e-ASiA Summit 2011
Of promises and visions
Visitors look at different products and services a stall at the e-Asia 2011. Photo: Amran Hossain
Asia's mega ICT event, e-Asia 2011, kicked off yesterday at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre in the capital. Countdown timers were set in parts of the capital prior to its inauguration with colourful flags. Right after the inauguration, techies swamp the venue to witness the tech event of such a scale that has never taken place in the country. Experts from across the globe have come to participate in a series of seminars, share their knowledge, display the promises of the ICT sector and its vision for future. Exhibitors from home and abroad are showcasing their products at the event. Six country pavilions have been set up and at the far end of the exhibition hall there is a stall of Japan. They showcased a digital travel pass, Spass, which will come out in January next year in Bangladesh. The passes will be used in BRTC (Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation) buses. The Spass has been developed using a technology of SONY Corporation, Japan. The project was financed by JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) and organised by Dhaka Transport Coordination Board (DTCB). The passes would be rechargeable at Tk 50-Tk 2,000 and there will be dedicated booths for the service. Passengers will just need to hold the passes onto a machine while getting on and off the bus. Through this process the machine will get the data from source to destination and calculate the fare and deduct the amount from the card. An official of Spass said, preliminarily it will be used on Abdullahpur-Motijheel route. Just beside the Japan stall at the exposition, there is Virtustream, a world leading enterprise cloud software and services provider. Ed Franklin, executive vice president of sales of Virtustream, in a brief interview said they make a company more efficient by providing advisory services and software and evaluating the existing infrastructure of the company or enterprise. "If you have a company that has 10 servers and is running at certain power levels for those servers, you can use our vitualisation technology, programmes and advisory services, and make five servers do the same amount of work those 10 servers were doing. That does two things; it helps by lessening power consumption and of course makes it more efficient," Franklin said. He said Bangladesh has a good opportunity in software development and there is also hunger for learning about these services. Franklin said they will partner with some Bangladeshi firms and teach them how to provide these services. After a little walk from Virtustream, you will see Ericsson's stall. They are showcasing a 'connected tree', a tree that can recognise a passerby using its electrical impulse. It can also tweet, send SMS and change its colour. The company is also showing 'e-wallpaper'. It is a technology that will replace the walls of your living rooms in future. Basically e-wallpaper is LCD screen that will allow you to change pictures of your living room's wall. At the exhibition, there is a dedicated section where all the digital initiatives by different government organisations are being displayed. Bangladesh Betar, Bangladesh Bank, Bangladesh Post Office, Dhaka Electric Supply Company Ltd, the foreign ministry, the agriculture ministry, and Bangladesh Police are among the organisations. Bangladesh Police in its stall displayed a digital process that helps passport applicants track their applications from home. Outside the exhibition hall, there are two pavilions and they have stalls from different private and government service providers.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments