1. How many Indian state governments have deployed NComputing virtualised desktops for their students? What are the major projects has executed in the education sector in India ?
A. Around 10 states government schools had tie-up with NComputing and deployed its devices is schools. NComputing would soon increase this number. Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Punjab are the biggest projects for NComputing in education sector, around 2 lakhs seats are only deployed in these three states. More than 60% of our devices are deployed into educational sector. From that 60%, around 80% of devices are deployed in government schools/institutions. Certainly, government-run educational institutions/schools have brought the biggest business opportunity to our company in India. We have deployed thousands of seats in 50, 000 government schools in India.
Some of the major deployments includes India, states like Gujarat: 77,465, Andhra Pradesh : 60,000, Maharashtra : 18,000, Uttar Pradesh : 15,000, Rajasthan : 14,000, Bihar : 15,000, Assam : 3,200, Punjab : 60,000, Haryana : 52,000, Employee State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) : 31000. In India, NComputing has deployed total 5 lakh seats across various state education projects, private educational institutions and others.
2. Please elaborate on your solutions have benefitted the students in various schools and how many counries have adopted these solutions?
A. There are a million public schools in India, and the vast majority of them can not afford to provide their students with a sufficient number of computers. Our solution enables a school to set up a 40-seat computer lab for less than the cost of 10 standalone PCs.
We are growing rapidly worldwide, mostly in developing nations like India. Over the next 5 years, the growth of computing will be in the emerging markets and underserved markets. Emerging markets are well known – these are the countries where PC penetration is still less than 300 per 1,000 population. What is also interesting (and often overlooked) are what we call “underserved” markets. For example, in the USA, most public schools only have 1 PC per 5 students. So there is still a large need for additional computing – if only the cost was more affordable. So we see tremendous opportunity to bring affordable computing to the next billion people around the world. All the state governments were increasing the budget for the computer education. Their aim is to give computer education from the school level itself. Importantly Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, was first in this list. In view of this making the educational institutions as main market we are going ahead.
3. Is NComputing’s technology accessible and affordable?
A. The NComputing solutions are built specifically to break the price barrier, and have a unique way to enable computing access for people from different customer segments at a fraction of the cost of the traditional all-PC set up. While initially it was difficult for people to break away from the conventional/traditional way of computing, over time, as they realized the value that a revolutionary technology such as NComputing can deliver at half (or even lesser) the cost of the traditional computing set up, its adoption across domains and verticals such as Education, Business, Government, Manufacturing, Banking and Finance, Retail, and so on, has grown dramatically. The NComputing solution shares the excess power in today’s computer’s capacity. NComputing’s virtualization software and hardware tap this unused capacity so that it can be simultaneously shared by multiple users. This spreads the cost of the shared PC over multiple users and that brings to per-user cost down radically. It is noteworthy that in a short span of 5 years alone, NComputing has deployed over 13 lakh seats in India, which is helping in transforming the lives of over 2 crore users in the country, daily. These 13 lakh seats comprise 5 lakh seats under government education (through various projects), 4 lakh seats in private education including schools, colleges, training centres, universities, etc; and another 4 lakh seats in SMBs and enterprises – these mostly focused at verticals like manufacturing, service oriented organizations.
4. Please give an overview of NComputing and its offerings for various sectors?
A. NComputing’s mission is to enable everyone in the world to have access to computing at an affordable cost. The NComputing solution is based on a simple fact: today’s PCs are so powerful that the vast majority of applications only use a small fraction of the computer’s capacity. NComputing’s virtualization software and hardware tap this unused capacity so that it can be simultaneously shared by multiple users. Over a million NComputing seats have been sold to thousands of organizations to slash their computing costs as much as 70% and electric consumption by 90%.
In the education sector, every sub-segment (primary, secondary, college, university, training centers) needs to have computer labs or computers in classrooms so that students can learn about computers and learn their subjects on the computer through e-learning programs (for example, English, science, math). Pretty much all educational institutions have limited funds for computer equipment. We enable them to use their existing budget and stretch it so that they can double or triple the number of students who can have computer access for the same cost. In addition, since our devices are so small and produce virtually no heat or noise, they are perfect in a computer lab where students are clustered together. We have recently covered more than 50, 000 government schools all over India in our drive.
In the business sector, there are many small and medium businesses that also have limited funds and watch every rupee of spending. Since most business users only use the computer for accounts, web or other low-intensity work, they use at most 5% of the PC’s power. We enable them to share that computer’s excess capacity with many more users. They also like NComputing because they have to maintain far fewer PCs than before.
In government, we provide affordable computing for government offices (municipal, state, central) in urban as well as rural areas. In addition to the cost advantage, one key feature of our solution is that it uses only 1 watt of electricity. This is especially critical in areas where electricity is in short supply because expensive inverters and UPS (uninterruptible power supply) are required. With NComputing, the cost of these devices is much lower because smaller ones are needed. Also, since the power usage is so little (1 watt for NComputing vs. 110 watts for a PC), the cost of electricity is also reduced. In addition to government offices, NComputing is also a great fit for community computing centers and e-government projects.
5. How do you foresee the current demand for your products in India?
A. NComputing is an ideal product for the Indian market, making computing simpler, affordable and extremely energy efficient. An emerging economy like India which has an enormous need for enabling computer access to the rural India to being relevant in driving down IT infrastructure costs along with some very important benefits in big enterprises. The value the product can deliver is being understood by the Government as well. As many as 15 + state governments have either deployed or are seriously evaluating this technology for their various projects.
India is a huge potential market for NComputing and therefore it is a focused country for the company. We are investing in teams and strengthening our channel and support network to service the rapidly growing customer base.
6. NComputings contribution to making the country digitalized?
A. NComputing always tries to spread the benefits to millions of students and the under-privileged work force across the world that do not have the privilege of having access to computers due to budget constraints faced by organizations and institutions. There are schools located in the rural areas of the country where they find difficult to access the technology they require for making the school digitalised. NComputing has reached to them and has helped in setting up a computing infrastructure at a much lower price.
NComputing has been the enabler for providing computing/digital access to millions of people—not only in India, but also globally. With its array of affordable desktop virtualisation (also called shared computing) solutions, the company is working closely with the Central Government, majority of the State governments, and with many non-government agencies in the country to enable digitization in the country by making computing solutions available at the most economical price point so that the benefits of computing reach far and wide.