Yesterday, I attended Day 2 of the Web Innovation 2007 conference.

The irony to note is that the conference website is so NOT Web 2.0. For example, where are the slides that people can download? These guys can learn a thing or two from the foss.in website and conference. Again, for a web innovation conference, why is there no wifi? How are you supposed to access the websites?

On the other hand, this conference has been surprising to me in the sense that it actually turned out to be interesting. I think the quality of people who have come to speak here is high and that’s probably because these people are high up in the decision-making chain and they have come to talk about what they do best - websites and business.

Of course, the other half of the speakers are doing just boring sales pitches but that didn’t deter the audience from asking tough questions and seeking their value from it. They even directly questioned how their company lives up to what was described in the presentation.

Continuing Day 1’s trend, here are the transcribed notes:

• Jayabalan (CTO, Netmagic) on “Building scalable and resilient infrastructure for web applications”

  • Users, Connectivity, IT infrastructure, Application infrastructure
  • Challenges - Growth (number of concurrent users), Hardware failure, Software bugs, Security threats
  • Management and maintenance, Connectivity/routing issues, Secure connectivity, Cost
  • Failures can’t be avoided
  • Features and functionality alone not sufficient, Performance also required
  • Difficult to get people with end-to-end knowledge
  • Recommended setup - Storage, SANSw, Web + App + DB, Switching, Accelerator, Firewall
  • Develop for future - scalability in all layers
  • Performance optimizing techniques - Compression, TCP multiplexing, TCP optimization, TCP buffering, Caching, CDN, Load balancing, URL/content/cookie switching, Content modification, SSL offloading, Surge protection
  • Please outsource parts of these infrastructure to experts who have good infrastructure and service
  • Netmagic caters to all of the above (can it get more blatant than this?)
  • jb at netmagicsolutions.com
  • Replies to audience that Yes, Providers in India do have such infrastructure now. Power and Connectivity are major issues that you can’t scale in-house, so outsource it.

• Rohit Varma (Founder and CEO, Techtribe) on “Delivering Value through Social Networks”

  • (Unfortunately, missed this session in the business track because the session in the other tech track was long)
  • Get into the press, only way, do not depend on viral marketing

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Yesterday, I attended Day 1 of the Web Innovation 2007 conference.

The first half of the day was quite useful, but the latter half turned out to be pure marketing pitches by the sponsors.

First and foremost, I think the title of the conference is a misnomer. Although it says “Web Innovation 2007: The Nextgen Web Technology Revolution: 2.0 & Beyond”, it should have been “Web 2.0 : How can India catch up” - the discussions were really about the ‘current’ situation of things rather than ‘innovation’ or ‘future’. By ‘current’ I mean, the internet products and services market in the western world and how India can catch up.

The No.1 and possibly only gripe that most speakers mentioned which is a barrier for internet and Web 2.0 to become omnipresent is that broadband connectivity is pitiful in India.

I agree to this as far as locality reach, reliability, and pricing is concerned. However, let’s compare it to mobile phones which is the second-most discussed topic, on how it is booming and all that. Why did mobile phones take off and not broadband? I think it’s because mobile phones had a killer application - communication. That too, communication any time, anywhere.

Similarly, let’s take the case of computers in many shops and distributors - accounting solutions whether it is by the local software shop or well-known ones like Tally, they bought computers just so that they can use these software. Just like Lotus 1-2-3 for Apple Mac I in the history of computers.

Unless we have killer applications that people in India want to use, why would anyone want to buy a computer or a broadband connection? And if there are killer applications, won’t there be demand for broadband connections, and won’t supply follow? Just like the mobile telephony market today?

Maybe I’m completely off on this one, but I still don’t yet see killer applications on the web today for the common man in India, let alone Web 2.0-style applications. Forget common man, how about the educational aspects of things, if there are products and services that can be beneficial to school and college students, that alone is a big deal. As B V Naidu (one of the advisors in the Karnataka IT committee) said, 54% of the Indian population is below 20 years!

Naidu also mentioned that there are 7 million new phones being bought every month, you won’t find such a high number anywhere else in the world. Yet, there are a meagre 1.6 million mobile internet users. Again, what are the killer applications for them? At least, I never felt the need for internet on my mobile phone. (As an aside, getting it working for the first time is a pain which is another major factor).

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