‘‘Asia will be late into, and the first to recover from, this dreadful economy,” says Richard Li, chairman of Pacific Century Cyber Works (PCCW) Asia.
“At last, the natural demographic advantages in Asia—large, young populations concentrated in densely populated cities—can be brought into play,” Li said. “And without the legacy dependencies on old digital technologies, many are well-placed to leapfrog to capture the advantages of new platforms, whether it is ‘cloud sourced’ computing or ‘New Generation Networks’ that thrust IT users beyond 3.5G.”
Li gave his forthright views about the region’s position in the current financial crisis, during the Asian-Oceanian Computing Industry Organisation (ASOCIO) ICT Summit, organised by the Information & Software Industry Association. The ISIA is the principal trade association for the software and digital content industry, providing global services in government relations, business development, corporate education and intellectual property protection to leading companies that are ‘setting the pace for the digital age’.
Li was one of a series of key IT decision-makers from Hong Kong, Thailand, India, Singapore, South Korea, Bangladesh, and Malaysia, who met in Hong Kong to outline their technology vision for their nations at the ASOCIO Summit.
Thailand: intelligent market
Bunrak Saraggananda, president of the Association of Thai Computer Industry (ATCI), says Thailand’s small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have huge potential to advance ICT implementation.
Bunrak says the targeted SME segments are agriculture, food, and food processing, tourism, automotive parts, healthcare, retail, logistics and construction. Driven by the ATCI, Thailand’s government agencies have recently approved additional tax incentives for the industry. For instance, corporates can now receive a tax reduction for software and hardware depreciation in one year. And all individuals are eligible for a tax deduction of 15,000 baht (US$435) every three years, for every PC purchase.
The JJ Intelligent Market is one of ATCI’s pilot projects to develop the country’s information infrastructure using mobile and broadband. Bangkok’s Jatujak weekend market, frequently called JJ, is the largest market in Thailand, also the world’s largest, offering household items, clothing, Thai handicrafts, religious artifacts, collectibles, foods, and live animals.
By offering visitors a virtual shopping experience, says Saraggananda, the JJ Intelligent Market serves as a business model to be deployed in other weekend markets. In the future, JJ intelligent market will be equipped with fibre optic, wi-fi and WiMax infrastructure, high speed broadband Internet, and various applications through software-as-a-service.
A shopping portal for local and overseas buyers will also be built, together with intelligent parking, helpdesk support, and links to the global e-market place such as eBay and Amazon.
India: outsourcing growth
“India’s growth is driven by a unique combination of progressive free-market policy, a low cost structure and a sustained demographic advantage”, says Ameet Nivsarkar, vice president of National Association of Software and Service Companies.
Nivsarkar says India’s IT-business process optimisation (BPO) industry is exploring new verticals to reduce dependency. In 2007, the banking, financial services, hi-tech and telecommunications industries accounted for nearly 50 per cent of Indian IT-BPO exports.
Manufacturing and retail are other large sectors, accounting for 23 per cent altogether. Airlines, media, healthcare and the utilities industries are some other emerging high-growth verticals for BPO.
He says Asian companies in India are extremely respected and enjoy a favourable mindshare with Indian consumers.
For instance, Suzuki, the Japan-based automobile manufacturer, has owned more than 50 per cent of the Indian passenger car market share for more than 15 years; a Honda joint venture has sold more than 300,000 motorcycles a month in India; while Samsung and LG compete to be the number one in the consumer goods market in India.
Singapore: master plan
Khoong Hock Yun, assistant chief executive of the infrastructure development group of Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), outlined Singapore’s iN2015 master plan which aims to increase the competitiveness of the Lion City’s IT industry in the world.
Khoong says Singapore’s tech sector has seen persistent growth. In 2007, the industry registered double-digit revenue growth of 13.8 per cent to reach US$37.7 billion. ICT employment reached 130,400, growing by 8.9 per cent on the previous year. He says the iN2015 master plan has three main aspects.
The industry requires sectoral transformation of the government and society.
The plan is built upon an ICT-savvy workforce and a pool of globally competitive ICT manpower.
Singapore’s ICT industry will be built on the ‘Next Generation National ICT infrastructure’ that is ultra-high speed, pervasive, intelligent and reliable.
Singapore’s plan is expected to activate an ‘always-on community’, with mobile advertisement and information, wireless interactive advertisement, wireless point-of-sales, wireless security, wireless surveillance, commuter/enterprise services at train stations, and video conferencing.
S. Korea: evaluating skills
Sung-Soo Lim from the Kookmin University, also a member of the Federation of Korean Information Industries (FKII), says it is important to devise a systematic method to evaluate the skills level of embedded software engineers as Asia’s job markets are being integrated into one big market with industry role distribution.
As an example, about 75 per cent of Samsung Electronics’ new employees are embedded software engineers. However, no consistent criteria are globally applicable at present to evaluate the candidates’ skill levels, and there is no systematic and fast method to identify the appropriateness of their skills in a specific area.
FKII has recently formulated the embedded software skills set (ESSS) evaluation framework, which is a continuously updated online-based system that serves as a standardised guideline for global human resource recruitment practices and education.
The ESSS evaluation framework assesses seven broad skill sets of candidates: programming languages, development tools, system programming, OK kernel programming, middleware and application programming, hardware control programming, and software engineering/development process. Lim says FKII is open to global co-operation by updating the skill set level database with a centralised or de-centralised Web-based ESSS system.
Bangladesh: going digital
Mustafar Jabbar, the president of Bangladesh Computer Society, says the computer industry dreams to transform the country into ‘Digital Bangladesh’ by 2021, when the country celebrates its 50th anniversary of independence.
In Bangladesh today, only one per cent of its population has access to computers. Jabbar proposes that by 2021, the government will outline clear policies regarding ICT issues. The ‘digital government’ he envisions is one that is paperless, with civil servants becoming computer literate, and every piece of information being digitally stored and processed. In turn, the ‘digitised’ Bangladesh will help increase the government’s transparency.
Digital education is also on the country’s agenda. According to Jabbar, the country has millions of graduates now, but many are incapable of using computers, and many education departments are still not inter-connected.
Malaysia: partnerships
“The problem with the ICT industry today is that we are doing so many things that we think are innovative, but they are merely improved versions of existing products and services”, says Bobby Varanasi, head of marketing and branding at Outsourcing Malaysia.
Outsourcing Malaysia is a chapter of PIKOM, the association that represents the country’s ICT industry.
Varanasi says companies that have made India and China their ‘hubs’ are especially looking at countries such as the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam as their ‘spokes’.
The ‘spokes’ are regional centres that serve as disaster recovery and business continuity specialists, and sometimes as near-shore providers to some of the key markets.
