davidkagiri.net

For quite some time I noticed that many of my friends and small business around have trouble accounting for where their money goes and how it is used. Hey then I thought.. why not come up with a cost effective Web based solution that takes advantage of the Software-As-A-Service business model that will not only store and track ones money but give and insightful analysis on how it moves.

Thats how Zynde.com was born. After months of research and development I came up with a very intuitive and easy to use web solution that serves both personal users and businesses.

Upon registration a 7-day risk free trial is given and for sure it will be something worth paying for. Try it and your feedback will be highly welcomed.

As I was reading my favourite paper The Business Daily I came across a very interesting article on mobile usage in Africa. My home country Kenya leads the pack with Ghana. I generally havent been involved in mobile programming but this are surveys you read about and think about potential opportunities.

Generally when it comes to mobile phones I viewed the majority of the people using the SMS based services to access information and transfer money and not really browsing, from say Opera. However with falling prices of the high end internet enabled handsets the for interactive services is increasing and its leading to a subsequent drop in bandwidth charges. Mobile based applications demand will increase especially e-commerce based.

I have been looking at the available technology stacks that can exploit this medium and am still experimenting with some. Will keep you updated on my progress and your comments will be appreciated.

A while ago I decided to take my web development skills to the next level and embarked on a search for RAD environment that would greatly improve my productivity. After some Google searches I came across several top PHP frameworks such as Codeignite,  Zend and a particularly interesting code generator called Codecharge studio.

Given my Delphi background Codecharge studio with its drag drop features was seemingly attractive. It was simple and it could generate a database application with ajax features within minutes. Infact I used it to set up a demo application for a bidding – that I lost. However I came to discover that code generators are inherently “evil”. They limit your creative space and tie you down – not good in a rather fast paced competive world.

From the advice and recommendations of a friend of mine Marc Gray he insited that I use a framework and better still make my own. Making my own was out of question because one of my requirements was that I want to use a framework will evolve outside myself and has a strong community.

After a couple of searches I was drawn to the Zend Framework. I must say it has a learning curve but the MVC structure it enforces makes it an overkill should your application grow. I liked the business model employed by Zend and the certification program that sets the stage for the enterprise adoption of PHP. Its association with companies such as Adobe for some of its componets such as Zend Action Message Format (AMF) server is very re-assuring for a developer because you are assured of its quality and personally creating backend code for my flex RIAs has never been so easy. The Zend Framework enabled me play around with the various web services around and thumbs up for Jon Lebonsold whose webcasts greatly accelarated my learning curve.Thanks Jon!!!

It goes without saying that zend is a framework worth learning and utilizing for php based projects. With its Eclipse-Based RAD its makes it a framework of choice.

They new buzz word in the IT world seems to be “Cloud Computing”.Everyone has an opinion on what is cloud computing.

For sure without doubt Cloud computing promises to increase the velocity with which applications are deployed, increase innovation,and lower costs, all while increasing business agility.Given this enormous opportunities, enterprises can leverage an external cloud, build their own cloud internally, become a cloud services provider, or choose a blend of these options to achieve or gain the advantages that enable them be more agile.

Take a look at Amazon, Google, and Yahoo!.This enterprises baffle as to how they are able to produce such phenomenal cost savings over what an individual enterprise can achieve, given the market pricing for basic compute and storage. The fact is that cloud computing costs less — and it allows people to become much more agile in how they’re using IT resources.

The cost savings are a result of increased efficiencies, which have always been a feature of Web-scale computing. By leveraging technologies like virtualization, companies are able to achieve a much more efficient use of computing resources, improving infrastructure utilization rates and streamlining resource management while providing on-demand scalability. When combined with utility pricing, this removes the need to overprovision in anticipation of future demand peaks. And instead of funding very large capital investments, businesses are able to pay only for the computing resources they actually need and consume, which allows them to convert capital expenses to operating expenses.

The business agility are as a result  self-provisioning features of cloud computing meaning much faster time to market. There’s no need to negotiate long-term contracts. Built-in services means someone else has already figured out how to build a scalable storage system, so companies don’t have to do that work themselves. Cloud computing also enables greater elasticity; if an application grows to be very large, cloud customers only need to pay for increased resources when they’re being used. This allows for a more flexible business model behind applications being deployed in the cloud today.

Africa is uniquely positioned to maximise the benefits of cloud computing.As Network Providers seek to increase the quality of internet connection to broadband standards cloud providers especially SaaS providers can quickly reap the benefits of cloud computing.

Resources: Sun Microsystems

“We can confirm that all construction on Phase 1 is complete and testing is underway on the fully powered system. I am confident that July 23 will be our ready for service date” said Seacom CEO, Mr Brian Herhily.

Well its finally here.After decades of relying on the expensive satellite links Kenya will soon be having four international fiber connections landing at its coastline from zero in less than an year.Seacoms capacity stands at 1280 Gigabytes rivaling what is offered at West Africa by 10 times.Other fiber optic cables such as TEAMS 40 Gigabytes and EASSy 640 Gigabytes are due to start service soon.

To capitalise on this opportunity companies such as Access Kenya ,for instance, have purchased a total of 2,500 mb of capacity from the Seacom fibre optic which together with a similar amount procured on the TEAMS cable ,will give it a total of 5,000 mb of capacity, a figure that is four times what the entire country (Kenya) already uses.

Source: Business Daily June 16th and July 17th.