Building critical mass in ICT research and innovation Finding the synergies Building collaborations Prof Derek W. Keats Deputy Vice Chancellor (Knowledge & Information Management) The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

Africa is not performing well in the 'knowledge economy'

South Africa is no exception to this fact

Africa is mostly dark

The world produces 103 scientific research papers per million people

The USA produces 690 and Canada 723 scientific research papers per million people

Africa produces 8.2 scientific research papers per million people

12% of the world's population enter tertiary education

32% of North Americans enter |tertiary education

2.4% of Africans enter tertiary education

In the USA, investment in higher education is 2.9% of GDP

In the Britain, investment in higher education is 1.1% of GDP

In the South Africa, investment in higher education is about 0.025% of GDP

There are more actively researching computer science professors in a large American university than there are in Sub-Saharan Africa

'Skills shortage'

Problem or symptom?

Ecosystem dysfunction

Collaboration

Synergy

Collaboration

software engineering

AVOIR is about people, not technology South Africa 2008 SADC sysadmins

Human capacity development Nigeria 2008

Collaborating Kenya 2008

New opportunities Afghanistan, 2008

Functional ecosystem for innovation Ghana, 2007

gstreamer GNU/Linux PHP MySQL PEAR Open Office SWF tools CURL Chisimba FFmpeg The stack Java Python Flash Open fire RED5 Javascript jQuery extJS Jabber Cross platform RESTful API Ajax Mashable XMPP Mobile phone Online package management Version 4 will be fully distributed prototype

Assimilation hive://chisimba.borg

Fedora gstreamer GNU/Linux PHP MySQL PEAR Open Office SWF tools CURL Chisimba FFmpeg The stack Java Python Flash Open fire RED5 Javascript jQuery extJS Jabber Cross platform RESTful API Ajax Mashable XMPP Mobile phone Online package management Version 4 will be fully distributed prototype SWORD Open Zoom

Synergy

Option 1Option 2Option 3Option 4Option 5 The cutting edge Risk without ecosystem Safe, proven, mature old technologies Mature but relatively new technologies We help to lead technology trends We create and use new technologies before anyone else

Option 1Option 2Option 3Option 4Option 5 The cutting edge Risk with ecosystem Safe, proven, mature old technologies Mature but relatively new technologies We help to lead technology trends We create and use new technologies before anyone else

Process Technology Innovation Support (people) Innovation driven Where are there opportunities to create synergy, leading to innovation?

eLearning at Wits...

Pedagogy (Process) Technology Innovation Support (people) Key responsibilities Researcher Software developer Materials developer Instructional designer Systems admin Instructional designer Lecturer Application support

Pedagogy (Process) Technology Innovation Support (people) Key responsibilities Researcher Software developer Materials developer Instructional designer Systems admin Instructional designer Lecturer Application support

Capable of virtualization to run multiple systems and take advantage of better use of CPU cycles and storage Massive clusters of low cost commodity computers - Compute cloud (e.g. Amazon Elastic Cloud) - Data cloud (e.g. Amazon S3) - Public cloud - Private cloud

Compute cloud Cloud storage Robotic tape library Hosted services Wits portals eLearning Digital archive Private cloud infrastructure Simplified view Hierarchical storage

Compute cloud Hosted services Digital archive Virtualization Application Object store Data grid Application Private cloud infrastructure Wits portals eLearning Operating System Hierarchical storage Middleware Application Hardware layer Robotic tape library Spinning disks Flash memory

Compute cloud Hosted services Digital archive Virtualization Application Object store Data grid Application Private cloud infrastructure Wits portals eLearning Operating System Hierarchical storage Middleware Application Hardware layer Robotic tape library Spinning disks Flash memory Free and Open Source Software

Hosted services Digital archive Virtualization Chisimba Fedora iRODS Chisimba DSPACE Private cloud infrastructure Wits portals eLearning OS: Open Solaris Glassfish Zimbra Compute cloud Hierarchical storage Hardware layer Robotic tape library Spinning disks Flash memory

Enterprise document management An approach using private cloud Site Ingest Born digital iFolder client Network iFolder server iRodsChisimba Network Site iFolder client WWW Private cloud infrastructure iRods Workflow managed by iRods layer

Conclusion The only way to build critical mass is through collaboration AVOIR as an example Anyone is welcome to participate The only way to fix the broken ecosystem is to maximize synergy Synergy begins at home

Attribution file: /attribution/attrib.txthttp://