ColamaTM, the competitive landscape
Abstract : We assert that ColamaTM has a unique value proposition and hence has no competition. It is inevitable however that our product is compared to offerings with an overlap in the maket place and we explain the broad differences.
Elevator pitch
ColamaTM enables course infrastructure control and compliance.
Course infrastructure covers the course content alongwith lab hardware, software and the interconnect.
We enable control of the course infrastructure by letting you define the configuration (of the hardware, software and network) that you desire to work with for a given course content.
We also enable replicating this environment at other physical sites (be it franchises or branch offices or sister organizations) and ensure compliance to the specs laid out.
Marketing pitch
Our offering is unique in the market place today...
We handle laboratory infrastructure configuration, maintenance and upgrades (as above) and are tuned to handle college workflows. Specifically, we provide demo & exam modes for lab operations.
We unify course (content) and platform (laboratory environment) delivery to ensure a seamless learning experience for students. We have a patent pending for the same and towards this end, we are working with DOEACC to create lab tutorials for engineering courses.
We handle replicating configurations across remote sites and support a franchisee model well – case in point is our ability to export/import configurations
We are virtualization technology (VMware | KVM | ... ) agnostic and enable you to work with multiple vendors uniformly.
We are open to customization of our solutions to fit specific needs.
A picture is worth a thousand words ...
The competition
Before we do a deep dive into specific products, we would like to stress that no other solution offers the same workflows for the education vertical.
In the web based learning business, there are many players, public (NPTEL) and private (EduComp), all of whom offer course content on the web. But none of them today offers a lab environment for a student to experiment in.
On the other hand, in the virtual lab infrastructure business, there are many well entrenched products (Citrix | HyperV | VMware), from various private vendors, that handle lab management well.
ColamaTM, in contrast, straddles these functional spaces by unifying both content (say, web cast lectures) and platform (the lab environment) delivery to provide an immersive experience for the student. And, yes, no one else offers that capability today.
Let us now take a quick peek into what specific products/technologies in the market offer. We've found that clubbing them under the following headings made for an easier comparison -
Terminal services – where a single OS instance is shared amongst multiple users, or differently put the graphical equivalent of login shells of yore. e.g. MS-RDP
Virtual machines – where a single hardware instance runs multiple OSes with the help of a hypervisor. e.g. Vmware/Xen/HyperV
Learning Management Systems – where course content is presented as web pages, recorded/streaming lectures or a combination of both that can be accesses via a web browser over the internet. e.g. NPTEL
For detailed information on these products, please visit the product specific links provided.
MS-RDP refers to a protocol to publish a remote desktop along with the server and client that uses it to share a desktop across the network. (Excerpt from Wikipedia below)
Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is a proprietary protocol developed by Microsoft, which concerns providing a user with a graphical interface to another computer. The protocol is an extension of the ITU-T T.128 application sharing protocol.[1] Clients exist for most versions of Microsoft Windows (including Windows Mobile), Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, Android, and other modern operating systems.
Citrix offers Xen based virtual desktop solutions. (Excerpt from Wikipedia below)
Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CTXS) is a multinational corporation founded in 1989, that provides server and desktop virtualization, networking, software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud computing technologies including Xen open source products.
VMware provides a hypervisor and lab management solutions built on it. (Excerpts from Wikipedia below)
VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW) is a company providing virtualization software[1][2][3] founded in 1998 and based in Palo Alto, California, USA. It is majority owned by EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC).
VMware's desktop software runs on Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, while VMware's enterprise software hypervisors for servers, VMware ESX and VMware ESXi are bare-metal embedded Hypervisors that run directly on server hardware without requiring an additional underlying operating system.[4]
Online course content made available by the Indian Government. (Excerpts from Wikipedia below)
The National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) is a Government of India sponsored collaborative educational programme. By developing curriculum-based video and web courses the programme aims to enhance the quality of engineering education in India. It is being jointly carried out by 7 IITs and IISc Bangalore, and is funded by the Ministry of Human Resources Development of the Government of India.[1]
As of December 2009, over 250 courses were available online. The course videos are available in streaming mode, and may also be downloaded for viewing offline. The video files are also viewable via the IIT Channel in Youtube.
Seven IITs and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have worked together to develop web and video based material for basic undergraduate science and engineering courses in order to enhance the reach and quality of technical education in India.
Our partners
While Colama was conceived and built at Coriolis Technologies Pvt. Ltd., we've benefitted from ongoing collaborations with the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay, and the DOEACC Society, Gorakhpur.
In conclusion
We started out asserting that Colama was unique and trust that you will agree that we were justified. To reiterate, we do not view these other offerrings as competition; instead, ColamaTM complements many of them by seamlessly combining their value propositions to provide you with a best of breed solution customised for the education vertical.
Please feel free to revert with queries to info@coriolis.co.in