The past quarter has seen us begin and make some progress in our Emergic vision. I’ll review key achivements of the past quarter, and then lay out the plan for the next quarter.
First, an insight into the 3 key innovations which are driving Emergic.
1. Server-based Computing: The Thin Client-Thick Server project is the key to reducing the cost of computing for enterprises. Any old PC can serve as a Linux Thin Client. This way, the cost of the desktop can be brought down to USD 100. All applications run off the server. I think the time is right for emerging enterprises to eschew thick desktops and look at moving processing entirely to the server. Linux and Open Source are making this possible. It has to co-exist with the Windows world. This is now possible with OpenOffice being able to read and write the proprietary MS Office file formats. The Server willreside on theLAN. Think of this as an ASP. Instead of the servers being centralised, they are no distributed to enterprise networks. I’ll be writing more on this in my current Tech Talk series.
2. Digital Dashboard: This is going to be the new desktop for near real-time enterprises. It will be built using Blogs, RSS Syndication, Outliners and Directories. It will integrate information (events) from multiple sources – newsfeeds, blogs internally and externally,and enterprise applications. What isimportant here is for individuals to narrate their work and enterprise applications to stream “events” on to the Enterprise Information Bus.
3. Visual Biz-ic: This is the equivalent of an Integrated Development Environment for business processes (like Visual Basic/Studio for software components). Enterprise Software needs to be architected usingWeb Services and Business Rules for SMEs, and assembled together like Lego blocks. Software needs to be built tobusiness process standards like ebXML and RosettaNet.
Our focus with Emergic is to make computing available to the bottom of the enterprise pyramid for no more than USD 20 ppm (per person month), including hardware, software, support and training. The target audiences are the SMEs in Emerging Markets who cannot afford to pay for technology in dollars. This is where the next 500 million IT users are going to come from.
I have put together separate updates on each of the areas we have been working on: BlogStreet, Digital Dashboard, Thin Client-Thick Server and Enterprise Software.
On our core Messaging front, our collections for the quarter were on target (3% higher than what we had targeted). We’ve made some progress with channels, but not as much as we would have liked. We’ve also worked on putting together a plan for outsourcing some aspects of our Support and Marketing activities. We’ve also been working to strengthen our marketing activities in other parts of India. The next quarter will be challenging: our target is to show a 25% increase in collections from this quarter.
