The Sikh Geek

The company that is behind Asterisk, the open source software based PBX, has just secured $13.8 Million from Matrix Partners. Now, VC companies are not known for giving money just for the sake of it. They’ll want to be convinced of a sound business plan, strong management team and an exit strategy.

This article from O’Reilly gives the details and interestingly states that O’Reilly have switched to using Asterisk themselves. I currently use a version of Asterisk called Trixbox (formerly known as Asterisk@Home).

I’ve been thinking about this recently and whether such a service could be provided and whether there is a market for it in the UK. My quick searches seem to indicate that there isn’t such a UK based service, although one company (based in the US) did seem to cover the UK and one which was about to start in the UK. A quick chat with Rackspace showed that this wasn’t something that was part of their main offerings. I know people like Vlad are doing this quite successfully, so it got me thinking.

The other option which seems possible is to use a co-location service, which would involve buying the hardware and commissioning it. Different co-location providers offer different service levels, so the right one would have to be selected. Technically this service is possible but for such a service a lot more is required than just being technically feasible.

I need to think this through some more…

He’s the first Sikh English Test cricket player and he’s a superb spin bowler and during the current Test Series against Pakistan he’s been arguably England’s best attacking bowler. Here’s a news story about Monty when he was to play against India, where his grandparents still live in Ludhiana, Punjab. People are talking about how he’s a role model for integration in Britain. This is nothing new to Sikhs, who are one of the most integrated communities in Britain. Our whole religion and outlook on life is about being a part of the community we live and work in. This integration goes back a long way to when Sikh regiments fought in the the two world wars for the British Army. Sikhs come from very humble backgrounds, little villages in the North of India called the Punjab, but we can rise to the top of our professions.

Another example of this ability to rise, almost unnoticed, to great things is evidenced by the current Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, a Sikh himself. I believe, India’s moves to better relationships with Pakistan, were because of his faith as a Sikh. It is our Sikh faith that pervades everything we do!

*** UPDATE ***
Sajid Mahmood and Monty Panesar helped destroy Pakistan on the final day of play and they were all bowled out. Disappointing thing was that Mahmood was subjected to taunts of being a “traitor”, which is something I cannot understand!

There is nothing but pride from the Sikh community for Monty Panesar making the English Test Side. Here is another article from the BBC News website about him!

This spoof video of SBS R2 based on the Da Vinci code movie made me chuckle. This should be the main marketing video! This goes to show that Microsoft does have a sense of humour.

After weeks of trying to recover 700 GB of accidentally deleted email, PlusNet has finally admitted it can’t be recovered. The gory details are here and here. What I can’t still work out is why there wasn’t a backup of the NAS device? Shouldn’t that be standard practice?

I would not recommend PlusNet after this fiasco.

This one is close to home as I saw an article in the The Leicester Mercury that LABA (Leicester Asian Business Association) has a new president, Jaspal Singh Minhas, who wants to transform the organisation. Well, it certainly needs transforming and I speak as a member of it! It has been funded by various grants from EMDA etc, to support the Leicester Asian Business Community mainly in Objective 2 areas (which are socially and economically deprived areas). Despite the significant funding it has received it has achieved little in my view, hardly run any events, doesn’t keep in touch with me as a member, it’s Chief Executive, Jiva Odedra, has never replied to any of my emails. Just look at it’s website and you will see what I mean!

Leicester is actually a powerhouse of Asian entrepreneurial spirit with companies like the LPC Group run by the Tejani brothers who came from Uganda with nothing and now have a £120 million turnover company!

Yes, an intrepid few SBS Specialists from the Midlands met recently in Leicester for an Indian Curry at a Punjabi restaurant called the “Flamingo Bar & Grill” - sounds seedy but I can assure it’s not. It was a good night with a few beers and good food, interesting conversation and sharing our thoughts on what we wanted from the Group. It was good to discuss things with people who are obviously committed in working together and driving things forward. Present were James Harbidge (Small Biz IT), Steve Wright (BMS), Simon Mitchell (Root IT) and myself and few of my other friends/colleagues.

If you need a damn good CISCO accredited networking consultant then Simon Mitchell is your man!

Thanks guys.

I know I’ve been selling this solution for a while to small businesses, so it’s time I started considering moving to SBS 2003 myself. I’m probably going to wait until SBS 2003 R2 becomes available, hopefully in the Action Pack. It will replace my current Linux Server running Debian Sarge with Samba 3 which acts as a PDC (Primary Domain Controller), so I do domain logons from my laptop running Windows XP Pro. Well, the Linux Server will become a member server of the new SBS 2003 Domain. I will also migrate to using CRM 3.0 SBE (Small Business Ed) from Outlook Business Contact Manager, which I currently use.

I do have a SBS 2003 server which is used as a test server but I also have a test facility at a partner company called CubeRoot in Central Leicester, where we run a SunFire v20z AMD 64 server running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server v9 and VMWare Server, so we can configure different OSes.

If you want to have a play let me know!

Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel, is not happy with the proposed updating of the GNU Public License (GPL) to a new version which will be called GPL v3 and also with the process being used to draft it! He’s saying that the Linux kernel will stay under the GPL v2, although I think he’s using rather more colourful language than that!!

Hey, nothing like a good argument with expletives! I think he has a point about the FSF (Free Software Foundation) by saying that they are fundamentally opposed to anything that isn’t developed under the GPL and also say that this is the only ‘ethical’ way to develop software. This is quite an extreme position and I never feel comfortable with extremism!

I’ve been trying to buy a Vodafone 3G card, which in theory should be easy, right? Wrong! My first attempt online failed, I went through the process and entered my payment details and was told everything was okay and the item would be delivered in a few days. Well, I got an email a couple of days later saying the payment had not been authorised! What? Can’t they do realtime authorisation like any other decent online payment system and there’s nothing wrong with the card!

Okay, so I thought I’d try again today but the link to the online store wasn’t redirecting and just throwing up an error (it’s now saying the online store is being redeveloped). I then tried to phone them just after 5.00pm and got an answerphone message saying that they were unavailable and to leave my name and number and they might consider ringing me back sometime if they felt like it, okay I made that bit up! In this 24 hour world, they’re obviously just a 9 to 5 company.

How can the largest company on the FTSE 100 have service like this? No wonder its investors want heads to roll at the moment!