Excuse me, are you an Asian company?

weekly roundup After months of hard work and much sweat, the ZDNet Asia team is pleased to unveil this year's Top Tech 50 Index which seeks to recognize tech vendors that have exceeded their peers in terms of outstanding financial performance and track record, and a strong commitment to the Asian market.

And the winners are... dramatic drum roll... not Asian enough?

There are fewer than 10 Asian companies, excluding those from Japan, on the Top Tech 50 list this year. And of the 13 newcomers, only two have an Asian heritage and not surprisingly, they come from the region's two economic powerhouses--China and India.

Pierre Hennes, a partner at Upstream Ventures and also one of the Top Tech advisors, noted that Asian businesses today are still investing much of their IT budget on products and services offered by MNCs. Hennes said he would have liked to see more tech vendors from the region on the list, but added that he understood why this was so.

Asian IT vendors, he noted, may face difficulties trying to break out of their local markets, and the IT decision maker's main objective is to mitigate risk from his purchases.

Hennes quipped: "Their neck is on the line for whatever IT purchase decisions they make… And no one gets fired from buying from major companies like IBM." But, he is confident that IT vendors from China and India--with their sheer market size--can help change the landscape in coming years.

And to help some of them along, ZDNet Asia has added a new award category in this year's Top Tech Index--the Top Asian TechnoVisionaries. The special award identifies 10 young Asian tech companies that scored high in several key areas including technology innovation, market potential and customer strategy.

In other news this week, read about a new health warning from the U.K. Department of Health and a caution of another kind from Microsoft which software bootleggers would want to take notice of. Also, find out why a U.K. insurance company is taking back its call center from India and what caused Google to get all riled up this week.