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| Subject: | RE: [gislist] GIS software/hardware donations for 3rd World |
| Date: |
01/21/2005 01:25:01 PM |
| From: |
Anthony Quartararo |
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Frank, Mike, et al,
Indeed, access to broadband is a fatal flaw for this business model for
developing communities. However, it is much less fatal than it may
initially appear. Bandwidth and access to bandwidth does, despite the
wholesale vaporization of the telecom industry, continue to move forward.
More fiber landings continue to be made [at least 30+ on the African
continent], microwave, broadband Wi-Fi [WiMAX] and even broadband satellite
make steady progress, even in developing communities. The flaw is in
getting more people more access, sooner rather than later, not anything
implicitly wrong with the business model itself.
Further complicating the struggling spatial ASP model is the
counterintuitive licensing and technical deployment models that the major
GIS software vendors impose upon potential consumers / solution providers of
spatial ASP services. Take for example Malaysia, India and South Korea, 3
of the most heavily penetrated broadband markets and very technically
advanced communities (GIS/IT communities), if access to broadband internet
was truly a limiting factor, we would conclude that these 3 communities
would be stampeding to implement spatial ASP solutions and ditching the
desktop/LAN-enterprise GIS, etc. They are not. This is due to unnecessary
and counterproductive software (GIS, RDBMS & 3rd party products) and data
products licensing restrictions [not to mention some governmental
bureaucratic chicken-littles] preventing the implementation of more useful &
effective solutions.
Take the CRM market as a reasonable, if not limited technical proxy: for
years SAP, Oracle, Siebel and others dominated the market, and their systems
implementation [technical complexity] & costs made a modest enterprise-GIS
look like "dollar-store" material. Along comes Salesforce.com (and some
others) that moved the entire CRM model to an ASP. At present,
salesforce.com has over 214,000 paying users from 13,300 customers [an
average of 16 users per customer btw], and each of those users pay a minimum
of $65 per month [for those keeping score at home, that's $14,000,000 per
month in sales, minimum]. This is just one CRM ASP provider too. The point
being, there was a latent demand that was being overlooked by the big CRM
vendors, and that latent demand turned into a complete paradigm shift for
the CRM industry [Seibel, ACT!, etc. all moved to the ASP model AFTER
salesforce.com]. The same needs to happen in our industry. There is such an
incredible latent demand in the developing world, not to mention a sizable
market in the developed world, for REAL spatial ASP solutions, it confounds
me that no one has really capitalized on it yet. [the numbers are very
compelling]
True, right now, as I write this response, the best solution may be handing
a set of CDs to someone in a developing community, but that process is rife
with fatal flaws as well, and is a dying business model. The longer
organizations subscribe to it, the longer it will persist [to the detriment
of the users, the consumers and the industry as a whole]. I do appreciate
the reality-check however. Thanks.
Anthony
-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Warmerdam [mailto:fwarmerdam@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, January 21, 2005 12:53 PM
To: Anthony Quartararo
Cc: gislist@lists.geocomm.com
Subject: Re: [gislist] GIS software/hardware donations for 3rd World
On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 10:18:09 -0500, Anthony Quartararo
<ajq3@spatialnetworks.com> wrote:
> Rick,
>
> Why not approach the problem from a fresh perspective? I am speaking
> of the as-of-yet unfulfilled spatial ASP business model.
Anthony,
I think an ASP model for some sorts of mapping and spatial data analysis
could be valuable, but my understanding is that dependable high speed
network access is a big challenge in much of Africa.
An ASP model might work well for some federal employees or major
universities, but that once you get out into field offices internet access
drops off dramatically.
Earlier this week I spoke with a UNEP staffer who said that for practical
purposes a CD with data and software goes alot further amoung his user
community in Africa than web services of various kinds.
So spatial ASP solutions may be a solution, but not necessarily to the
question that was asked.
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