Last week, two leaders each separately took their own big steps to crowdsourcing – tapping into public intelligence – to find a way out of the mess they were in.

One was an embattled prime minister who needed ideas on how to heal the country’s divisions and move his country forward. The other was the industry’s biggest cloud computing CEO who needed ideas on how to heal a puncture someone had made in the earth and was now leaking lots of dirty oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

One old-world leader took three telephone calls out of a total of around 55,000 and then left his staff to listen and note down on paper more ideas for the next six days. The other leader of the move to cloud simply posted a blurb about the website, http://www.gulfcrisis2010. com on his Facebook status update and let the power of viral forwarding in today’s connected social network spread the word for him.

The old leader was Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva who launched his six-day, 63 million ideas hotline project. The results of that so-called brainstorming session could have been penned by his public relations team long in advance. The people of Thailand are suffering from high prices, loansharks and the economic gloom in general.

Looking at the politicians in suits in the huge room with hundreds of telephones, pens and paper made one wonder if things would have been different in Soviet times. One thing is for sure, had the Soviet phone system gone down the way ToT’s did, they would not have been let off so easily.

The new world leader is Marc Benioff. Chairman and CEO of salesforce.com who spends his days talking about the cloud and the democratisation of IT as well as the 1:1:1 model of compassionate capitalism.

GulfCrisis2010 is powered by salesforce.com’s cloud computing platform, force.com and salesforce sites. Instead of a room with hundreds of operators and hundreds of phone lines, GulfCrisis2010 resides in the cloud. The site was created by Salesforce employees and partners from reside.biz. The platform undoubtedly uses Salesforce ideas, used internally by companies like Dell to bring their dealer network into their product brainstorming as well. It could have gone from concept to online site in a matter of hours or at most days.

The idea is simple. Anyone can create a login and submit an idea or vote for other ideas. This will allow good ideas to bubble up. In contrast, we here in Thailand could phone in, talk to someone who would put it on a piece of paper for processing by bureaucrats.

Unlike Abhisit who only took three calls himself, Benioff could probably see the progress of any ideas as they were bubbling up or as they were overtaken. Right now the top idea seems to be to detonate a nuclear device to shut the well, as was planned in Soviet times.

Unlike the Thai government who only took in ideas, wrote them on a piece of paper to be tallied up by underpaid, overworked civil servants, Gulfcrisis2010 is a site that allows for comments and multimedia debate like any proper web forum.

People who like an idea can vote on it, add multimedia comments to it. Bad ideas can be voted down too and it is clear that right now, the majority of users do not agree with the idea of breeding oil-eating microbes to be let loose on the environment, for instance.

The situation in Thailand could have been pre-scripted; that people are upset with economic woes more than anything else. The situation in the Gulf of Mexico brainstorming session, which is still going on, is much more varied. True, most of the ideas are about the science of stopping the leak, but many were also about legal amendments that would make things go faster or prevent a recurrence.

One brainstorm was stuck firmly in the mid to late 20th century, the storm is a precursor of more we will see as we move into the 21st.

Salesforce’s site is accessible through a mobile phone even, not perfect but it works (the main problem seems to be the initial popover oil slick). Everyone has a mobile phone in Thailand, most of which can access the Internet, though few choose to. For those who say such public participation is impossible and that Thailand is not ready for it should just look at the amount of time, effort and resources put up for talent show voting in the country. If that is possible how hard could it be for 55,000 people to collaborate on bubbling up ideas for our politicians to read?

Which brings us to infrastructure.

Cloud computing may be the future and it may be able to work magic, but without access to the cloud – the one cloud that is the Internet, Thailand risks missing out on the change. Without decent, reliable Internet or commercially competitive, vibrant 3G, what use is writing about the sea change in enterprise computing that mobility is bringing to the industry.

When I first met Benioff in Singapore four years ago, he spoke of how cloud computing was like shared infrastructure in modern cities. Water just flows when the tap is turned on. Electricity is there without having to call the power company. Then, as is the case today, I recalled how my mind drifted to how irrelevant water and electricity was an an example in my own case. I have to rely on artisan well water as there is no commercial water supply to my place. My power supply fluctuates from 200 to 250 volts depending on the time of day, and as for my ADSL connection, I have to check every morning that my 2km of extension phone line is still there or cut down to be sold as none of the telcos seem to want to wire my place up.

No, I do not live in the remote hills in the far north of Thailand, but just 40km or so north of Bangkok.

The world is moving to on-demand, utility computing while Thailand still struggles with infrastructure. The world can now collaborate and crowdsource ideas with ease while Thailand is still reduced to propaganda stunts. How long will we have to wait for someone to realise that things can be done in a better way?

Source:http://www.bangkokpost.com/tech/techscoop/186139/thailand-needs-more-than-propaganda-stunts

It will be a disaster if the 3G bid goes ahead now without amendments. Operators have a choice either to boycott the auction, or to sign a document they have no intention of abiding by – in other words, doing things the Thai way. The problem stems from three clauses added at the last moment, after the last hearing and appearing in the final draft for the auction information memorandum (IM) calling for the return of frequency; for no core network and for no roaming from 2G to 3G.

Key is the clause calling for return of frequency. According to the 3G bid IM, before 3G operations can commence, 2G frequency in that area must be banded back to the concessionaires (ToT or CAT). It was explained by the NTC that there will be no disruption in 2G operations as CAT and ToT are required to give out frequency for the operators to use anyway, just not to hoard.

There are two problems with this scenario.

The IM says one thing, and while the explanation from the NTC is much more reasonable it is not in black and white on paper. What if CAT and ToT do not hand the frequency back? CAT and ToT are both concession holders and also competitors, lest we forget. CAT has its own CDMA network and ToT both a GSM 1900 network and a (pretty dire) 3G 2100 network. What if they decide to hand back only part of it and use some to launch something else, say 3G on 900 MHz or LTE on 1800?

What if the same thing that happened to the 3G in-band migration network upgrades happen again? Both AIS and Dtac have identical clauses in their contracts with ToT and CAT. In 2007, Dtac asked for a "network upgrade" of its old 850 MHz 1G network to 3G on the same frequency. Three years later, CAT’s Section 22 committee, named after the clause in the contract, has not yet made a decision as to whether or not to allow the upgrade. AIS asked to do the same for its 900 MHz 2G and ToT said yes.

What if handing back the 1800 frequency takes another three or more years if it gets stuck in the Section 22 committee again?

That leads into the other problem. Why is the NTC suddenly reversing years of progress in deregulation and international commitments in suddenly giving more de facto regulatory power to CAT and ToT?

This is probably in contravention of Thailand’s GATS/WTO commitments and in violation of the 2007 constitution calling for an independent telecommunications sector. Yes, the NTC may think it’s calling the shots, but if CAT can delay a decision on 3G for three years, it is the de facto regulator. Handing back even more frequency only strengthens the position of these two state-owned enterprises and turns back the clock on the deregulation.

Another point added to the 3G IM stated that the 3G operators were not to build their own core network but were to lease them from the incumbents, namely CAT and ToT, again putting even more power into the hands of the state and away from the market.

The rationale behind this seems to be national security. Core infrastructure needs to be owned by Thais and not foreigners. The only problem is that the Thais wanted to charge so much for it in the 2G era that the foreigners had to build out their own networks anyway. Come 3G, to force the networks to be available to everyone in the name of national security, the evil foreigners bidding for 3G this time cannot build out their own networks and must use the ones made by the patriotic Bhumibutra, sorry, state owned enterprises instead. That could be a good idea, but where this has happened in other countries, core networks are often tightly regulated to be at cost plus rates so as not to distort the market.

Or is that the plan? There seems to be a trend that equates a strong state with strong state enterprises. But did we not decide with the fall of the Soviet Union that a socialist, command economy was not as good as a free market?

Finance Minister Korn Chartikavanij has been quoted as being in favour of concession conversion – turning the concession agreements into licences before the 3G bid, so that the rules on infrastructure re-use can be hammered out with clarity before the bid. But the finance minister is not the finance ministry, and there are many powerful factions in the ministry who call for a strong state sector and for the state owned enterprises to be a major revenue earner for the exchequer. Whether his latest push to concession conversion goes through or not remains to be seen.

No "roaming from 2G onto 3G" clause was also added, but the clause exempted ToT from the requirement. Someone out there wants a level playing field for the industry, but obviously think that ToT and CAT need special help to be level with their concessionaires.

I asked NTC commissioner Dr Natee via Twitter why the NTC had added these three clauses in the IM without public consultation and ended up surprising everyone. His answer, as usual, sidestepped the question: "We want to proceed for the sake of Thai people," he replied.

Natee has been very active on Twitter lately, but in a way that I for one find worrying and playing to nationalistic pride. From inviting people to pray that the operators take part in the bid and move 3G forward to re-tweeting messages cursing the enemies of the country who do not want to see Thailand move forward. Yes, it’s candid and it feels personal and it is working. In a short time he has turned himself into the people’s hero, the one who is doing all he can to bring 3.9G (whatever it is) to Thailand, the people’s hero fighting against… against what exactly?

If 3G does not happen, it is not because of some evil foreign conspiracy against the country by the Shingaporeans and Telenorwegians, but it is because someone decided to insert three clauses in a 3G bid that aims to reform the industry. Reform can be good. Reform should happen. But reform should be done as part of a proper reform plan, not stealthily inserted into a 3G bid document as a prerequisite for bidding.

At this juncture, assuming the bid goes ahead and is not aborted or with the three new clauses dropped, Thailand’s telecom sector has two choices. Either to not give up their remaining concessions and boycott the bid, or to sign the agreement with no intention of abiding by the rules and sorting out the problem at a later date, probably when nobody’s looking.

The "Thai Way" of doing things might appeal to some, but in today’s global economy, investments have to be justified and how many investors would want to make a high-risk deal if they can get a decent return in another country with a more transparent, less protective regime?

Source:http://www.bangkokpost.com/tech/techscoop/187120/amendments-needed-to-avert-3g-disaster

Desktop aimed at new generation of users

Having incubated its competence for four years, the Bangkok-based Thomson Reuters is going to launch Reuters Eikon, the next generation desktop for a new generation of financial professionals, worldwide this September.

Gilles Depaty

The success of Thomson Reuters’ Bangkok office has exceeded expectations. Set up in 2002, the ambitions and aims of the office here were very modest, according to Gilles Depaty, Thomson Reuters head of Asia Development, Desktop Platform Group, during an interview with Database.

The idea at that time was to have about 200 people initially, a hundred more a year later and transition to 600 people with jobs mainly in maintenance and support.

However, in the end Reuters has been much more successful, with more than 1,200 people working today, together with greater confidence in the Bangkok base. Next year, there will be more than 1,500 people here, but Depaty said the number of people is not the point.

Today 70-80% are working on key strategic products for the global market, which is a big challenge and opportunity.

Reuters Bangkok does not only do support and maintenance jobs, there are many major initiatives in every division, in both desktop and server infrastructure-base of enterprise teams.

The year 2007 was a significant transitional period when the Reuters Eikon project was started and that involved every part of the Bangkok team. Positioning itself as the ultimate set of financial tools for a new generation of financial professionals, Reuters Eikon allows users to navigate from news to analysis to communication to action.

"The key point of differentiation of Eikon is that the product has been built with the users and for the users. Real attention has been paid to their needs," Depaty said, noting that one of the key points is the collaboration feature which allows a community of users leveraging the product to do business together.

"The key differentiation between the old generation users and the new generation users is that the new generation working in the financial sector are very familiar with working outside the office environment, compared to the users in 2002 when they were stuck in offices. People today, when they want to find something turn to Google, and this is the feature that we have incorporated – the search ability. We put the customers at the centre of the product and for what we are going to build for the next 10-20 years," he said, adding that a significant amount of the initiatives have been done in Bangkok including transaction products, billing, matching, and so forth.

When looking at Reuters a decade ago, 100 of the development workforce were in the US or Europe, but today there are more than 70 of the development staff are in Asia, especially Bangkok and Beijing. This represents a big change in the company.

The head of Asia Development Group said it’s not a matter of costs, rather it was a matter of finding the right technical people, with the right profile and the right skills. And it’s also a matter of being closer to customers because the Asian market is growing.

"They are developing, there is the new evolution here of the footprint of the company, driven by the cost and as well as by the evolution of the market and where the customers are. Of course, we still have big customers in the US and Europe, but the next place where we’re growing is here, in Asia," Depaty said.

Challenges of the IT industry

Thomson Reuters is perhaps the largest software company in Thailand as there is a huge potential here, Depaty said, although he admitted that there are limited factors for the growth of the IT industry in Thailand. The number of IT professionals and profiles that the company need is limited. There is a limited number of people that the company wants to recruit and another negative factor, he said, is the poor management.

People in the industry lack skills in communication, decision-making, being able to manage multiple teams as well as awareness and assertiveness. Communication, which is a soft skill, is fundamental in dealing with a global project.

"I’m honestly not sure that the university curriculum here prepares people to deal with a more complex world, where they have to do a lot of interaction with people from different backgrounds. Even the engineers in companies like Reuters or Microsoft, which face the same problem, they are very smart in technical matters, but communications skills are also essential," Depaty said.

In terms of IT industry growth in Thailand, this is perhaps one of limiting factors, he said. "We need more managers and better managers, but it’s quite difficult to find a large number of suitable people in Thailand," Depaty said.

Another challenge related to IT skills and management that Depaty pointed out is that people here don’t develop in-depth knowledge.

"We see a lot of people with a large number of skills, they may have the breadth, but I’m not sure we always get the depth we need. People here are likely to be engaged in a number of interesting things, doing a bit of this and a bit of that, but it’s difficult to find a world-class expert in technology here," he said.

"For instance today, it’s easier to find highly experienced technology guys in Beijing, guys who have spent hours and days and weeks working on all the details of a specific technology and they can teach others everything about this specific technology, but that doesn’t happen here in Thailand."

Suttawat Triwittayapoom, Thomson Reuters technical director, said that when doing this kind of project, they need to go into the depth of the technology and it’s essential to have a good portion of people.

He noted that the main difference between new graduates from local universities and those from abroad is that the Thai education system tends to spoon-feed students; they are taught but don’t learn by themselves. "This is something very visible here where people are waiting for the company to teach them rather than going themselves where the knowledge is," he said.

New approach to new technology trends

In the era of Web 2.0 or cloud computing, software development has to be adjusted to perfectly serve the users. At Reuters, Depaty pointed out that one of key technical differences between producing products which were mentioned earlier and the Eikon is that the footprint in the user infrastructure is minimal. The vast majority of it’s infrastructure to use the product is now at Thomson Reuters.

"Previously, when customers wanted to install our product, they had to install a lot of things on themselves, set up the network, hundreds of servers, etc. Now we push that back into Thomsom Reuters infrastructure," he said.

"Yes it’s the evolution, but it’s much more in terms of design. The technology itself hasn’t changed that much, but it’s an approach and in terms of architecture and design that we significantly changed," the head of Asia Development said.

One of the key technology changes which is different today is that Reuters is moving away from private API to web API so that the company can provide customers with mobility and can provide them with a higher level of independence from the infrastructure. So the customers are no longer stuck with private network and API.

Source:http://www.bangkokpost.com/tech/technews/187115/reuters-eikon-due-in-september

Targeting strategic areas by boosting R&D spending will help Thailand uplift its innovation and competitiveness in preparing for Asean’s free trade community.

By 2015, Thailand will increase its spending on research and development from 0.25 percent to 1 percent of gross domestic product, said Pichet Durongkaveroj, Secretary General of the National Science Technology and Innovation Policy Office.

To date, the kingdom has spent 18 billion baht on R&D, or 0.25 percent of GDP, which still below the average at the global level of around 1.04 percent according to The International Institute for Management Development’s (IMD) competitiveness ranking of 58 countries.

However, the government should have more aggressive strategies to boost R&D activities, especially through Government Procurement, National Projects to get the benefit by training people related with those projects and technology transfer.

Climate change, energy, healthcare, agricultural and food safety, tourism and original design manufacturing are all targeted strategic areas for National Policy and Plan for Science Technology and Innovation 2010-2020.

All these strategic areas will be guideline frameworks for committees to grant research budgets to the research projects. This will help the country reduce overlapping projects and focus on serving policy and preparing the country from the impact of globalisation, especially from free trade agreements allowing a free flow of workers.

Thailand should find its way to collaborate in S&T with Asean Plus 6. For example, S&T education with Cambodia, Laos Myanmar and Vietnam, and halal food co-operation with Malaysia and Indonesia. The kingdom must boost research spending equally in both the public and private sectors, but currently 55 percent of R&D spending comes from the government. And it needs to encourage research institutions to focus more on upstream technology rather than dominate in processing and trouble-shooting.

Moreover, there is a need to motivate the younger generation to learn Science and Technology (S&T) in order to increase the researcher rate from 6.75 researchers per 10,000 to 10 researchers per 10,000. Currently, in Thailand, only 20 percent of students choose to learn S&T, compared to Korea, where 70 percent of students choose to learn S&T.

"The aim is to produce graduates with an academic background and high technology skills by project-based teaching and learning methodology. Students are to discover their capability of applying their technology-inventing skills in their careers or in higher education," Pichet said.

Manoo Ordeedolchest, Chairman of ICT policy at Sripathum University, said that the government can leverage use of social network sites to motivate the young generation to learn S&T aggressively by providing interesting science tips and contents that show the application of science to daily life and how it can change the world.

Meanwhile Dr Dundar Kocaoglu, President and CEO of Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), also suggested that Thailand move towards being an innovative country by changing its education system from a model based on rote learning to a new model based on inquiring and applying knowledge as well as creating more research universities.

Rapidly changing technology is increasing competition among businesses and the country needs to use innovation not only in the world of business but the government should create awareness and facilitate an environment of innovation such as boosting high tech manpower and recognition for researchers and higher education. South Korea places great emphasis on innovation while Taiwan is known for its entrepreneurial spirit.

Source:http://www.bangkokpost.com/tech/technews/188208/calls-for-boosting-r-d

Thailand has stepped up to second place in Southeast Asia in terms of the number of Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) companies which have generated over 190 million baht in revenue for the Thai economy.

Twenty three CMMI companies in Thailand celebrated their success after passing the CMMI standard appraisal.

CMMI is a process improvement approach that helps organisations improve their performance, the standard endorsed by the Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie Mellon, US.

Those 23 companies are supported by Software Park Thailand and the National Science and Technology Development Agency (Nstda) through the SPI@ease program, the initiative to support software entrepreneurs running process improvement.

According to Nstda director Thaweesak Koanantakool, the market share of Thailand has been declining because the software industry is globalised and the business process is similar globally. The process of CMMI will help Thai software companies to focus on areas they excel in. Meanwhile the SPI@ease program will also help the production process to gain international recognition.

Citing a survey of software spending according to the economic sectors in 2009, Thaweesak said the banking sector spent more than 10 billion baht, telecom sector over 8 billion baht, education some 7 billion baht, logistics of over 3 billion baht, insurance firms over five billion baht, healthcare over 2.5 billion baht, and the public sector spent more than 13 billion baht.

The SPI@ease program is thus another significant way for software entrepreneurs to improve their processes to meet the global standard and have them to be competitive with overseas software.

"Those companies who passed the CMMI standard become more capable to expand their business and some of them can do the consulting jobs overseas, especially in China and this region including Vietnam and the Philippines," Thaweesak said, noting that the first phase of SPI@ease program has spurred more than 190 baht of revenue for the country.

With the success of the three-year SPI@ease program that strengthens the ecosystem of the Thai software industry, the director said Nstda and Software Park have conducted the second phase program consecutively, with support from the Software Industry Promotion Agency (Sipa). "We expect that there will be more than 190 million baht income created by the second phase of the program," he said.

Somchai Chatratana, Nstda’s Technology Management Centre (TMC) deputy executive director, said that the 23 companies have passed the CMMI level 2, 3, and 5, and nine of them were also qualified as CMMI consulting companies.

The software production process improvement helps the companies to reduce their costs and enables them to intensify the business. More than half of the companies have increased their capital up to 10 times.

Currently, there are some 38 CMMI companies here and Thailand is ranked the seventh in Asia and second in Southeast Asia, while Malaysia is top with 71 CMMI companies.

Source:http://www.bangkokpost.com/tech/technews/188211/more-thai-firms-get-cmmi-appraisal