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Nigeria's Software Sector Needs Dedicated Fund-Expert

If the boom in the ICT sector would have to be sustained then, the support services need to be enhanced to ensure that breakdown and collapse of the various components of the technology such as the software and the hardware does not result to monumental economic loss to the individual, organisation and the nation in general.

It is perhaps in response to this view that Data Recovery Specialist Limited, a company with expertise in averting possible collapse of systems owing to data loss or system crash was set up.

In a recent dialogue with IFEANYI OSUEKE, the Head, Data Recovery Services of the firm, Olukoya Mathew said besides being the unseen force that runs any system, software is also a veritable tool for solving problems that could arise in the system depending on its nature.

“Many reasons could be responsible for the crashing of a storage medium. It could be environmental factor, viral infection, corruption of the operating system or contamination. The three things needed to recover lost data are Skills, Hard and Software tools”.

		The IT specialist wondered why government and multinational organizations are slow in encouraging support services, software development and IT sector in general explaining that a single crash could have a far reaching effect in the economy while a single recovery could save life and the economy in a manner that cannot be quantified monetarily. According to him, “Our pay-off line is 'saving lives, saving businesses and saving carriers'. We have seen several IT managers fired because critical server crashed when it should not. A typical example is the bank.

“You know customers do not want to hear excuses. Suppose a customer comes to the bank and he is unable to access his balance so as to cash money because the system crashed, what will you tell him? That is brand erosion. If an IT head is fired, the effect is both on him and his family.”

He stated further, “Here in this company, we can save his job because we have been able to record 99 per cent success.

It is an economic loss for critical files or records of customers to be lost. We have seen a situation where the laptop of a medical doctor of many years standing crashed.

Imagine the information in that hard disc; would that not be a huge loss if he is unable to recover those files?” Mathew explained “crash” to mean the inability of the IT professional or user to have access to the information, pictures or music from the systems that use hard disc;

digital camera that has storage area or phones that have memory and so on adding that there must be attitudinal change on investment if ICT must move to the next level as government intends. He faulted the desire for quick return on investment by entrepreneurs,banks, multinationals and

even individuals saying it is the bane of local software growth in Nigeria-a country with large number of talented men and women in all fields of human endeavour.

The data recovery specialist intoned further: “In Nigeria, we have talents in all facets of life, be it sport, economy, ICT, Law and so on. But the problem is that the average businessman in Nigeria wants to invest in an area where there is a quick return on investment. In software development you cannot get your return immediately, sometimes not even within 24 months, except you are asked to develop software for a particular situation and you are paid.

“But if you discover a problem and develop software to solve that problem, it will take at least one year for the software to be perfect. For you to test your solution around so that people will believe that it can solve their problem, will take another one year. This is why individuals and companies such as banks found it difficult to invest in software development because their thinking is that they can make more money if they invest in capital or money market or even real estate.

“We think this way because we lack foresight. India's economic mainstay is software; American companies outsource their technology to India. When you go to Microsoft, you will find Indians; they have foresight so they developed themselves for the future and they are now reaping the fruit. If we have sponsors, we have talents who can do wonders in software. There are indigenous software companies that are making so much money in software development but they did not start today not even yesterday”.

He commended the effort of the federal government for the role it has been playing in recent time in improving ICT through some of its agencies like the Nigeria Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Computer Professionals Registration Council (CPN) among others.

He however advised that there is need to strengthen the ICT legal framework and pool resources to foster speedy development in the sector. In his own word, “We need legal framework; let there be pool of funds just as we have a percentage of companies profit after tax being dedicated to SMEs. Let us have something like that for software development. It is an intellectual property that is highly profitable than oil.

“Oil is got from the earth and one can fathom the volume. For instance, Nigeria may have about 1billion litres, which is a finite value. It simply means that time shall come when it will be exhausted. But intellectual property, once developed is developed, what one needs is to keep reviewing it on annual basis. The owner of Microsoft is rich because what he has developed is what is being sold around the world”. He added that such fund could be utilized in the provision of other infrastructure as the lack of it has constituted a set back.

Data Recovery though, leveraging on the expertise of its technical partners at the moment is still researching on how to be sufficiently independent of any foreign application, “we do have research and development unit that is working on how to do away with some of these tools because they are killing the business as well. So we are looking for a way we can do all of these things even without their assistance.

We are nearing the time when we would be able to develop our own machine level applications that can do recovery for us then we would do away with all these foreign applications”
On his views about the future of ICT in Nigeria, he observed that ICT is a human endeavour that has come to stay as it controls all the facets of life, predicting that any other new thing that will come will certainly be an offshoot of ICT. “ICT is the last thing”, he concluded.

AMD Launches Mainstream Processors

Advanced Micro Devices has introduced a series of mainstream graphics processors that start at $69.

In addition, AMD released an upgrade of its software development kit for boosting the performance of general purpose applications through the use of the company's graphics processing units. The 4600 series of GPUs comprise the ATI Radeon HD 4670 and the HD 4650.

Both include support for DirectX 10.1, a collection of application programming interfaces for tasks related to games and video on Microsoft's Windows platform.

The mainstream processors are aimed at casual gamers and people who favour entertainment PCs. The products deliver solid graphics performance at low cost. The HD 4670 has a manufacturer suggested retail price of $79, and the HD 4650 has an MSRP of $69.

“Today, AMD is providing mainstream users one of the largest segments of the market with superior graphics products and performance at previously unheard of prices,” Rick Bergman, senior VP and general manager of the graphics products group at AMD, said in a statement.

The HD 4670 operates at a maximum of less than 60 watts and has 512 MB of memory. The product is available immediately. A model with 1 GB of memory is set to ship this month. The HD 4650 operates at a maximum of less than 50 watts and also has 512 MB of memory. The GPU is scheduled for release this month.

Both products feature AMD's TeraScale graphics engine, which has 320 55-nanometer processing cores. The cards provide “smooth” high-definition video viewing through the use of AMD's second-generation unified video decoder, the company said. In addition, they support HDMI 7.1 surround sound audio.

Novell May Sue Microsoft

Software giant, Microsoft may be sued by Novell for allegedly conspiring to kill WordPerfect, but that's not stopping the companies from joining forces on other fronts.

The software vendors, which have been collaborating on Windows-Linux interoperability since 2006, said that they will work together to develop virtualization technologies. Virtualized computing architectures feature software that allows applications to run across multiple servers and multiple applications to run on a single server, increasing flexibility and efficiency.

To support Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization environment, Novell said it is releasing a special version of its SUSE Linux Enterprise server operating system designed specifically to run as a 'guest' on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. “Customers want virtualization solutions that work in a heterogeneous environment,” said Joshua Dorfman, Novell's senior marketing manager for Linux.

Microsoft said it's been collaborating with Novell on the offering for the past 18 months. Channel partners that support the product include Computer Integrated Services Company, Continental Resources, Dell, Insight, Total Tech Systems and 21Vianet.

Dell Software and Solutions vice president, Rick Becker said that SUSE Linux on Hyper-V gives the computer maker a chance to “provide our customers running mixed Linux and Windows environments with an optimized solution that is quick and simple to deploy.”

Microsoft recently unveiled several products and services designed to increase its presence in the market for virtualization technology and pledged to release new offerings within 30 days. The company said its Hyper-V Server 2008 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 products would be available by October 8th.

Hyper-V Server 2008, Microsoft's core virtualization technology, will be available as a free download from the software maker's Web site. Virtual Machine Manager 2008, a paid offering, provides users with tools needed to manage Hyper V Server 2008.

Microsoft is also enlisting partners in its effort to bring virtualization to mainstream computing. The company said that it has teamed up with chipmaker, Advanced Micro Devices to help make AMD's Opteron processors more virtualization-friendly. PC manufacturer Hewlett-Packard also pledged to build servers and storage devices designed to fit into virtualized environments.

Meanwhile, Novell's antitrust suit against Microsoft is proceeding. Novell accuses Microsoft of using monopolistic tactics to drive WordPerfect and Quattro out of the market. Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court gave Novell the go ahead to continue the litigation.

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