Now that same mobility – having technology to hand any place, any time, without
having to be physically tied to a place with hardware, software, a power point and
phone jack – can be delivered through the liberating force of open source.
I'm talking here about mass deployment services – applications that can be delivered
across the Internet to whichever device the user needs, wherever it is housed –
in their offices, vehicles, homes, Internet café, Spaza shop, resource centre or
delivery point where there are public access terminals.
Africa's entrepreneurs have for too long been hobbled by the need to invest
in rooted hardware and software, and then be tutored in using applications that
have little relevance to the way they do business.
Being able to access, via the Internet, a choice of African-developed services to
address a choice of needs as and when needed, will leapfrog African technology users
into a new and dynamic realm of interacting with the world.
Knock-on benefits
It is not only entrepreneurs that open source's mass deployment services will
liberate. Services, such as health, education, libraries, welfare, financial transactions
and information research, can be made available to people who log on to public access
terminals to interact with all spheres of government and non-government organisations.
Public servants – whether they be health workers, teachers, agricultural extension
officers or road builders – can use enterprise-class applications to do their jobs
better because their departmental 'paperwork' can be done in a multi-purpose
resource centre shared by the community.
These enterprise-class applications serve the mass of the people or operations that
don't meet the usual criteria of having to own a PC. Their work doesn't
need them to sit at a terminal for a couple of hours each day – but they need access
to the technology to update reports or order supplies.
This is an affordable and speedy way for government to deliver services to most
South Africans. Delivery will not be stymied because of the cost of taking the IT
infrastructure to each rural outpost or township school.
Open source enables us to emerge from old proprietary IT models and environments
in the way applications are developed and deployed into a participative model.
Traditional players will feel uncomfortable with this. They are used to customers
assessing their value through recognised norms – global brand names and service
levels.
Vendors will need to become self-reliant within the continent and shed their global
security blankets. They will need to be more 'street-wise', relying on innovative
agility to quickly deliver to the market what it needs.
The model open source enables is dynamically different from the software solution
delivered to an end-point. The open source model is based on universal availability.
Shared ownership and shared resources will deliver ICT benefits to Africa – and
open source will make it happen.
Source: ITWeb
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