Thus Spaketh Idd Salim

Cloud. Yes. Tuko juu.

Well, I could easily have had the title of this blog as ‘Safaricom launches Cloud Service’. But that would be an insult to those who know this already and those who know how to use google. More insulted would be the 3000+ people who were at KICC last night. The lack of originality and literary profundity on the blog-scene always leaves me cacchinnating.

I believe you have come here to read about the intricacies of this new service and get an abstruse insight. You are seeking the answer to : “How does it work for my business” and, more importantly, the answer to eternal question business people ask, “How do I make money off it?”.

Today, I also wanted to talk about “8 ways local developers could harness the Safaricom cloud”. But then I realized two things. 1 – No body gives a fck. 2 – No body gives a damn. So I will keep that to my self.

Step in, Safaricom Cloud

Well, I could NOT wait for the launch to start. I was getting bored of being surrounded by loud talking, thunderously laughing, suit-wearing (yikes!!) people. How fast can I get to iHub, home. Where people are simple, free and real?

Then started the presentations. QnA from RamahNyang to Bob, Macharia, Hamdan and a ‘Mr Smith’. The presentation from Mike and Bob was, as expected, idiot-proof. Even my cat would have understood what cloud computing is and why we needed it by just listening. More here.

The service offers Storage-As-a-service, Backup, Archiving and Software-as-a-service. Google those if you don’t know what they mean. They are below the context of this short post.

Then came the PS. Described by Bob as the Kenyan IT Sector Demi-god. And finally, someone was talking to ME.

In the last paragraph of this blog post, I recommended that Google should NOT host Kenya government data and suggested we setup a local setup to manage that. Google would shut down their cloud in a blink and years of our history would be lost. I made some few enemies at google, ofcourse. I mean who is this 3rd World blogger that thinks Kenyans can setup a world-class cloud? We are google. We know how to do all that stuff. Well, 3rd world country, A1 1st world brains. End of. Moving on.

Ndemo spoke of the need for the cloud. The government was spending SO much on hardware and storage and labor to sustain a core business necessity that was NOT their core business. IT infrastructure. That money could be used to empower other IT needs. Safaricom and SST were now heaven-sent. The government will be the first customer for the cloud. I smiled. Kenyan critical government data hosted HERE. By us. Another big FU to those who said it could not be done in Africa.

Ndemo spoke about something everyone was, until this time, ignoring. IaaS. Or as I love to call it, Computing Power as a service. He spoke about  once talking to Rabaa of homeboyz and hearing him speak of having a handicap in terms of computing power. I talked about this earlier. We need to create a monster of a computer and call her I.S.I.O.L.O. [Immanently SuperCharged Infinitely Omnipotent Limitless Operationator]. A computer that can render HD+ videos for homeboyz in seconds, serve all government data in real-time, perform complex maths in micro-seconds. We have the knowledge and skills to develop one. And we will be showcasing one at @iHub in 3 months, if everything goes to plan.

All in all, I see the stars aligning.

I await to see what they will offer developers and innovation hubs.

I hope top techies will be consulted on this, as the potential is limitless, if harnessed properly.

Back to code…

Wazi.