’s through out India.
• The SIFY Iway cyber cafes have computers which are stripped down Microsoft Windows with absolutely minimal storage options. Once the user logs out of the computer all the files created during the session are deleted.
• Users experience is restricted to Web Browsing, IMing etc.
• Local storage doesn’t make sense, since it’s a shared PC and users might end up using a different PC during the next visit to the cyber café.

Had written about how SIFY Iway is an ideal candidate for a WebBased OS ecosystem and one that should be encouraged in India.

One would imagine that with such features, it makes SIFY Iway’s ideal for web-based office , rather than offline Microsoft Office. It would be more convenient for Sify Iway users to use applications like ZOHO or Google Office products , rather than get tied down to Microsoft Office.

Users can create documents using applications like Writely, or ZOHO , store them in Box.net and access that data from another PC or from another city for that matter on the next visit to the cafe. And why restrict this to Office App’s ? Supply chain or CRM applications for small and medium business in India, which cannot afford complex IT infrastructure or note books for their sales people,  should utilize this opportunity more effectively.

Commenting on the alliance with Sify, Ravi Venkatesan, chairman, Microsoft India said, “The idea is to work together, given the confluence of objectives of Sify as a company and our Unlimited Potential commitment, to offer affordable, easy to use services to Indians by leveraging Sify’s IP capabilities, market reach over its sophisticated network and data center infrastructure across the country.”

I don’t quite understand, how this makes software affordable ? Between free and affordable, I guess free software is cheaper.

Google’s online office offering gets stronger with the rumored “PowerPoint” feature. The only feature missing, MS Access ? It wouldn’t be a bad idea to provide a “zoho” or “dabbleDB” like database solution delivered over the web for rapid application development. The solution should be easy to use and not require the users to write either PHP or DB SQL codes, just like MS Access. Should work on static HTML pages/Blogs etc, yet deliver dynamic content and capture user inputs. I put together a high level software spec (PDF link) for such a system. Here is the product abstract for WebDB

This product idea originated from the need to provide users a simple way to create web based applications, while hiding the complexity of hosting a database, writing scripting code like PHP, managing a database and the need to understand the whole HTTP/Web architecture. The product acts like a Rapid Application development tool for the web users, who want to capture data or deliver dynamic content on their WebPages. With AJAX based technologies, it is possible for the current generation of internet applications to expose API’s which can be delivered over the web. The complexity of the API’s can be hidden from the client layer and using AJAX, the data can be exchanged with the client layer without doing a page refresh.

From the user’s perspective, their work is limited to creation of the fields they want to render or capture in the WebDB admin section and generate API’s code which can be embedded in the client layer. The underlying insert/query or update is taken care by the WebDB transaction engine based on the HTTP submits.

Sify has over 3000 VoiP enabled cyber cafes called “Sify Iway” in most the major cities (149 cities) and towns of India. These are franchise run cyber cafes where SIFY provides the network and billing software to run the cyber cafes. The billing is centralized and each cyber café makes money based on the number of hours of internet usage. Users have a single sign-on ID which is created once during initial the registration process.

Just like prepaid mobile, IWAY provides you prepaid broadband access with a roaming user ID which you can use in any Sify IWay cyber cafe’s through out India. About 60% of Indian users access their broadband internet in cyber cafés and SIFY has most of this market share. Lot of Indians have their first broad band experience in one of these cyber cafes which are very popular with the school and college kids.

The SIFY Iway cyber cafes have computers which are stripped down Microsoft Windows with absolutely minimal storage options. Once the user logs out of the computer all the files created during the session are deleted, so the only option is saving the files as an attachment in an email message. Besides local storage doesn’t make sense, since it’s a shared PC and users might end up using a different PC during the next visit to the cyber café.

These computers have the mandatory Microsoft Office which is used mainly for editing or updating resumes. These machines are strictly meant for browsing, but lack of choice in terms of operating system limits them to using Microsoft Windows.
Companies like Google, Yahoo which are putting together the components for a WebOS, should take a closer look at iWays, since webOS has better chance of getting accepted in this model. If Google were to launch a Gdrive, online storage of bookmarks, Word Processor, Spread Sheet etc which could be delivered over the web, IWAY can be perfect match for this technology.

If a network computer every made sense for mass captive audience, then this is the best fit.
Since this is a prepaid service and the cash credit exists in the user account, this can be tied up with some sort of payment system to enable transactions like Railway ticket booking (which is huge in India) and Airlines reservations etc. Ecommerce is a relatively un-tapped field in India with great potential for growth because of lack of proper payment options.

Sify Iways also have VoiP enabled telephone booths which are used for providing extremely cheap (6 cents per minute to US) international phone calls. These are cheaper than the rates of any state owned or private telephone service.These cyber cafes provide a major growth area for Broad Band in India. Since the cost of ownership is divided, people can access broadband at the rate of 40cents per hour without ever needing to invest in a PC.
Besides Sify is a major ISP in the Indian market, which again gives the possibility of distributing toolbars/instant messengers to the ISP users.

PS: This blogpost was sitting in draft mode for the past few months and for some reason never got published. Since the time of writing this article, some four months back, Google launched Google Browser Sync and Google spreadsheet.