Connecting Villages with Lotus Domino
One of the most innovative use of technologies I’ve seen in recent times comes from a Boston based company called First Mile Solutions. It is about providing connectivity to villages, poorly-connected areas in a most economical fashion. The problem on the ground is that the demand in these areas is not too high, and it is not commercially feasible to provide connectivity to a vast area with sparse demand. The solution First Mile Solution provides is one of setting up village kiosks and a Mobile Access Point .. essentially a vehicle (typically a motorcycle) with a Wi-Fi access point that drives past all the villages. This Mobile Access Point stops for enough time to replicate data with the village computer and drives to its next destination. After covering the entire beat, the vehicle goes back to the city which is connected to the Internet and replicates all the village data with the appropriate gateways.
Now, can you think of an architecture better than Notes/Domino to serve this market? Replication, Rapid Application Development, Mail Routing … Notes has everything that is needed to provide a comprehensive solution to these villages. Delivering services to villages will be a key piece of e-governance in countries like India (which is facing a renewed thrust on the rural sector). And by capturing the first mile, IBM can capture a big chunk of the e-governance pie.
- Venki