M – Enabling Distance Education

A system and a process that connects learners to distributed learning resources other than attending courses in person, students may communicate at times of their own choosing by exchanging printed or electronic media, or through technology that allows them to communicate in real time. Distance education courses that require a physical on-site presence for any reason including the taking of examinations is considered to be a hybrid or blended course or program.

India has a large number of Distance education programmers in Undergraduate and Post-Graduate levels. The trend was started originally by private institutions that offered distance education at certificate and diploma level. By 1985 many of the larger Universities recognized the need and potential of distance education in a populous country like India and launched degree level programs through distance education. The trend caught up, and today many prestigious Indian Universities offer distance programs. Two such universities are;

Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences, centered in Bangalore, India, is a unitary university set up in 1996 by the government of Karnataka, for the regulation and promotion of higher education in health sciences throughout the state of Karnataka. About 276 colleges throughout the state are placed under the Rajiv Gandhi University in order to establish uniform standards in academics and administration.

MGR Medical University, Chennai, India deals with all medical and paramedical degrees. Both of these and many private and public, non-profit and for-profit institutions offering courses and degree programs through distance education.

Solution:

After a thorough examination & analysis of the requirements, ValueFirst (a global leader in “Enterprise Mobile Messaging Services”) in collaboration with a technology partner proposed its best-in-class application ValueFirst Velocity. ValueFirst Velocity is an enterprise class SMS suite designed to create, process and transmit SMS in a complex database environment. It provides highly reliable automated mobile messaging platform.
ValueFirst application enabled the universities to send their critical messages on a Just-In-Time (JIT) basis onto the mobile phones of invigilators.
The mobile messaging suite in addition, offers complete automation of various communication processes such as College to Student communication, College to Parent communication etc at these universities.

About ValueFirst:


ValueFirst (http://www.vfirst.com) empowers its customers to communicate between varied IT back-end systems and mobile phones using SMS Services. ValueFirst provides a unique, end-to-end, global carrier-grade mobile data service. Its mobile data service offering includes "plug and play" application licensing and hosting. Employing a partnership with Mobile operators and a clear focus on SMS mobile messaging. ValueFirst’s Mobile Messaging Platform is capable of delivering SMS services to virtually any CDMA/GSM mobile handset. ValueFirst combines signalling information from the mobile world with innovative applications running concurrently on its own IT applications platform and thereby pave the way for mission-critical international messaging services.

MOBILE MESSAGING WILL HELP OVERCOME ISSUE OF MASS REACH

Enterprises are now moving beyond emails towards mobile messaging solutions.

Vijay Shukla, cofounder and country head, India, ValueFirst in an interaction shared the future of mobile messaging in the enterprises.

According to the study by Internet and Mobile Association of India, 68 percent of organizations have two or more mobile messaging applications in place.

ValueFirst recently forayed into politics by extending a solution to BJP for an SMS based communications network for all its members.

Excerpts:

In the mobile messaging space how are the enterprises accepting the new technology?

Enterprises are very excited by technology that can directly increase revenue or reduce costs or increase efficiencies and productivity. Mobile messaging provides one or more of all such benefits.

Therefore, enterprises are very keen to know about mobile messaging business and implementation perspectives.

Mobile Messaging will help enterprises and organisations overcome the physical and economical constraints of mass reach, thereby paving the way for greater efficiencies through real-time communication. What is driving the use of mobile messaging solutions by enterprises is continuous communications and collaboration, both with customers prospects and colleagues.

How is ValueFirst positioned in the mobile messaging space?

There are many players in the space, so what is your USP? With over 25 million transactions a day, ValueFirst is the single biggest mobile messaging company in India. Our unique selling point is end-to-end service, domain expertise, over 30 cities direct sales reach in India, cost effectiveness due to buying strength and global reach with coverage in over 8 countries.

What are the other applications you are working on?

There are many. V-Secure is one that we have been working on. Likewise, there are a few voice applications that we are in the process of integrating with mobile messaging.

How big is the market for location-based services (LBS) in India?

We have witnessed a lot of telecom companies planning to launch LBS, but it has hardly been made available for the subscribers? The LBS market in India is in nascent stage. The fundamental disconnect, is that the enterprises want operator neutral services and the operators want to go direct to enterprises with operator-specific LBS solution. That is the main reason for poor take-off.

Lok Sabha treads tech path

The Lower House of the Parliament — Lok Sabha — has tied up with enterprise mobile messaging services provider ValueFirst for staying in touch with its members.

“The Lok Sabha Secretariat would use the messaging services to communicate with internal stakeholders and public alike with critical information directly, using this service. The system would enable them to send messages to multiple mobile phones covering all service providers in India,” ValueFirst Country Head and Co-founder Vijay Shukla said.

All communication to the media would also be sent through this system. The messages through the system would be delivered and received in real time, he added.

“The Lok Sabha needed a unique solution to fulfil its communication and connectivity needs keeping in mind the members of the house and their limitation of regular meeting with each other.

Parliament of India was also looking for a solution to bridge the gap of communication during “no session period” between the members of both houses and Parliament of India. Another concern was to find an optimum solution for various routine communications; Secretariat to Members and Secretariat to general public,” Shukla added.

The political parties in the country and abroad had earlier experimented by sending SMSs to voters to garner votes. Recently, the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) had used such services for the party- members communication.

Use of SMS in politics made headlines with US presidential hopeful Barack Obama sending 2.9 million text messages to announce the selection of US Senator Joseph Biden as Vice-Presidential running-mate, according to the mobile arm of the Nielsen media ratings company.