Join me at the SIIA On Demand Cloud Computing Event next week in San Jose!

Yep that’s me talking about cloud computing and the SIIA OnDemand conference.  And I meant what I said:  you should join me at the SIIA On Demand Conference (www.siia.net/ondemand) in San Jose.  This conference will have such great practical advice – we’ll be hearing from experts about how to drive more revenue in this tough economy.  They’ll talk about using social media marketing techniques, new pricing strategies, and lots of other ways you can see results quickly.  There’s also going to be a large forum for hearing actual real world success (and failures) that you can learn from and apply to your business.

As I mentioned in the video, if you come for the first day, you can join me at an IBM-hosted pre-conference event Oct. 28.  And come by and say hi on the second day, when I’ll be part of a panel discussing “Channel Strategies That Win: A View From the Top.”

Find out more about the conference at these links:

Look at the conference overview – http://www.siia.net/ondemand/
Join the LinkedIn group once you register:  http://bit.ly/odgroupmembers
Browse the current attendee list – http://www.siia.net/ondemand/2009/attendees.asp
Review the conference agenda -  http://www.siia.net/ondemand/2009/schedule.asp
Register today – http://www.siia.net/ondemand/2009/register.asp.  Enter promo code PRMSPKR and save $100.
I look forward to seeing you there!

I am still whirling from the past weekend. I spent Friday through Monday (until 9pm Monday night) at a workshop that is transforming. I felt my life literally being transformed. Knowledge is power. It truly is. The more we learn; the more we grow. There were moments when I felt like I had been turned inside out and the workshop leader was coating my inside with some sort of sticky substance. I felt raw, opened up and fully present. In spite of any physiological changes that yelled for sleep and rest. In spite of old tapes that begged for time to ponder and reflect, I pushed through and was pushed. At times I was pulled through from one opening to the next.

What now? Now I find out how much of the sticky goo that was smeared inside my soul still remains. I’ve been asked if I am using the new tools I learned. My response is that I am unconsciously using what I am now aware of. I’ve always had these tools; I was unaware and asleep next to them. Now, fully awake and present I am aware of just how I use them so that I am now able to manifest my outcomes.

I am thankful to everyone at the workshop. I am thankful to the leader, to the crew, to my fellow classmates. I learned something from every individual there. I am thankful the universe pulled me toward this goal. I am thankful I was able to share the experience. I am thankful for the nurturing and love received over those four days.

The Software & Information Industry Association, the protectors of capitalism themselves, have made the most incredibly ineffective anti-piracy advertisement, unless you are 8-years-old in which case you are probably still singing the hook: “It’s not just a copy, it’s a crime!”

I believe Techtonic’s Nick Summers says it best:

“Don’t Copy That 2─a sequel to the campy 1992 educational video Don’t Copy That Floppy─is telling about the industry’s failure to reach students”

But Don’t let the video fool you, even the SIIA calls the “real example” pirate from the video, Jerimiah Mondollo, “one of the most notorious sellers of pirated software on eBay“. And kids, if you really want to call college students that, are very aware that the Gov cannot pursue everyone, and in most cases, will not pursue these pirates unless they are making a profit (and a large on at that).

Absolutely no props to the SIIA who is spreading madly fictisous propaganda with a tiny kernel of truth burried under there somewhere…

On Friday August 28th, 2009 a jury in the Northern District of California found ISP/web hosts Akanoc Solutions, Inc., Managed Solutions Group, Inc. and Steven Chen liable for contributory trademark counterfeiting and awarded Plaintiff Louis Vuitton Malletier $32 Million.

This story is not only the first you will likely read on this case, but its author was the primary investigator and a witness for the Plaintiff.

I first observed this group a few years ago doing business as Managed Solutions Group (MSG) when they were popping up as a US-based web host for China-based sellers of counterfeit goods.

A couple of my luxury brand clients asked me to look into this entity and I did.  I asked a colleague who is a higher-up at a major anti-spamming organization if he had ever heard of them.  His immediate response was, “Yeah.  They are spammers.”  He later clarified stating that they had positioned themselves as bulletproof hosts for spammers for some time.  He told me they had straightened their act in that industry after the CAN-SPAM Act was passed and made it a criminal act to facilitate such activity.

Louis Vuitton Malletier, S.A. v. Akanoc Solutions, Inc. et al was a bold case and a years-long battle fueled by the passion of Vuitton’s in-house legal wizard Nikolay Livadkin and outside counsel Andy Coombs and Annie Wang of J. Andrew Coombs a P.C. A brilliant case was laid out that illustrated Akanoc, MSG & Chen’s non-compliance despite diligent efforts by Vuitton.

Laughably, Akanoc admitted that they complied with the requests of big companies like eBay and Microsoft but not with smaller companies such as my client.  I don’t know which part of that statement is more moronic: The Defendant sneezing at a 100 year-old company that made $24 Billion last year (triple eBay but less than Microsoft); or that they looked a federal judge in the eye and sneezed at the rights of all companies they did not perceive to be ‘big’.

The verdict is below and many interesting stories will arise.  There are many things to learn from this.  A few of which are:

• Web hosts must not ignore the violation of anyone’s rights on their watch.
• Don’t mess with Louis Vuitton.
• Evidence produced by my office is far better than our competition and can help you win cases like this one.

For more information please contact me by phone at (972) 422-2100 or by email at rob@ipcybercrime.com.

Now, I’m going to finish my coffee.

Back in the early 90s, the SIIA released an anti-piracy video called ‘Don’t Copy That Floppy‘.  It saw a resurgence of popularity as a kitchy PSA on Youtube in recent years.  The star was attorney/actor M.E. Hart who portrayed ‘MC Double Def DP’, a rapper/superhero whose mission was to stop children from pirating video games.  A look back at the original (released in 1992) illustrates how technology has changed and how the world needs MC Double Def DP now more than ever.  Check out the trailer, it is hilarious.  It is actually so funny, it looks more like something from Saturday Night Live than the SIIA.

According to a survey by the Software and Information Industry Association, the wide adoption of institutions using Education technology to improve student learning and instruction has been occurring but, it has been slow in recent years.  The Vision K-20 pilot survey was implemented to benchmark the progress of different education institutions to see if they are meeting the Vision K-20 goals and measures.

Sixty-one percent of those represented in the survey are from k-12 institutions; while the remaining percentage of those represented in the survey are from post-secondary institutions. The results concluded that on average institutions are only 61% on their way to having institution leaders use technology tools for planning, budgeting, and decision making, and having students have access to courseware and technology based curriculum. The survey also shows that only 53% of  interactive adaptive, multimedia courseware and simulations (also known as 21st Century Tools)  are used in teaching and learning.

Despite the slow use of Education Technology, the survey concludes that institutions have made the most progress in the areas of 21st Century tools and Enterprise Support.  Eighty-Six percent of institutions have high-speed broad band access available for robust communication, administrative and educational needs and 85% of educators have access to the level of technology resources, training and support common to other professionals.

So all in all, institutions have the capability to utilize Education Technology within their institutions but many K-12 institutions still haven’t made the progress they hoped they would. According to the survey, K-12 institutions are lacking in their efforts to achieve the Seven Vision Goals compared to Post-Secondary institutions who seem to be doing much better in their efforts. The results showed that the  K-12 institutions that were surveyed are only 63% on their way to enabling students to learn from any place at anytime compared to Post-Secondary institutions who are 76% capable of enabling their students to learn at anytime or any place.

The other six goals of the Seven Vision Goals include:

1. Help Schools meet the needs of all students

2. Support accountability and inform instruction

3.  Deepen learning and motivate students

4. Facilitate communication, connectivity and collaboration

5. Manage the education enterprise effectively and economically and

6. Nurture creativity and self-expression

A recent friendly football match between Singapore and Malaysia - Source: redsport.sg

Today, Dr Hank Lim, my research director at SIIA, asked me and my colleagues – why did MM Lee visit Malaysia for a week?

I was reminded of the online furore over Dr Mahathir’s comments on MM Lee from the blogs featured on Singapore Daily.

However, Hank gave a vastly different comment to the visit. In fact, it did not have anything to do with Dr M’s blog rants. He conjectures the reason for MM Lee’s visit instead.

The global crisis is changing the power structure of the world and Hank predicts that the USA would not regain its pre-crisis prestige and strategic power even as the world slowly recovers from the economic poison. He thinks that the world will be more regional-centric and hence ASEAN needs to shore up its relevancy and strategic position.

He thinks that is why MM Lee visited Malaysia. The senior statesman wanted to assess what are the industries and Malaysian states that Singapore can work with to strengthen both countries’ economy and in turn, lead the way for ASEAN to improve its economic community.

In the regional association, Singapore and Malaysia are the two most developed nations. Therefore it makes sense for Singapore to want to establish a win-win relationship with its northern neighbour.

A zero-sum game won’t cut it and Singapore is willing to make the first move in building a strong and close relationship with Malaysia.

Furthermore, Singapore’s foreign policy is guided by its holy trinity:

1. It is a small state
2. Foreign policy must ensure Singapore’s survival
3. A pragmatic or realpolitik approach to foreign policy and national survival

However, the foreign policy is also affected positively by economic interdependence and regional institution-building.

These ‘guidelines’ implies that cooperation with its neighbours (ASEAN) in the economic and political spheres is paramount to the survival of Singapore as a sovereign state and that means intra-ASEAN cooperation and the strength of ASEAN will feature largely in our foreign policy.

It is possible that the Iskandar Development Region (now known as Iskandar Malaysia) would foster the relationship of the two countries towards stronger bilateral ties and cooperation. In addition, the week-long visit which includes taking the Minister-Mentor to four Malaysian states; Penang, Perak, Kelantan and Pahang, would provide a strong assessment on the possible areas of economic cooperation that Singapore can work with Malaysia.

Moreover, SM Goh Chok Tong had visited the Middle East in Sep 2008 to “deepen Singapore’s political and economic engagement with the Middle East”. More hint at greater regionalism and the shifting of global economic powers?

When the world geo-political and economical play changes, Singapore, Malaysia and the rest of ASEAN will be well-positioned to meet the new world order.

—

Of course, Wayang Party has a totally different take on the matter. They think that MM Lee’s visit is purely driven by his fear of possible opposition takeover of the Malaysia federal government and its implications on Singapore. It is also an interesting theory.

Over at Chris Blattman’s latest post, he wrote about a recent anecdote that went like this:

11 year old Liberian plastic bag salesman: “Do you want the poor people to become rich?”

My research manager, Bryan: “Why, yes!”

“Then give me your car.”

In this situation, I would like to attempt to explain to the Liberian boy, why this manner of “help” will not be Pareto efficient. But I doubt he would care much.

One is increasing the welfare of the boy by giving him the car, however your own welfare has fallen because now you do not have a car to move around, and you have lost some value in giving your car away.

An increase in Pareto efficiency would be if you lend the boy US$100 to buy a shop space and more plastic bags so that he can earn 50% more income in a month. Then he repay the loan with a modest amount of interest. In this way, both parties gain utility (welfare), hence efficiency increase.

This is also why microfinance is getting more popular now.

The anecdote that Chris wrote can be related to foreign aid and perhaps to corruption too.

—

I’m reading up on corruption and integrity pacts as part of my background research for a project that I’m involved with SIIA (Singapore Institute of International Affairs). The corruption issue is a major obstacle to the efficient disbursement of foreign aid since the donors do not want their aid money to line the pockets of corrupt government officials.

It’s an interesting topic and a very tricky one to resolve as well.

Having stayed in Phnom Penh for half a year, I have experienced first hand the endemic nature of corruption in civil and law enforcement servants. I’ve paid US$15 “fine” to a policeman for wearing a jungle hat on my second day there.

The offence: jungle or military hats are only for military servicemen in Cambodia.

Noting that the average monthly salary in Cambodia is US$40-50, I’ve just paid almost a third of a uniformed civil servant’s salary in 10 minutes.

Corruption is a great obstacle to the progress of a nation as trust, goodwill, efficiency are all sacrificed for the benefits of a selected group of people (mostly those who derive their authority from positions).

Peter Jackson, chief scientist and vice president, Thomson Reuters, participated in a panel discussion at the SIAA NetGain Conference in San Francisco.

The topic was innovation and the challenges facing information companies in the digital age and amid the rise of social media.

Jackson, who is on the NetGain Steering Committee, discussed some of what Thomson Reuters has been working on, including the Reuters Insider multimedia project. Jackson’s team is involved in finding new ways to index video online and make it searchable, providing more insight and context to the end-user.

According to Jackson, the project is in beta and close to official release. He says it required new ways of thinking by his teams, and new uses for existing patented technology that’s already fueling many customer applications within the legal business.

In this video interview after the session, Jackson talked about the conference, the innovative work at Thomson Reuters and also provides more specifics on his team’s work on Reuters Insider:

Posted by Kevin Hunt, senior communications specialist, Thomson Reuters

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The attendees here at the SIIA NetGain Conference in San Francisco are from a variety of businesses, from startups to major corporations.

They come to SIIA events to learn what their colleagues and competitors are doing to deliver content and information, and gain new insight on the new tools and business practices as Ed Keating, the vice president of the Content Division of the SIIA, explains:

Posted by Kevin Hunt, senior communications specialist, Thomson Reuters

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Cloud computing is a concept and a reality embraced by many businesses dealing with data. The idea that digital information lives “in the clouds” means many businesses can cut their operating costs, no matter what industry they are in.

In a panel discussion about cloud computing here at the SIIA NetGain Conference, Larry Schwartz explained how his company, Newstex, relies on Amazon to be the cloud for video hosting among other services.

Schwartz, who is on the Steering Committee for the NetGain Conference, has some advice for businesses thinking about getting on a cloud in this video interview, and further explains how his company is doing it:

Posted by Kevin Hunt, senior communications specialist, Thomson Reuters

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Judy Estrin is a serial entrepreneur, a Disney and Fedex board member, an ex-CTO of Cisco, and the author of Closing the Innovation Gap. I read this recently, and was then fortunate enough to hear her give a keynote at SIIA NetGain 2009 in San Francisco. The talk followed the contents and spirit of the book fairly closely.

The “gap” of her title derives from the fact that we are today living off the fat of the 1950s and 60s, when government and commercial spending on genuine R&D was way higher than it is today. She argues that we have an “innovation deficit”, whereby current gains are really incremental and based on past achievements. Meanwhile, management philosophies such as “You can’t manage what you can’t measure” have hurt our ability to fund exploratory work that does not meet immediate business goals.

Her concept of “sustainable innovation” goes beyond any single idea to encompass an environment, or ecosystem, that supports novel approaches to problems. “Innovation doesn’t just happen,” says Estrin, “you have to nurture it.” The ecosystem she identifies consists of a nutrient environment of funding, policy, education, culture and leadership that supports the activities of research, development and applications building.

She identifies the following as core values – questioning, risk, openness, patience and trust – and states that these values need to be in balance. For example, too much trust leads to blind faith, while too much risk leads to recklessness, as we have seen with innovations on Wall Street. She also stresses the need to move beyond silos and false dichotomies, e.g., science versus arts, research versus development, and recognize the value of people who have some breadth and function as connectors in organizations.

Estrin distinguishes between three types of innovation: breakthrough (totally new idea, e.g., light bulb), incremental (tuning a new idea to generate a product, e.g., flashlight), and orthogonal (combining existing ideas into something new, e.g., sneakers with lights). She points out that only the second is customer-driven; customers are not going to do real innovation for you. I think this is certainly true of the Internet publishing space.

Speaking for Corporate R&D, I like to think that we practice what I call “serial innovation”, producing a steady stream of incremental and orthogonal improvements that satisfy customers while waiting for the “big bang” of a breakthrough. Genuine breakthroughs are few and far between, and you can’t plan for them. But staying as close as you can to the research literature and being conversant with the latest methods are good ways to improve your chances.

Peter Jackson
Chief Scientist and Vice President
Thomson Reuters

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Greetings from the Software and Information Industry Association’s (SIIA) NetGain Conference at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.

I’m attending the conference for two reasons. One, WestBlog is a finalist for an SIIA CODiE Award in the Best Corporate Blog category and Westlaw Business is a finalist in the category of Best Online Business Information Service.

The second reason is to highlight some of the topics up for discussion at the conference for WestBlog, including a panel this morning on innovation featuring Peter Jackson, chief scientist and vice president, Thomson Reuters.

NetGain has several other interesting sessions on tap, and keynotes from author Judith Estrin, Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive, Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine and Kara Swisher of D: All Things Digital.

You can follow updates from NetGain here on WestBlog, and on Twitter with the hashtags #netgain or #SIIA.

By the way, the CODiEs will be handed out tomorrow night. We’ll be sure to let you know if we bring home some hardware.

Posted by Kevin Hunt, senior communications specialist, Thomson Reuters

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Good news, friends! Since last month, I joined the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA) as an intern under the Eric Teo Global Citizens Internships programme. Founded in 1961, the SIIA is Singapore’s oldest think tank dedicated to the research, analysis and discussion of regional & international issues.

A unique feature of SIIA’s programmes is its commitment to public education including students and the general public population through events such as 938LIVE in NIE: What Does ASEAN Mean to You? (past) and the upcoming The Obama Administration’s First 100 Days forum (23 May 09).

During the last month with the organisation, I was introduced to the concept of “Track II diplomacy“, the various ASEAN foras, the various think tanks and special interests groups based in Singapore and the opportunity to be involved in the think tank’s flagship event – 2nd ASEAN & ASIA Forum.

I also enjoy the company I made within the organisation especially over lunch and tea discussion about philosophy and political/ economic theories. I am very grateful for the opportunity to be introduced to this environment before I return back to the university this July.

My fourth article for SIIA is on the recently concluded ASEAN and Asia forum 2009:

LAST Friday, I attended the 2nd ASEAN and Asia forum in Singapore, through the generosity of the organiser, SIIA. This was my first track II conference and I also managed to meet Dr. Noeleen Heyzer, executive secretary of UN ESCAP.

The forum invited a respectable list of speakers, from ambassadors and research institute directors to high-level government officials and private sector honchos. And I was keen to hear what they have to say on the issues on ASEAN and Asia.

The forum began with a history of ASEAN. Despite the almost 42 years of existence, ASEAN is still very young organisation. Its real age should be between 10 to 15 years because the last four members joined in 1995, 1997 and 1999. Notably, the bloc has achieved its initial objective of political stability and no major armed conflicts.

Tan Sri Jawhar Hassan, the CEO of Institute of Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank in Malaysia, articulated this viewpoint in his honest yet optimistic assessment of ASEAN’s past, present and near future.

Dr. Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Director, Institute of Security and International Studies, a think-tank in Thailand, also mentioned that there are no major wars among the member countries since the inception of ASEAN in 1967. The political stability helped the newly independent countries (with the exception of Thailand in 1967) to focus on their national development.

Of course, ASEAN should not stop at just achieving political stability. They should focus on other issues so that as a regional bloc, they are effective as an initiator of collaborative and beneficial plans. However Jawhar Hassan cautioned that ASEAN might have too many plans on its plate and should focus on implementation.

In short, ASEAN need more action and less talk. They need to start implementing and enforcing more of its agreements and plans, rather than engaging in more dialogues to discuss grandeur plans.

Intra-ASEAN trade is a quarter of the entire ASEAN trade. The member countries of ASEAN mainly export its goods and services outside of ASEAN. Even though intra-ASEAN trade is growing and also encouraged, the reality that most of the population in the region is poor, do not provide a strong aggregate demand for the group, hence they turn to non-ASEAN countries for trade.

This implied that cooperation with other major economic powers, especially near the Southeast Asia is important to the survival of ASEAN.

Thitinan thinks that the ASEAN-3 group is critical for the bloc to be effective and to be taken seriously as a regional geo-political and economic organisation. The ASEAN-3 group consists of ASEAN nations, China, Japan and South Korea.

With regional political stability (though Thailand is having some problems there) and against the backdrop of the “biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression”, economic issues are at the forefront of the ASEAN agenda.

Dr Muh Chatib Basri, director, Institute for Economic and Social Research, a think-tank in Indonesia, believed that emerging countries in the Asia region are going to be the engine of economic growth. The high saving rate of Asia allows the region to accumulate a vast amount of surplus and he proposed that we invest of investing this surplus in Asia and not outside of Asia.

Mr. Hidetoshi Nishimura, executive director, ERIA, a policy research institute, supported Basri’s recommendation by encouraging Asia governments to invest in good projects in Asia. He commented that infrastructure investment is crucial for the medium and long term growth of the region.

Dato Paduka Timothy Ong, chairman, Brunei economic development board, is more critical of ASEAN lack of progress on economic integration. He praised ASEAN on delivering political stability. However, he cautioned that ASEAN still has a long way to go in economic integration, especially when the ASEAN countries are rather fragmented in its state of development.

He cited the Doing Business 2009 report by World Bank to illustrate the diversity of the economic development of ASEAN countries. In that report, Brunei came in at 88, which according to his colleagues, is an auspicious number. He retorted jokingly that 8 is also an auspicious number and would have been a respectable rank too!

Besides economic issues, the notoriety of ASEAN’s reluctance in engaging the civic groups is also well noted. The lack of track III diplomacy in Southeast Asia is also hindering the bloc from progressing beyond political and economic issues. Thitinan commented that the reason for the lack of track III dialogues is because ASEAN leaders do not put emphasis on the civic society in the region.

Perhaps the only civic issue that ASEAN discussed about, as evident in the 1990s, was the environmental issue; namely the haze problem. Even then, it has an economical slant.

The first two panel sessions offered up interesting views on ASEAN’s history, development and economic challenges. However the next two sessions on natural resources and leadership, unfortunately, are dull as a nail.

To be fair, I think the only interesting presentation in these two sessions was by Mr. Warren Fernandez, former political editor of the Straits Times and current regional communications director for Shell Eastern Petroleum, a major oil products company. He gave an energy-crisis response dichotomy developed by Shell, whose extreme poles are called “scramble” and “blueprints”.

Energy security is an important issue and is also critical to a country’s economic development. The scarcity of traditional fuels such as coal, oil and gas as well as its negative externalities, is a driving political message by U.S. president Obama in his climate change agenda. It is also on the agenda of ASEAN and Asia.

The “blueprints” path illustrated a sustainable way to finding long-term solutions to energy security, and most importantly, a greener and renewable way to power our economies and hopefully save our planet.

In summary, the forum has been beneficial to me, in terms of experiential learning. I was given a glimpse of the industry that I wanted to enter: development economics, international trade research and policy-making. Most importantly, it showed me the intellectual gap between the speakers and myself, which would provide a catalyst for me to develop my personal knowledge and skills further.

2nd ASEAN & Asia Forum 2009

Dr Noeleen Heyzer has been the first Singaporean to head a UN organisation when she was appointed as the executive secretary of UNESCAP (UN Economic and Social Commission of Asia and the Pacific) and the title of under-secretary general in the UN, becoming the first woman and Singaporean to be promoted to that level.

She will be delivering the opening address at the 2nd ASEAN & Asia forum, held at Meritus Mandarin on 17 Apr. The forum is organised by SIIA as a panel discussion conference following the 14th ASEAN summit which took place in Thailand.

I’ll be attending the conference next friday and will write about my take-away points from the one-day, four-panel discussion in this blog.

Have you documented all of your software asset licences?

I have mentioned that one benefit of documenting your software licences is ensuring that you don’t re-purchase software assets that you already own.

For SMB Managers, there is one more thing to consider;

The Software & Information Industry Association said it has obtained a six-figure settlement in a copyright infringement case against a company and its affiliate that used illegal software. 

Do you really want to drop a Six figure amount because of a few illegal copies of MS Word?

I would hope not!

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Out In Front of the Paradigm Shift

“With tier one vendors such as Ariba and SAP moving into the SaaS space, a model upon which organizations such as Source One’s reputation and business have been built, it is in effect an admission that the traditional licensing model does not work.

Because of what can only be described as a monumental shift (remember the old analogy about big ships turning slowly), overall awareness and acceptance for SaaS-based or on-demand solutions is on the rise.  And with it, the players who are and have already defined this new paradigm.”

Excerpt from “Riding the Crest of a Wave: How the Original SaaS Companies Have Gained the Upper Hand” White Paper (March 2009).

As a confirmed “Blogger” I tend to always keep my hand on the pulse of the medium by including a weekly review of blog activity as part of my regular research process.  A process that includes a daily read of white papers, articles, industry reports and of course more traditional “electronic” trips to the various Internet libraries and resource centers.  

So it probably would not surprise you that a 2007 post in the B2B Marketing ROI Blog by Adam Blitzer titled “the end of installed software” caught my eye. 

Referring to an earlier prediction made by Seth Godin regarding the traditional software model’s demise as “hitting the nail on the head,” one could not help but wonder how far the SaaS or on-demand concept actually went back in terms of “collective” mainstream consciousness.

While many of the original SaaS organizations such as Source One have been around for as long as 25 years, when did this new model actually appear on the horizon for the rest of us?

Enter a year 2000 white paper titled “Strategic Backgrounder: Software as a Service” by the Software & Information Industry Association’s (SIIA) eBusiness Division.  (Note: while written in 2000, the paper was not actually published until 2001.)

In its opening paragraph, this seminal effort to explain the evolution from traditional licensing models in which “packaged desktop and enterprise applications will soon be swept away by the tide of Web-based, outsourced products and services,” accurately establishes the core principles or elements of the SaaS or on-demand model.  Specifically, that the new model will “remove the responsibility for installation, maintenance and upgrades (and the associated heavy costs) from over-burdened MIS staff.”  And that as a result, “packaged software, as a separate entity will cease to exist.”

In my Riding the Crest of a New Wave paper I concluded that “Even though the SIIA report at the time of its publication stressed that “due to technical and business issues, such drastic predictions,” had not yet happened, it nonetheless sent up the first flare indicating that a change was definitely on the horizon.  A change that has in fact affected all participants in the software industry.”

And while Source One’s indigenous expertise, which has been built on a long history of producing “proven” results, actually extends beyond the capabilities of a SaaS or On-Demand model, this white paper will focus on the onerous costing structure of “traditional” enterprise software vendors like Ariba, SAP and Oracle, and their consistently high implementation failure rates, as two of the primary reasons for their pending migration to the SaaS world.

In the process, I will present the findings that support my belief that the migration for these tier one vendors may actually signify a step into a Covisint-type oblivion, as they are now operating within the domain of the original SaaS players like Source One.  A domain within which the latter is both well-versed and “technologically seasoned.”

I think that you will agree that this will be one of the more interesting reads.           

Use the following link to access the paper in its entirety: http://www.slideshare.net/piblogger/riding-the-crest-the-original-saas-companies

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Update 16 Mar 2009: The title of my article was edited to “ASEAN: A re-think needed?”. I think the reason for the edited title is that my initial title was too caustic. Therefore a “safer” title is chosen. Personally I do not like to use prefix-suffix words such as “re-think, re-invent, re-energise”, etc. I think often when people use these words, they are not really re-thinking or re-inventing. At best it’s improving.

My March article for SIIA blog is on the recent 14th ASEAN Summit held in Thailand after some “delay”:

AFTER the new charter for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was launched in Jakarta on 15 December 2008, many expected ASEAN to finally lose its kids’ gloves to don some real ones.

The charter has some ambitious goals, including turning ASEAN into an EU-style community whose member countries function as a regional bloc and seeking a more rigourous role in global affairs.

However things seem to be business as usual at the 14th ASEAN summit, hosted by Thailand, with the only notable achievement being the signed regional free-trade agreement with Australia and New Zealand after almost five years of negotiations.

On other issues such as collective measures to deal with the global crisis, setting up of a human rights body, taking a firm stand against protectionism and the need to invest in infrastructure to promote economic growth, “rigourous” discussions took place among the delegates without any resultant concrete measures.

The Economist, a current affairs newspapers and a regular critic of the association, wrote an article on the latest regional summit, titling it “Business as usual”. In the article, ASEAN is labeled as a “regional talking shop” for most of the issues presented during the summit.

The label is not without evidence. During its 41 years of existence, only about 30% of the agreements actually took place, according to Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. It is of no wonder that the group received a reputation for being an ineffective regional organisation.

The reason behind the “talking shop” culture is because of the cardinal principle of ASEAN – the non-interference in member states’ internal affairs (which is still included in the new charter). This inability to force member countries to accept and adopt collective decisions meant that as a group, there is little or no progress. Since the ASEAN nations are not willing to sacrifice some of their sovereignty for the greater good in regional integration, the bloc can only remain stagnant.

The new charter hopes to correct this problem, by providing a “legal and institutional framework” for “a more rules-based effective organisation”, but it lacks bite in enforcement.

ASEAN has not been a joke all the time. Before the 1997 financial crisis, it was a respectable and influential association, with most of its then-seven members enjoying political stability and high economic growth. The economic prosperity and stability of the region have been the envy of the world. Suddenly, the financial crisis struck and Thailand falters in its economic and political footsteps, pulling Singapore and Indonesia along with her. Next, a pariah regime, Myanmar, joined the club, bringing along its infamous international standing. Cambodia joined after a delay due to a bloody coup by current strongman Hun Sen.

With the world facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the strength of the association depends much on the strength of its individual member countries to pull its own weight and to make some sacrifices.

The bid to achieve an ASEAN economic community by 2015 is hampered by the global economic crisis and huge economic disparities among member countries.

Furthermore, judging by the fixation on the non-interference rule, ASEAN is hard-pressed to move beyond mere words to truly integrate as a regional entity.

This article is also published in SIIA blog.