NComputing to Deliver Low-Cost Computing to India

NComputing managed to gain some sort of competition against former partners turned rivals Intel and One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) on delivering affordable computing to 1.8 million schoolchildren in India. The virtualization vendor came with lower-cost products, only $70 per seat, and won the deal with the Indian government. Initially, the deal was supposed to bring a $10 laptop to each student, but it seems that the $70 per seat offer from NComputing was the best of all.

The company is offering virtualization technology which is able to allow up to seven users to work on a computer at the same time. Each of the seven users has a monitor and other peripherals to work with. This way, the cost of the computer is divided to the number of users.

The bid for providing computing solutions for the Indian province of Andhra Pradesh was announced this week. OLPC and Intel were two of the major players considered for the deal. These two firms have been long competing against each other on the low-cost ultra-affordable market area, but also faced other vendors as rivals on the emerging nations around the world.

Although they are now rivals, OLPC and Intel were once partners. Intel left the charity foundation in January this year after being asked several times by the OLPC chief Nicholas Negroponte to stop distributing the Intel Classmate PC in the developing world. OLPC has on the market its XO laptop which is priced at $188, while Intel's Classmate goes for $200.

The Indian government had plans for expanding the computer education program before the Indian minister for higher education D. Purandeswa's announcement about the $10 laptops in July. In March, Lalit Dhingra, president of India's NIIT (National Institute of Information Technology), stated during a conference at the United Nations that there are some parts of India that need a great amount of improvement in what concerns education in computer skills, as they fall behind the rest of the nation.

“Electricity is not yet available in some of the distant areas,” according to Dhingra. “But soon, all of the schools will have computers.”