Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

Ndiyo, named after the Swahili word for ‘yes,’ was started around four years ago to overhaul approaches to the bridging of the digital divide, using the widely available Linux operating system, and a nifty piece of hardware that allows one computer to run multiple displays, keyboards and mice.

The organisation has a lower profile than a number of its AT&T peers and has not raised the VC millions of Virata, Level 5 Networks, Ubisense or Cambridge Broadband, for example, but looks set to make a truly global impact.

Having successfully piloted the technology in South Africa in Bangladesh, Ndiyo is now working on the production of a volume of prototype systems which it hopes will be the precursor to widespread adoption.

Effectively Ndiyo’s technology allows a single PC to be turned into multiple workstations, dramatically cutting down on the cost of ‘e-enfranchising’ the Third World.

Former AT&T researcher and webcam inventor, Quentin Stafford Fraser explained: “Ndiyo has a model. It’s not the only one, nor necessarily the best one, but it does work now using today’s technology. It’s based on sharing the power of a PC between several users at once.

“Today’s computers are easily capable of supporting multiple users, but in the past there hasn’t been a convenient and affordable way to do this. Now there is.

“Our technology has emerged from our collaboration with DisplayLink and has a very different design philosophy to existing thin-client hardware.

“Whereas most designers started with a PC and then looked for components they could take out, we started with a bare monitor and asked what we would need to add to create a working thin-client terminal.”

Ndiyo takes advantage of a key feature of Linux – that every Linux-based PC supports multiple simultaneous users. To date, according to Ndiyo this has been under-used, because there hasn’t been low-cost hardware to take advantage of it.

This is where DisplayLink comes in. Although Stafford-Fraser refers to the Cambridge company as a partner, NDiyo is in fact the ‘mother’ of DisplayLink, spinning it out at least in part, to stimulate the creation of “suitable low-cost, but high-performance, hardware.”

This is combined with Open Source software, not least from fellow AT&T virtualisation software company, RealVNC, meaning that there are no software licensing costs associated with adding extra users. Crucially when aiming the technology at the developing world Ndiyo’s model vastly improves the ease of administration, creates substantial cost savings, and even lower environmental impact.

The technology requires far less electricity than conventional networked computing, approximately a twelfth of the wattage required for a conventional PC.In partnership with the GSM Association and mobile network operators in Bangladesh and South Africa, the company has trialled Ndiyo-powered Internet Access Facilities in two parts of the world which have hitherto had poor internet connectivity.

The project involves using Edge (Bangladesh) and 3G (South Africa) mobile networks to provide broadband Internet connections to servers, each of which runs a number of local Ndiyo workstations.

The Ndiyo architecture enables many users to share not just the cost of the computer, but also of the internet connectivity.

Having made his mark on the technology world with a number of significant contributions, Stafford-Fraser, decided when he left AT&T that his thirst for technical challenges could overlap with a passion for social justice:

“There are number of drivers that motivates us: Our belief that conventional PC-based networking architecture is so intrinsically wasteful and expensive that it excludes billions of people from access to the benefits of ICY; the fact that current computing technology is environmentally damaging and probably unsustainable and a desire to ensure that the developing world does not become dependent for ICY on a small number of Western companies.”

•Northants based Riders for Health, which uses the latest satellite technology to deliver healthcare to the remotest areas of Africa has been recognised for its work with an international humanitarian award from Silicon Valley.

The not-for-profit organisation, based in Daventry, was one of two UK ‘laureates’ in the Tech Museum Awards 2006, with the headline prize of ‘global humanitarian’ going to Microsoft founder, Bill Gates.

The awards are run by the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose to honour companies and individuals from around the world who are deemed to be attempting to solve global problems through the application of technology.