Business ICT

Infotel 2008 in October

Anjana Samarasinghe

Sri Lanka is projecting to import Rs 15 billion worth of computer hardware to the country in 2008 and this was Rs 13.5 billion in last year.

Chairman of INFOTEL Lanka Society and Director/ CEO of Softlogic Trading (Pvt) Ltd Roshan Rassool said that comparing with 2006 there was a significant growth in the hardware imports.

He was speaking at the Press launch of INFOTEL 2008 Sri Lanka’s premier Information Communication Technology event which will be held in October at the BMICH.

The current growth rate of the local hardware market is 10 per cent. However few years back there was a 15 per cent growth rate and it was slowed down due to current economic conditions, Rassool said.

According to reports per year 250,000 PCs are sold in the local market and 65 per cent to 70 per cent of them are local brands assembled here. Cost of living directly impact the disposable income of the consumers.

However in the local hardware industry people are much more educated on the products they expect to buy and computers has become a necessity. Today consumers could buy PCs even for Rs. 5,000.

He said that today small-scale businesses are adopting advanced technology for cost cutting and increasing productivity. This market segment too has high growth potential.

Talking about the INFOTEL 2008 he said the main objective of INFOTEL is to bring together the entire IT community in Sri Lanka including experts, professionals and academics and the user community on to a single platform.

This will be the ninth INFOTEL exhibition which will commence on 30 October during the national ICT week. Cyber Security Week and International Information Technology Conference (IITC) will be held as parallel events to the INFOTEL 2008 during the same week.

This will be an effective platform for showcasing latest market trends in the industry and building partnerships among stakeholders. Apart from software, hardware and communication categories there will be a career section at the exhibition, which will provide career guidance for the job seekers in the industry. The e- Sri Lanka initiatives section is also another new feature in this year’s show.

This will showcase applications that help to bridge divides or remove the technological boundaries between average citizens and state institutions, he said. Chairman/Main Organising Committee IITC 2008 Dr Ruwan Weerasinghe said IITC will showcase research talent in the country.

In addition to the presentation of research papers, the conference will feature several keynote addresses and invited talks by leading personalities in the IT world from Sri Lanka and abroad. The Conference will be followed by several high quality tutorials and workshops in the areas on the cutting edge of IT. This will be held from 28 to 29 October.

Chairman/Main Organising Committee Cyber Security Week 2008 Lal Dias said the main objective of organising this event is to generate awareness on the information security in the country and protect information systems in Sri Lanka. There will be essay competitions and workshops on cyber security during that week. It will also showcase the methods of information security.

There will be over 250 participating stalls arranged in pavilion style and over 25,000 visitors at the exhibition.

##################################

IT solutions needed to battle crisis

“It must deliver solutions to drive down costs, improve passenger convenience and provide enhanced possibilities to maximise revenues. The industry fuel crisis that has plunged airlines back into the red means achieving these goals is critical to survival,” said Giovanni Bisignani, Director General and CEO of the International Air Transport Association (IATA). Bisignani made his remarks in the opening keynote address at the SITA Air Transport IT Summit.

Bisignani cited the success of IATA’s Simplifying the Business programme. “This IT revolution is well on the way to saving airlines US$ 6.5 billion annually. On June 1 we delivered 100 per cent e-ticketing. Alone, that will save US$3 billion. Now we must look ahead to respond to passenger demands for more self-service options throughout the travel process.

IATA’s Fast Travel will deliver a second revolution with baggage self-tagging, automated document checks, self-boarding and kiosks to handle irregular operations and mishandled baggage reporting,” said Bisignani.

Bisignani then pointed to the need for progress in several key areas: GDSs: “Our partners in the value chain must deliver similar efficiencies to airlines,” said Bisignani, referring to Global Distribution Systems (GDSs). We worked together in the e-ticketing project that helped airlines reduce sales and distribution costs by 25 per cent. But there is still a need for more change.

Why can China TravelSky charge US$0.50 per segment while the western GDSs charge over US$4? The industry is in crisis and they must come to the table with better efficiencies or we will use other ways to distribute products,” said Bisignani. Bisignani also challenged governments to deliver better results with IT to improve security.

“The industry is much more secure than it was in 2001. But too often we get more hassle than value for the US$30 billion that airlines and their passengers have paid in the last seven years.

The IATA-led Simplifying Passenger Travel project is a solution to make security more effective, efficient and convenient with IT solutions.

Governments must rise to the challenge by focusing on risk management, using available technology effectively, taking better advantage of security intelligence, harmonising global standards and taking responsibility for the bill,” said Bisignani.

“IATA’s commitment to improving the industry’s good environmental performance reduced fuel burn and saved 10.5 million tonnes of CO2 and US$2.1 billion in 2007. This was achieved by shortening 395 routes and spreading best practice in fuel management. We welcome the commitment of the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation (CANSO) at their annual meeting to deliver even greater efficiencies.

IT also has a role. Providers like SITA have an important role in ensuring that operational systems make the best use of improved routings. We could do much more if governments came on board.

A Single European Sky in Europe and NextGen air traffic management in the US would deliver enormous performance gains-as would harmonising air traffic management requirements globally,” said Bisignani. IATA

#######################################

Apache Harmony

The University of Moratuwa became the No 1 University worldwide to have the most number of projects accepted for the Google Summer of Code programme this year.

‘Apache Harmony’ is the second project report that the Daily News Business is carrying as a series.

This report was submitted by Senaka Fernando, a final year undergraduate of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of the University of Moratuwa. He hoped to make the opportunity he got through GSoC a fruitful one that would increase his visibility within open source as well as to become a part of various new open source communities. He is looking forward in making use of any opportunity to take part in open source.

Java is undoubtedly one of the most powerful object oriented programming languages in the world.

It supports almost all the useful programming techniques in the object oriented paradigm such as inheritance, encapsulation and polymorphism. Apart from these features, Java offers garbage collection (an automated memory cleanup process that makes the developer’s life easy by taking care of some crucial memory management issues) and platform independence through the concept of Java Virtual Machine.

Due to these reasons Java is favoured by developers all around the world when it comes to developing complex software applications and cross platform systems.

In order to be able to develop in Java, one must use a Java Software Development Kit (Java SDK - sometimes also referred to as Java Development Kit). There is a number of Java SDK implementations from a variety of vendors like Sun Microsystems, IBM and Blackdown.

Apache Harmony is an Open Source JDK Implementation. Apache Harmony began as a project to become a Apache 2.0 Licensed alternative to Java from Sun Microsystems. Most of Harmony is functional, and can already be used in place of Java. But, however, improvements are yet to happen.

Harmony relies on its user-base as a means of contribution through patches, financial support, evaluations, and sensible use-cases. Thus, contribution and active involvement of users within the scope of Harmony is always encouraged. As a result of this, several communities have shown interest in this project.

The Parrot VM (Virtual Machine) project from Perl, is one such party interested in plugging the Harmony Garbage Collector into their VM, and as a whole improving the visibility and the usefulness of the Apache Harmony Project.

My role in the project is to make it possible to use the Harmony GC (Garbage Collector) in the Parrot VM. The major issues that I have to address is regarding connecting two interfaces written in two programming languages.

This problem has previously been attempted and failed due to the complexity in linking and especially building the source.

The benefit of the project is two fold. The harmony GC has never been ported to any other VM even though it should be possible in theory.

This project makes that a reality. The Parrot VM does not yet have GC that is as capable as the Harmony GC. This project will help Parrot users gain the best out of the Harmony GC.

Another major advantage of this project is the ability to make the Harmony GC pluggable to any C/C++ application. Starting off with Parrot as an example, the final outcome of this project will result in an implementation that is capable of being used with any C/C++ application. Also, this will make it possible for Parrot folks to make sure that their interface for plugging an anonymous GC is working as expected. (To be continued)

################################################

Yahoo! Exodus continues as Delicious founder resigns

The brain drain at ailing Internet Company Yahoo! is continuing apace, with the resignation of Joshua Schachter, the founder of the popular Yahoo!-owned social bookmarking tool Delicious.

Schachter, who sold Delicious to Yahoo! in 2005, blamed his decision to walk on the “decisions of my management”.

He said on the Silicon Valley website TechCrunch: “I was largely sidelined by the decisions of my management. So that was mostly the result rather than the cause, if that makes sense.

“It was an incredibly frustrating experience and I wish I was a lot more like Stewart [Butterfield] in terms of pushing my point of view.” Schachter’s resignation comes hot on the heels of the departure of Stewart Butterfield, founder of photo-sharing website Flickr, who resigned in a bizarre leaked resignation letter.

His resignation coincided with that of three more senior executives at the end of last week Qi Lu, Brad Garlinghouse, and Vish Makhijani. Garling house was senior vice-president for communications and communities, with responsibility for Yahoo’s email and messaging services, Yahoo! Groups and Flickr.

#############################################

Software Awards tenth anniversary

The National Best Quality Software Awards (NBQSA) the only National competition of its type in Sri Lanka for recognising exceptional local ICT achievements will mark its tenth anniversary this year.

The primary objectives of NBQSA are to provide recognition for outstanding achievements of individuals and organisations in Sri Lanka which have contributed to the development of ICT.

It will also create a window to gain international recognition for locally developed ICT products and improve standards and the quality of local ICT products and services, to be able to compete in the international market place.

The competition is to be held in sixteen categories ranging from applications and infrastructure tools to media and entertainment applications. Gold, Silver and Bronze awards are presented in these categories provided that there are winners.

The judging is carried out by a panel of judges consisting experts from diverse disciplines such as IT, Engineering, Management, Accounting, Marketing etc, who come from both the private sector and the Academia. The judges are appointed adhering to strict criteria and conditions to ensure unbiased and objective evaluation as well as strict confidentiality.

The event is organised annually by the British Computer Society (BCS) Sri Lanka section.

############################################

Sri Lankans to access Corbis’ 100 million image library

Corbis, (www.corbis. com), a Seattle USA-based creative resource for advertising, marketing and media professionals, has appointed Sri Lanka’s first online stock photo library ‘Images of Sri Lanka’ (ISL) as its representative in Sri Lanka, effective July 1.

With this tie-up, Sri Lankans will now have access to Corbis’ pre-eminent collection of more than 100 million creative, entertainment and historical imagery and a comprehensive footage library.

“With this relationship we look to bring the creative advantage offered by Corbis closer to Sri Lanka’s advertising and publishing industry,” said Director Global Channel Sales of Corbis, Paul Harraghy.

“We have the broadest, deepest, most easily accessible and searchable collection of imagery in the world. Among our world-famous collections are the 11 million piece Bettmann Archive, the 50 million piece Sygma archive and the leading edge contemporary stock image collection zefa.

We also represent imagery from the Smithsonian Institution, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Gallery in London.”

Director Operations, Images of Sri Lanka (ISL) Dhammika Heenpella said that as the representative for Corbis, ISL will license and provide Corbis’ services to the Sri Lankan market.

“Corbis offers by far the most comprehensive image file, from past to present, creative to journalistic, Fine Art to Entertainment images. Its Rights Clearances expertise can make archives of non-commercial images available for commercial uses,” he added.

##############################################

Innovative hospital software from Lunar Technologies

Ruzaik Farook

A new Sri Lankan computer company, Lunar Technologies Pvt Ltd, has won an international award for innovative hospital software. Judged by the editors of the magazine Computer World, the award was sponsored by the US company Intersystems who produce the Cache database in which the software was written. Intersystems were celebrating, in Orlando, Florida, 30 years of their own innovation in computer database development.

The software was recently installed in the Eastern Province where it now stores information on all patients admitted to the government hospitals in Batticaloa district. The software was developed for the Ministry of Healthcare and Nutrition in collaboration with the World Health Organisation.

The development was funded by the Austrian/Swiss Red Cross using money raised for tsunami-hit areas. Work started on the project in July 2006. The first small hospital (Chenkalady Rural Hospital) started using computer in February 2007. The first large hospital in the project (Batticaloa Teaching Hospital) started in April 2007. By the end of 2007, 11 hospitals in Batticaloa district were using computers.

The computer programme is designed to improve the documentation of patients treated in hospitals in Sri Lanka and to speed up the notification of infectious diseases. In each hospital there is a computer installed at the front desk where patients are registered and another in each ward where they are treated.

In the wards the staff can see patient details and enter the diagnosis into the computer. This can then print useful reports such as the bed head ticket and patient discharge letters. The system contributes to public health by notifying cases to the Medical Officer of Health and producing health statistics automatically.

While hospital information systems have been used in the West for many years, there has been little success in computerising medical information in developing countries. This is due to the complexity of most commercial databases and the need for large expensive computers to run them.

The Cache database system from InterSystems is not like that. It is easy to program and runs quicker than other commercial databases. This means that it can be installed on low-cost computers. A small PC costing Rupees 100,000 is sufficient to run a Cache-based database in a rural hospital.

The Chairman of Lunar Technologies Gamini Karunaratne says, “Although the MDS software is not a complete Hospital Information System it does provide a basic medical record for the patient. Hospital staff find it easy to use compared to the old system of writing everything in a book.

As well as notifying infectious diseases, the software provides hospital directors with useful information to help run their hospitals. And in everyone of those 11 government hospitals it is the nurses and doctors who are entering the medical data, not administrators or clerks.”

Dr. Pole believes that this is just the beginning of more interesting developments to come, as the System has the potential for improvement to cover many other areas in patient care and hospital information. The system provides a good start to the computerisation of hospitals in Sri Lanka, and may even prove useful in other developing countries.

###############################################

SLT to change the future of tele-viewing

Sri Lanka Telecom is set to revolutionise the way Sri Lankans see the future of tele-viewing. Viewers will now have Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), a system where digital television service is delivered using IP over a network infrastructure, which includes delivery via broadband connection. With an IP based platform, it allows viewers the opportunity to make the experience of watching television more interactive and personalised.

Speaking on how IPTV is a pioneering initiative in Sri Lanka, CEO, Vision Com (Pvt) Limited Thusha Weerasooriya, said, “This is an important project for SLT, as the success of this is going to enhance and drive the demand for the core optical network , copper wire lines and ADSL, thereby allowing the growth of multi-sided businesses to increase and complement each other in many forms.

We are glad to be the driving force with the IP based TV broadcasting service in Sri Lanka, with the latest entertainment mediums in the world. Our aim was to bring in IP technology, that has been driving new real time voice, data and multimedia applications throughout the areas of business, education and entertainment.”

Offering new possibilities to the viewer, the key element of SLT IPTV is its interactive platform, where they have total control over the watching of any programme whenever they chose to. Information pertaining to IPTV is transferred over separate, closed networks, where the benefits are of a less congested, more efficient means of delivery, allowing higher quality and interactive features.

With IPTV, SLT will be enabled to offer a real time broadcast programming, Video on Demand and other advanced services over broadband connection to televisions. How the system works is with the Set Top Box, which is provided with one side being connected to the television and the other being connected to an ADSL line, which are the basic requirements from the users end.