Goodbye 2008, onward 2009

Q: What was the biggest trend that affected your company last year?

The travel landscape has without a doubt undergone quite an evolution in the past year. The credit crisis in the United States peaked and quickly split across borders to cause a global economic downturn across a broad range of industries, including travel, which has a direct impact on Amadeus' business.

Travel companies are seeking ways to streamline processes and cut costs, as well as trying to differentiate themselves from competitors. They are looking to new technologies as a means to achieve all these objectives.

Do you expect it to be business as usual with the recession?

Amadeus and its customers are naturally impacted by any downturn in the economy which results in a decrease in travel. Over the past six months, we have seen a definite slowing in growth of travel bookings, from both the corporate and leisure travel sectors.

However, the need for travel has not evaporated, particularly here in the Asia-Pacific region. This region is growing in popularity as an international tourist destination, and is also a high-volume region for business travel. Many executives based here work in regional roles, and hence, must travel--especially when Asian business culture prizes face-to-face meetings.

Our business continues to grow because our customers--airlines, travel agents, hotels and other travel players--are increasingly looking to technology to help make their operations more efficient and streamlined, and subsequently cut costs and maximize revenues at the same time.

What technology innovation is the travel industry looking forward to this year?

At Amadeus, we are very excited to watch the travel industry evolve towards integrated IT systems--one technology system that connects all aspects of their business. This helps them to become more streamlined and cut costs, as well as increasing visibility of internal processes.

For example, some airlines are still operating on legacy systems to manage each different part of their business, from reservations to check in to baggage control. In some cases, this could mean extremely high costs and hundreds of different IT systems operating at once. Now, we see airlines wanting to move all these systems to one common platform.

During 2008, Qantas became the first airline to complete its move to all modules of this solution, and others including Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific and V Australia are also in the process of migration. These airlines recognize that in order to handle the demands of today’s travelers, control finances and reap long-term benefits, they need an IT system that is integrated and streamlined-providing a simple solution to complex issues.

We expect that in 2009, many of our travel partners will make the decision to migrate towards integrated IT, whether they be airlines, travel agencies or hotels.

Will there be new challenges for your clients this year?
Moving into 2009, organizations around the world will be focused on recovering from the downturn of second half 2008, as well as future-proofing their businesses. Many IT departments recognize that the best way to achieve this is through an overhaul of corporate IT, to increase efficiency and improve processes.

However, such a change will be met with some resistance--it is this ‘fear of change’ that is the biggest hurdle for IT departments. There is often a fear of change, particularly in Asia, as decision makers may be concerned that any major change in the company could disrupt business, unsettle employees, and ultimately lead to a loss of productivity and business output.

However, there are ways to initiate change, even major change, without disruption to normal business. The critical factors for a smooth transition are an open attitude towards change, and support from the partner ecosystem.

Nariman Karimi, CIO, DHL Express Asia-Pacific

	Nariman Karimi, DHL Express
	The risk [in IT management] is to try and spread thin to do a bit of everyone's requirements.

Q: What was the biggest industry trend that affected your company last year?
We benefited from three different elements, most important of which were the Business to Consumer and Business to Business systems.

We found that although this activity is not entirely new, the possibilities and approach were different; in 2008, the emphasis was on more standard protocols, converging around existing ERP standards and a shift away from niche and very be-spoke interfaces. Following this, there was a definite preference by the customers for simplicity--simpler business rules which reflected wider adoption of their standard ERP solutions.

Second, the modernization and migration of our legacy systems based on Linux and open standards was another trend that we benefited from greatly. Migrating to Linux in many of our systems lowered the costs and provided an easier support environment.

The third trend was the continuation of the process of moving toward central and standard systems and solutions, which made for faster to market processes and higher efficiencies.

What technology innovation or product are you looking forward to next year?
Further use and integration of global maps into commercial applications. They are becoming more sophisticated in terms of mapping the granularity of addresses, and we are excited about the possibilities that this offers for our customers and internal planning.

Also, further Web 2.0 applications developments for interacting with the outside world and facilitating workgroups.

Was there a technology release which disappointed you this year?
Video conferencing and tools for remote team working. Although there have been advancements in this area but compared to the overall pace of technology development, it is still with some anxiety that you start a video session. Would have liked to have seen attractive applications that would make it possible to have a trouble-free eight-way remote meeting.

What is the biggest challenge facing your IT department?
Maintaining focus at the time when the funds are tight and the demands are growing: the risk is to try and spread thin to do a bit of everyone's requirements--this will be a mistake as you will have to achieve 100 percent solutions.

Keeping the team motivated and energized: when you have been riding a series of waves to shore in terms of innovation, have had great wins on connecting with your market and customers and colleagues, and then the economy slows like it has, it takes real leadership on behalf of management and true grit on behalf of the team to get excited and enthused about more cost reductions--but I suppose this is where true mettle is shown. Do you expect it to be business as usual, in light of the recession?
Yes and no, yes that this is a slow down and not a stoppage! There are still goods being produced, shipments to go from place to place, so this will not be different to our business.

No to business being as usual in terms of having to choose carefully where to spend the energy and resources on, so that you can be sure of taking it all the way to a worthwhile end.

Yaj Malik, area vice president for ASEAN, Citrix Systems

	Yaj Malik, Citrix Systems
	IT should be a business enabler and not an inhibitor to corporate streamlining and growth.

Q: What was the biggest thing that affected the industry last year?
Almost every firm in every industry has had to deal with the fallout of the financial crisis and economic downturn plaguing the global markets. Spending predictors are showing that many CIOs are cutting big-ticket investments and low value projects, which means less cash for bells and whistles IT projects.

What they are doing, however, is continuing to fund existing projects with tangible ROI--projects that are going to deliver sustainable business values for their businesses.

What is the biggest misconception about virtualization and why?
Many decision makers deem virtualization as a quick stopgap measure to rapidly reduce costs of server management and optimize their infrastructure spend. The area in which virtualization really moves beyond where it is in the marketplace today is when it starts getting applied to strategic business problems. Nobody deploys virtualization technology because it is the latest trend or for the short-term cost savings.

Goldman Sachs sees total cost of ownership (TCO) reductions will be a key driver for the acceleration in server virtualization deployments as CIOs are forced to cut capital spending and reign in management, administrative, power/cooling costs. Today, businesses are applying virtualization because they have very strategic business problems that are core to the fundamentals of running the business.

We will see these decisions manifested in strategies related to building an internal "cloud" environment to take advantage of delivering simplified computing to their staff.

What technology trend do you think will transform IT this year?

2009 will see the increased trend towards the consolidation of IT assets that will eventually allow CIOs to embrace virtualization and cloud computing to enable their IT organizations to maintain just one copy of each software, application, workload, allocate one password for each user and create only one instance of data. Not only does this eradicate the hassle of updating and maintaining multiple copies of each software application on numerous machines, it enables the IT organization to roll out new applications and desktops much more quickly as IT department is not required to rebuild the infrastructure each and every time to take into account new assumptions for security, connections and users’ devices.

New users can also be easily added onto the networks in minutes, rather than days or weeks. Built on a solid base of virtualized servers, applications and desktops, this end-to-end virtual environment is fast becoming a reality for many organizations.

No discussion on application delivery can be complete without addressing the plethora of end user devices available for the mobile and knowledge worker. With the consumerization of enterprise IT, this will be the single, biggest trend affecting corporate IT over the next decade. According to Gartner, by 2010 end-user preferences will decide as much as half of all software, hardware and service acquisitions made by IT as more users are bringing personal technology into the workplace and expecting to use it as part of their jobs.

It has, therefore, become extremely important for CIOs heading 2009 to pay close attention to what is happening on the consumer front and model their best practices for their IT organizations to act more like consumer-product companies. Right now, we’re looking at ways to deliver applications and desktops for end users in a natural and organic way to use in a rich environment with a broader range of mobile devices.

The biggest challenge facing IT departments is...

...the sheer complexity of the distributed computing model. Maintaining, managing and optimizing an organization’s IT assets has been the bane of every IT administrator and CIO, however, simplifying this has been a challenge for many companies. The existing infrastructure has proven on many counts to be inflexible in dealing with the challenges of a modern, dynamic business environment.

The inability of these resources to handle the agility required with new mergers or of rapidly offshoring certain functions has led to many corporate failures and succumbing to competitive threats. IT should ideally be a business enabler and not an inhibitor to corporate streamlining and growth.

Rafay Khan, vice president, business development, Asia-Pacific, Navteq

	Rafay Khan, Navteq
	In 2009, we can expect the opportunities for LBS offerings to grow dramatically for developers, entrepreneurs and service providers across Asia.

Q: What is a trend affecting the location-based services industry?

The location-based services (LBS) industry made great strides in 2008. This is no surprise given the pervasiveness of sophisticated handheld devices and the tech-savvy consumers across Asia.

Demand for mobile navigation devices increased dramatically amongst consumers, with analyst house Canalys estimating that 1.3 million mobile navigation devices shipped in APAC in Q1 2008; this represents a 67 percent growth over the same period last year.

We have seen an increase in demand across a host of industries including in-vehicle, portable mobile devices, solutions for enterprises, location-based services and Internet portals.

What is the scene like in Asia for LBS?

Navteq's global developer competition was also launched in this region for the first time in 2008, and the Asia-Pacific leg received more entries than the North America and Europe segments of the Challenge, thereby demonstrating the potential for LBS in the region.

The entries further indicated that the two biggest trends in this region were around social networking and user-generated content.

In 2009, we can expect the opportunities for LBS offerings to grow dramatically for developers, entrepreneurs and service providers across Asia.

Ravi Rajendran, vice president and general manager, ASEAN, Hitachi Data Systems

	Ravi Rajendran, HDS
	In Singapore, we still see companies that have a significant underutilization of their storage investment.

Q: Are you worried about the news of the recession?
It seems that everyone will be feeling the effects of the global recession in some form or other. That said, organizations nonetheless realize the importance of maintaining the integrity and availability of their core business data. This sentiment is supported by Gartner who, in a recent report, predicted that IT spending across the Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) will grow by at least 8.3 percent in 2009.

The biggest challenge facing IT departments is...
The categorical slashing of their budgets. Faced with an economic slowdown, companies will necessarily look inwards for cost-cutting. While we do not expect the knee-jerk reaction of slashing IT spend (previously witnessed in 2000), there will be a slowdown in large-scale IT project spend and infrastructure expansion.

As this is a very real possibility, IT departments should look towards products and services that enable consolidation and optimisation of existing IT infrastructure to drive cost-savings associated with hardware, maintenance, energy and IT real-estate.

In Singapore, we still see companies that have a storage infrastructure utilization rate between 30 to 40 percent. This is a significant underutilization of their existing IT investment and represents an area where the highest OPEX savings can be realized.

With the current emphasis on companies to streamline their operations and cut costs, we believe that there is an opportunity for vendors and service providers to help their clients consolidate and optimize their resources.

Lena Goh, marketing director, Mobile Communications Business, Microsoft

	Lena Goh, Microsoft
	Social networking on mobiles will reach a tipping point in 2009.

Q: What are some mobility trends that you predict will come to a head in 2009?
In 2009, a new generation of mobile devices will make their way into the market, addressing the demand from people to simplify their lives.

The mobile phone will really serve as the universal remote control, allowing people to manage all aspects of their lives. As a result, we will see a shift in user interfaces that will be able to connect with people on a more emotional level.

People will be able to customize their phones--not just their ringtones and wallpaper, but at a much deeper level, by adding applications and services that suit their lifestyle.

Also, social networking on mobiles will reach a tipping point in 2009. As more and more devices with better browsing capability come to market, it will be easier than ever for people to connect to each other.

In the coming year, this will open up more revenue opportunities for mobile operators and content providers as they bring cool services to market.

Despite the economic slowdown, we expect there will be strong opportunities for developers in 2009 to help people better aggregate, access and manage their information as the industry continues its shift towards cloud computing.

Song Tang Yih, vice president, Asia-Pacific, F5 Networks

	Song Tang Yih, F5 Networks
	Even when IT budgets are constrained, data center creation, server consolidation will continue.

Q: What was 2008 like for F5?
2008 has also been a year with many milestones for F5: Early this year we released an on-demand Application Delivery Controller (ADC) that can be upgraded as demand grows. According to Gartner, we dominated our space worldwide with more than 60 percent market share in the advanced ADC category.

We are also extremely proud to have supported major Web content providers during the Beijing 2008 Games. To give you an idea of the amount of Web traffic that passed through the portals--the number of unique visitors to CCTV.com reached 25.13 million during the live telecast on August 8. This number is eight times more than the Web site's average daily traffic and the most in CCTV.com's 12-year history! What about this year?
Going into 2009, even when IT budgets are constrained, data center creation, server consolidation will continue. So we see more customers needing to realign their business priorities to be more cost effective.

F5's focus for this year will be to collaborate increasingly with our customers to tackle their challenges at the core--right where their network, storage, servers, and security come together and help them move their business ahead on a solid, forward-looking foundation rather than a series of costly and reactive one-offs.

Greg Russell, senior vice president, Asia, Telstra International

	Greg Russell, Telstra International
	The need to communicate doesn't go away in a down market but actually increases.

Q: What challenges in 2009 are you prepared for, with the financial downturn?
Changes in global economic conditions during 2008 demanded increased focus on how customer value is created and sustained. The telecommunications industry is no stranger to this having already undertaken initiatives to realign and right-size during the meltdown in the early 2000s.

One constant has been the need to communicate, which doesn't go away in a down market but actually increases. For example, pressure on reducing travel expenses will mean businesses will need to collaborate more electronically.

As such, I believe the industry is far more prepared to weather this financial storm. In fact, our business outlook remains unchanged and we remain cautiously optimistic for 2009.

What we do expect however, is that the current climate will compel CIOs and CTOs to rethink how they maximize returns on their IT investments, resulting in more time being dedicated to exploring innovative approaches to stretch budgets to achieve more.

We anticipate more companies will acknowledge and adopt solutions such as managed services, hosted infrastructure and virtualized environments as a pragmatic way to liberate value without having to exhaust limited capital resources. This can lead to a far more fluid environment, allowing tighter alignment of spending with objectives and achievements.

What will companies focus on in 2009 to cope?
I believe the key focus in 2009 will be on how service providers can help customers achieve desired business outcomes without needing to stall programs due to capital constraints.

This may be achieved through focusing on optimising existing technology more effectively, such as consolidating data center services into key hubs or harnessing new working practices like remote working and telepresence.

Initiatives such as these can help reduce tactical costs including IDD, roaming charges and travel expenses and can often be executed across existing, or slightly upgraded, IP data networks.

Of course this will inevitably drive up the volume of IP data traffic and service providers must plan carefully to ensure the timely availability of a robust, ubiquitous and secure network infrastructure. But as the price per bit continues to go down, this will help customers increase the proficiency of contact, wherever, whenever and however it occurs.

Eric Lauzon, CIO, Nortel Asia

	Eric Lauzon, Nortel
	Tools such as virtualization, video conferencing and telepresence technologies will gain popularity in 2009.

Q: What was the biggest thing that affected your company this year?
The global economic downturn is clearly having a profound effect on our industry in 2008 and 2009. But adversity also brings with it opportunities, and we are working with our customers to identify how technology can help them through the current economic malaise.

Companies will be looking at cost savings in all areas of operations. Within Nortel's operations, we have eliminated most travel for anything but customer-related activities.

Is the news about the recession next year going to affect you, or do you expect it to be business as usual?
We’re confident that 2009 will see more companies adopting unified communications (UC), especially as a reduction in business travel and operating costs drive IT to look into Green IT and technologies that improve productivity and efficiency savings. As such, tools such as virtualization, video conferencing and telepresence technologies will gain popularity.

We also think companies will look towards hosted UC services to reduce costs and maximize resources. Last year, UC services accounted for about US$2.6 billion in the Asia-Pacific market, according to Frost & Sullivan.

What is the biggest misconception about unified communications and why?
Some misconceptions customers have had about UC that we've heard are things like: They think they have to rip and replace their entire infrastructure in order to reap the benefits of UC and that cannot be further from the truth. We have an installed base that is still using a combination of analog phones, as well as digital telephony.

Another last misconception is UC equals unified messaging and your ability to see or hear your voicemail or your email. That is not UC. UC is a much richer, multimedia experience tied to many more components than just messaging

Where is Asia in terms of UC adoption?
In 2008, we saw great momentum across Asia in the enterprise area of our business, especially in China, India and South East Asia and we’re on target for our stated goal for Asia to represent around 25% of Nortel’s business in the next couple of years.

Don Cooper-Williams, executive director, Asia-Pacific, SAS

	Don Cooper-Williams, SAS
	Maximizing organizational performance ahead of the competition will continue to be a top priority for business leaders in the Asia-Pacific region.

Q: What was the biggest thing that affected SAS in 2008?
For SAS, one positive shift in our industry was the removal of several stand-alone competitors, who were bought out and absorbed into larger companies.

Like all vendors, the effect from the global situations saw some of the customers take a cautious view of last quarter expenditure, and delaying some purchases in those countries where the culture tends to be slightly more pessimistic.

The biggest challenge facing IT departments is...
Consolidation, reduced spending capability and demand on delivering business value to the rest of the organization. Information is doubling faster than ever; change is more complex, and markets are volatile. Maximizing organizational performance ahead of the competition will continue to be a top priority for business leaders in the Asia-Pacific region, and IT decision makers will need to deliver to the business greater agility as the market changes continue to unfold.

In particular, IT management, especially those in the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) world, will face increased pressure from CFOs with respect to procurement and modernization plans that will be delayed due to shrinking budgets. They will be expected to maximize efficiency through infrastructure re-evaluation and process improvements.

Moreover, recruitment will be curtailed and management will need at redeploying current staff and address questions on the value of outsourced services. There will also be continued emphasis on the rationalization of vendors, software license audits, consolidation of departmental application environments, and at the same time, the need to deliver better services.

Paul Loke, senior assistant director, computing and information systems, corporate services and planning, National Heritage Board

	Paul Loke, National Heritage Board
	I'm looking forward to the advances in 3D virtual environments.

Q: What was the biggest industry trend that affected your company last year?
Web 2.0 has definitely changed the way we interact with the public. With the prevalence of camera phones, blogs and mashups, the interest of the public in exhibitions and lifestyle events has increased. However, this is a double edged sword as replicating the exhibition too closely online would cause the visitor not to visit the museum and just be happy viewing the exhibition on the Web.

What technology innovation are you looking forward to this year?
Not so much an innovation, but I'm looking forward to the advances in 3D virtual environments. The number of applications that virtual environments have would certainly be interesting to say the least. It would be interesting to see how virtual environments promote collaboration amongst teams and how these networked teams work together.

What is the biggest challenge facing your IT department?
As usual, lack of manpower would be the largest challenge. Although there is increased use of IT throughout the organization, we have a relatively lean team. The situation is improving, but I still consider the team to be very lean.

Do you expect it to be business as usual, in light of the recession?
More or less. We might have to source for better deals, but there will still be projects that need to be completed.

Edward Lim, general manager, Acronis Asia

	Edward Lim, Acronis
	Although IT budgets are shrinking, IT departments still have to grapple with issues such as meeting increasing user demands or expectations and managing complex IT environments.

Q: What are your plans in light of the economic recession?
With the global economic recession, companies are definitely more cautious about their IT spending and investment in 2009. However, due to the importance of IT infrastructure and business information, which are critical to any business’ survival, we believe that the demand for storage management and disaster recovery solutions will continue to grow in 2009.

This is particularly true for comprehensive and easy-to-use backup solutions that can bring down both IT investment and business downtime costs and recover systems and data while minimizing impacts on productivity.

In addition, IDC has also predicted that the demand for storage space will continue into 2009, as the amount of data that companies accumulate is not slowing down very much. This will further fuel organizations’ demand for storage management solutions.

On the business front, we have aggressive growth plans in Asia for 2009 and will continue to expand in key established markets in the region including Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. We are also growing and strengthening our channel alliances in the region and will continue to invest in research and development.

The biggest challenge facing IT departments is...
…to do more for less. Although IT budgets are shrinking, IT departments still have to grapple with issues such as meeting increasing user demands or expectations and managing complex IT environments.

To best address these challenges, IT executives are exploring effective and flexible solutions that can enhance productivity and efficiency at a minimal cost such as disk-imaging disaster recovery solutions, virtualization and de-duplication. By adopting these solutions, organizations will be able to achieve warm disaster recovery capabilities with cold disaster recovery cost.

Tim Bailey, director of platform marketing, Intel Asia-Pacific

	Tim Bailey, Intel
	All around the world governments are looking to invest in technology as a way to be competitive.

Q: Is all this news about the recession next year expected to affect business? Or do you expect it to be business as usual?
What’s happening worldwide is affecting everyone. Nevertheless, there are a couple of trends in our favor:

• The PC and access to the Internet has become indispensable. We feel we will emerge from this cycle stronger than ever because of that--especially as the Web increasingly goes mobile, and we deliver products (e.g. Mobile Internet Devices) that enable the truly mobile Internet.
• The trend towards high-definition devices continues to drive demand for advanced compute capability.
• There are still billions of people who aren't connected, and all around the world governments are looking to invest in technology as a way to be competitive. That is not going away and in fact, it is more important than ever.
• WiMax, where we’re working to bring Wi-Fi economics to the wireless broadband segment.

What role does IT play today in the organization?
IT has increasingly become a strategic differentiator for the organizations. Compounded with the current economic situation the biggest challenge is “how to drive more innovation and differentiation with equal or lesser budget”.

Research shows that currently close to 90 percent of IT budgets is spent on maintenance activities. Organizations need to invest in IT project that reduces total cost of ownership, is eco-friendly and improves the productivity of the organization.

On the server side, the challenges include Datacenters optimization utilizing more efficient infrastructure from server, network and storage and to really own the true total cost of ownership on CapEx and OpEx.

The key mandates for IT managers are to accelerate infrastructure refresh and decommission old hardware (instead of re-purposing) to take full advantage of new technologies to consolidate, virtualize and reduce energy consumption to support business objective while reducing operating cost.

Teh Ban Seng, vice president and managing director, Seagate Technology Asia-Pacific

	Teh Ban Seng, Seagate
	Singapore has the benefit of a well-educated workforce, a central geographical location and a pro-business tax system.

Q: Are you prepared for the recession?
Seagate is acting prudently to ensure we stay strong throughout the economic downturn. We are focused on controlling costs, managing our inventory and investing in key technologies to ensure our product and technology leadership in the industry.

The challenge that the industry will face is the fierce competitive environment. With the global slowdown, the market landscape will certainly get more competitive. We believe we have the right fundamentals and strategy to be successful and to lead the market, but there is likely to be further consolidation to the industry, across the supply chain.

For Singapore, like the rest of Asia, it will find 2009 challenging as the global economy slows. However, Singapore has the benefit of a well-educated workforce, a central geographical location and a pro-business tax system, which helps make the local economy resilient to the worst aspects of the economic crisis.

What is a trend that you expect will go in your favor this year?
The explosive growth in digital devices, applications and content globally is breathtaking and consumers now drive much of this growth. The home now outpaces business in terms of storage.

The positive thing is that despite global issues, we expect to see continued growth across the region, albeit at a slower rate than before. This is driven by the demand from the emerging markets like China, India, ASEAN and also the overall growth of the consumer market across the region.

In the long term, all the trends for digital storage indicate significant growth.

In terms of threats, much has been written about SSD (solid state drives) or flash memory being a significant technology threat. In reality, flash memory is really more a complementary solution to the storage space, addressing the lower capacity and mobile space such as MP3 players, mobile phones and other portable digital devices. It is complementary in that much of the content is usually backed up on a hard drive anyway, therefore further driving demand.

As for SSD, the penetration in the notebook space has been very slow, and in fact a lot of the notebook makers have continued to focus on the HDD as the storage solution of choice. SSD will have some value in the enterprise computing space and we’re beginning to see that taking off.

Ziya Aral, chairman and CTO, DataCore Software

	Ziya Aral, Datacore
	IT should be a business enabler and not an inhibitor to corporate streamlining and growth.

Q: What is the biggest myth about virtualization and why?
The biggest myth about virtualization is that it has anything to do with hardware whatsoever. 90 percent of the virtualization solutions out there are packaged with hardware and the only objective of virtualization is to free the link between environment and hardware itself. The net-net is that the mythology of buying a virtualization "box", an appliance or a virtualization environment that includes mostly hardware is just totally insane. It is complete mythology made up by the vendors. The whole idea behind virtualization is to free your self from the infrastructure.

The biggest challenge facing IT departments is...
...how to continue to support more and more discrete systems--whether they are physical or virtual--with fewer and fewer people. This typically means that issues such as transportability, configurability, compatibility should all be very, very important characteristics of systems that IT departments deploy. As the number of people vis-à-vis the number of systems continues to decrease, then anything that is specialized, out-of-the-ordinary or "funky"--any boxes that people need to understand, any configurations that IT people need to understand become a bigger and bigger drag. The number of people manning these discrete systems is that much smaller.

Do you expect it to be business as usual, in light of the recession?
No, not at all. The single largest productivity increment in all industries--particularly if you get out of manufacturing and into service and even more so retail--is computerization. But it has been that way for a while. Computerization, automation, networking, all of these things have become significant costs in their own right for a very long time.

In a recession, you have two problems--one is that your business contracts. But the other thing is that you have to be prepared to deal with what happens when it stops contracting--because the whole world is reinvented in those moments.

You therefore have to worry about what recovery looks like. A recession significantly aggravates a problem, which under ordinary times can probably be deferred or ignored for some period of time.

Maarten Koster, president, general manager, Novell Asia-Pacific

	Peter Chai, 3Com
	Some applications work great on proprietary software environments while others are better on open source.

Q: What was the biggest thing that affected your company this year?
With the recent acquisitions that Novell made in the last one to two years, and with the possibility of a tough market situation in Singapore and in the region, we've revamped our go-to-market strategy, globally and in the Asia-Pacific region. This approach will realign our sales, engineering and support teams in the region, and help us operate with a tighter budget constraint.

It will be business as usual, but as with any other company in tough economic times, we have to be cautious and keep our costs down.

What technology trend are you looking forward to next year?
We expect see more and more organizations embracing mixed environments. Some applications work great on proprietary software environments while others are better on open source.

There have been recent reports on Web 2.0 tools only just beginning to gain traction among enterprises in the United States. I believe Asia-Pacific organizations will also begin to appreciate the use of Web 2.0-based collaboration tools within the organization.

Lars Ronning, president, Asia-Pacific (excluding China and Japan), Tandberg

	Lars Ronning, Tandberg
	Video-conferencing is also what the doctor ordered for the fatigued road warrior.

Q: What was the biggest thing that affected your company this year?
We were excited about the launch of our full suite full high-definition (HD) offering.

We have also seen in the past year the growing importance video plays in the unified communications (UC) environment. We see UC as a long-term project and we are looking to implement these in phases.

Is all this news about the recession next year going to affect you? Or do you expect it to be business as usual?
There will be some measure of challenge earlier in the year. We are optimistic however about the growth of our business. The reason for this is travel is often one of the first things to be dropped from the budget when companies trim costs. Besides, video-conferencing is also what the doctor ordered for the fatigued road warrior.

Global collaboration will not cease, despite current economic conditions. Video-conferencing ups productivity – executives get through more meetings with overseas counterparts in the same time it takes them to travel. Such degree of collaboration afforded by video-conferencing accelerates decision-making and work processes.

The biggest challenge facing IT departments is...
…stretching what is potentially a reduced IT budget to achieve more. Any solution implemented, therefore, needs to have a prominent ROI.

This might still be achievable yet. When managed right, technology doesn't necessarily translate to higher costs. Companies need to look at how technology fits into the overall business objectives and establish measurable metrics from which relevant data can be collected.

Technology collaboration continues to be important for companies finding their footing.

Michael Warrilow, director, Hydrasight

	Michael Warrilow, Hydrasight
	IT should be a business enabler and not an inhibitor to corporate streamlining and growth.

Q: What technology innovation or product are you looking forward to next year?
While I wouldn't say that I'm 'looking forward' to Windows 7, I believe it will be critical for Microsoft to succeed with this release. Windows is a key foundation upon which Microsoft have built their success yet many would argue it is increasingly becoming a noose tied around their neck.

At home, fear of the complexity and effort involved in upgrading to Vista have stymied all but the most ardent gamers and those buying new hardware. In the office, it is rare to find any medium-large organization that has been willing to commit to Vista--whatever the reason. Customers, competitors and the industry in general will therefore be watching Windows 7 with a keen eye. Can Microsoft continue to innovate on the desktop? Will organizations continue to stick with XP? Is there a viable alternative to Windows? Moreover, does the desktop OS matter anymore?

What technology release disappointed you this year?
I would have to say the so-called 'netbook' market because I believe is has failed to innovate as a solution. In a very quick period of time most netbooks have simply become a budget mini-laptop rather that a new or distinct class of device.

What is the biggest challenge facing IT in 2009?
The first is over-confidence. Hydrasight research shows that many organizations in the Asia-Pacific region now feel confident that they can resist most external threats and/or that those attacks will have minimal (if any) financial impact. This high degree of confidence has pervaded IT decision-making with regard to enterprise security.

We believe IT organizations must ensure that over-confidence does not adversely impact security vigilance and overall security posture. There are many new types of attacks rising 'up the stack' and we'll see social engineering be increasingly used, for example in harvesting personal information from Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Plaxo among other social networking sites.

Second, Asia-Pacific organizations must ensure they have made a decision whether it is necessary to continue with a 'best of breed' approach, and at what cost.

Do you expect it to be business as usual, in light of the recession?
Absolutely--for the leading IT organizations.

In 2009, IT departments will still be expected to deliver according to business needs and ever-decreasing timeframes--yet now with slightly tighter budgets. It is therefore the CIOs who took advantage of the 'good times', to develop and prepare their teams, that will fare best in the tougher global and regional economic climate. As a result, I believe 2009 will further differentiate the leading IT organizations in Asia Pacific from the followers.

While there will not be drastic reductions in IT spending, many IT vendors will be forced (or take the opportunity) to reduce headcount in order to demonstrate financial restraint (to shareholders). Similarly, the leading IT organizations in the region will take advantage of the downturn to reduce the bottom 5 percent of their IT personnel.

Paul Serrano, senior director marketing, Asia-Pacific and Japan, Riverbed Technology

	Paul Serrano, Riverbed
	It would be nearly impossible for any company to pursue a "business as usual" business plan or strategy given the current and continuing economic situation.

Q: What was the biggest thing that affected your company this year?
Certainly the biggest single event for all companies worldwide was the devastating fall of the financial markets and the resulting worldwide recession. While this event had severe repercussions for most companies, it in fact offered us a unique opportunity to offer cost-saving products to clients.

Will it be business as usual through the recession this year?
It would be nearly impossible for any company to pursue a "business as usual" business plan or strategy given the current and continuing economic situation. This applies to Riverbed as well. We will refocus our marketing specifically around the current CIO challenges created by the existing economic environment.

Our intention is to broadly communicate a set of best practices which enterprise, service providers, carriers and other organizational CXOs have adopted in direct response to the recession. We are optimistic that enablement of virtualization and data center and server consolidation will become the de facto plan for 2009. What will the biggest challenge for CIOs be this year?
IT mandates for 2009 will be to reduce costs while still delivering on strategic business objectives. This is a tough challenge even in the best of times. In a December 2007 Goldman Sachs survey of CIOs top IT priorities for 2008 some of the top 20 included consolidation, virtualization disaster recovery and WAN Optimization.

Disaster recovery is another critical concern for IT managers. To protect against catastrophic loss of the corporate information base, many enterprises have requirements to transfer vast amounts of their data to a disaster recovery site.

Jeff Roberto, marketing and PR director, Friendster

	Jeff Roberto, Friendster
	2009 will be the year that we will see more compelling advertising campaigns on social networks.

Q: What was the biggest thing that affected your company this year?
For Friendster, the single biggest positive event for us was our announcement of Richard Kimber as our new CEO and an additional US$20 million in funding, back in August.

What will 2009 be like for Friendster?
We’re already off to great start this year with a series of new revenue related partnerships, new hires, and new offices in Asia. We expect 2009 to be a big year for our business, the biggest to date.

What technology trend are you looking forward to?
Mobile social networking took off globally in 2008 and a significant portion of these mobile users came from Asia. We launched our mobile site, m.friendster.com, in May 2008, and we’re doing over 1.5 billion monthly page views on it now, just 8 months later. We expect Friendster Mobile which includes our mobile site, our text alerts feature, and more, to continue to grow. Mobile social networking is creating new opportunities for device manufacturers, application developers and social networks to embrace and monetize this traffic.

What is the biggest misconception about social networks which will change?
The misconception about social networks is their sheer size and amount of consumer online minutes they command. Seven out of the top 20 sites on the Web today are social networks and social media sites, most of these sites did not exist just five years ago. Social networks are leaders in user engagement, or time spent on a particular site per visitor per month.

Advertisers and marketers are beginning to pay attention to these numbers, and 2009 will be the year that marketers embrace this trend with more compelling advertising campaigns on social networks.

Jim Lenox, general manager, VMware, Asia South

	Jim Lenox, VMWare
	Standards are key to the success of public clouds.

Q: Will the economic downturn bring challenges or opportunity to VMWare?
The global economic downturn has made outlook ahead uncertain for all companies but, as with most situations, there is usually a silver lining--governments and businesses being forced to do more with less has led to a greater adoption of virtualization to consolidate hardware resources.

The biggest challenge facing IT departments is...
...to be able to do more with less, while continuing to support business growth.

We are really excited about cloud computing. Standards are key to the success of public clouds--standards that allow compatibility at the virtual machine layer for easier entry and exit from the cloud, and standards that enable applications to be migrated in and out of public clouds without modification.

In 2009, these advances will accelerate to enable companies both large and small to safely tap compute capacity inside and outside their firewalls--how they want, when they want, and as much as they want--to ensure quality of service for any application they want to run, internally or as an outsourced service when additional capacity is required.

Lori Sobel, managing director, Southeast Asia sales and operations, Google

	Lori Sobel, Google
	We believe that collaboration holds the keys to the future.

Q: What was the biggest thing that affected Google this year?
We've seen a number of key trends in our core business areas this year. In terms of search, which lies at the heart of what we do, we've noticed that more people are going online to submit queries and find information.

What trends are taking place in the search industry?

We've also seen that people continue to flock to the Internet for Web-based applications that offer online communications and collaboration and we're seeing a good take up rate of our free and paid versions of Google Apps.

Lastly, we've seen the trend towards giving users the best that the Web has to offer on a mobile device and the development of advanced mobile applications.

What changes do you foresee in your business due to the recession?
The economic recession is forcing both large and small advertisers to go towards a more cost-effective and measurable form of advertising, so many are now considering or increasing their budgets for search engine marketing.

What technology innovation are you looking forward to next year?
We're looking forward to seeing more from mobile. Worldwide, there are currently about 3.2 billion mobile subscribers, and that number is expected to grow by at least a billion in the next few years.

As these devices are powerful, connected, and sensor-rich, they hold tremendous opportunity to provide access to information and bring people together the world over. The phone that you have in your pocket, pack, or handbag could very soon change the way we think about ICT.

We also believe that cloud computing will go mainstream this year as a viable alternative for companies.

Besides saving money and reducing set-up and maintenance costs, IT departments can avoid the distraction of common tech problems like server maintenance, spam filter patches and backups related to these kinds of applications and leave it all to the hosting company. Upgrades and improvements are available automatically, while cloud computing can scale easily to accommodate growing user bases and storage needs.

What is the biggest misconception about open standards that will change next year?
There seems to be a misconception that free, open platforms, and correspondingly open source, are not high-quality solutions. Yet in fact, by providing developers a new level of openness that enables them to work more collaboratively, we can harness their collective wisdom to vastly improve products.

Openness allows people to learn from each other, challenge each other, and build on each other's ideas. We believe that collaboration holds the keys to the future and we're fully invested in open source projects. We believe great things are built by great people coming together, and that open platforms will drive better technology for users.

Andy Cocks, director of solutions development and strategy, Datacraft Asia

	Andy Cocks, Datacraft
	We have just deployed several telepresence systems in different cities, enabling us to cut down on travel expenses.

Q: What are some business that affected Datacraft's business last year?

We foresee that in 2009, there will be a lot of exciting new content being created thanks to improved Internet infrastructure and increased traffic on the Internet so we are working to create content management solutions.

In the travel and transport industries, we are excited about the next-generation hotels. In the past, you have hotels running their fire detection and alarm system as well as their access security system running separately. What we want to achieve is integrating these disparate systems into one central system, using IP so that there is centralized management, reducing costs and increasing efficiency.

Do you have a strategy to cope with the economic downturn?
Our business operations and orders remain steady because people are looking to Asia for business and growth opportunities after the economic meltdown in Europe and US.

However we still remain cautious, taking very pragmatic and prudent measures like cost-cutting and the constant monitoring of the company's situation in every market we operate in.

In terms of cost-cutting, we are implementing a selective hiring freeze within the company.

In fact we have just deployed several telepresence systems in Singapore, Hong Kong and soon Japan to facilitate virtual meetings, enabling us to cut down on travel expenses.

Jonathan Yeo, managing director, North East Asia and South Asia

	Jonathan Yeo, Lexmark
	2009 will see IT departments go under more scrutiny with regard to any IT spend.

Q: What was the biggest thing which affected your company in 2008?
The second half of 2008 when the financial crisis hit, business slowed as customers deferred purchases. The ensuing tightening of credit had also affected some customer purchases. We were also affected by currency movements in the Singapore dollar and other Asian currencies as we reported our business in U.S. dollars.

However, we believe that 2009 will continue to present opportunities for us. Government budgets and spending will likely continue to be strong, so the public sector will be a key focus for us. On our enterprise business, many customers will look at, and accelerate initiatives on cutting costs. This will be good for our "Managed Print Services" business, which provides opportunities for our customers to save cost.

To help SMBs in this challenging business environment, we will offer them some choices of acquisition such as through leasing or utility pricing, so they may opt for capital or operating expenditure, depending on customer preferences.

What will be some challenges facing IT departments in 2009?
While IT departments are constantly challenged to help their organizations achieve their business goals with minimal IT costs, we believe 2009 will see such departments go under more scrutiny with regard to any IT spend.

Ravi Shekhar Pandey, manager, syndicated research, Springboard Research

	Ravi Shekhar Pandey, Springboard Research
	Countries most affected by the recession will be mature IT markets in export-oriented economies like Korea and Taiwan, and countries heavily-dependent on the financial services industry like Hong Kong and Singapore.

Q: What technology innovation or product are you looking forward to next year?
While there have been many IT innovations that help companies manage growth and a peak in demand for the products or services, there are very few innovations that can help companies address challenges arising out of drastic changes in the business environment.

I believe that 2009 will see more of technologies and solutions that can help companies cope with downturns and manage risks associated with changes in economic environment in a better way.

I think IT companies can help business design a solution that can simulate different business and economic environments for them and how would that impact their business--for instance, how would a chip manufacturer get impacted if there is a 1 percent drop in retail purchases in the United States or a 1 percent drop in economic growth in China? Such a solution would help them manage a crisis like situation better.

Was there a technology release which failed to live up to its hype and disappointed you this year?
There were no disappointments as such, but there was definitely a lot of hype around cloud computing, green IT and virtualization. However, we believe it's typical for technologies to go through a period of hype and we expect these technologies and concepts to do well in 2009.

What are some challenges which will IT departments next year, and will there be any new challenges?

As companies look at curtailing investments and controlling costs, some of the biggest challenges of IT departments will be around spending.

However, the key challenge for them will be to help their organizations grow their markets and sustain profitability in a difficult economic environment. Given that, CIOs will have to operate with reduced IT budgets but heightened expectations to deliver more.

There would be more focus on innovation. However, innovation will not always come easily and may take a much longer time the most organizations would expect or want. We believe that creating innovative IT solutions and practices will be the biggest challenge for IT departments and those who focus on innovation will emerge stronger at the end of the economic crisis.

But it is unlikely that innovation will be a widespread phenomenon--many companies will continue to depend on conventional ways to come out of the crisis.

What are some expected effects of the recession on business?
Certain countries like India and China will continue to grow, albeit at lower rates. This relative strength in IT spending will help to power the growth that we will see in the region and increase their primacy in the Asia Pacific-IT market at the expense, in particular, of Australia and Korea.

The most affected countries will be mature IT markets in export-oriented economies like Korea and Taiwan, and countries heavily-dependent on the financial services industry like Hong Kong and Singapore.

Thailand will experience significantly slower growth as it deals not only with the economic crisis, but its ongoing political troubles that have increased business uncertainty in the country. Indonesia and Vietnam will be less affected as the combination of limited existing IT investments and solid domestic demand will ensure ongoing IT spending.

We also believe that as technology has permeated far deeper into businesses' operations over the past 7-10 years and while it is a much larger component of most organizations' total spending, it has also become crucial to increasing efficiencies, competing in an increasingly globalized market, and expanding revenues.

Springboard therefore believes that while technology spending will definitely be affected by this crisis, it will be more resilient than other areas that are often easier and quicker to cut.

Darryl Dickens, head of marketing, Asia-Pacific and Japan, HP Software and Solutions

	Darryl Dickens, HP
	Now, you add in all the volatility the business is facing and in turn the changes to budgets, project and portfolio changes, modifications to services, and IT has an increasingly tough challenge in 2009.

Q: What was the biggest thing that affected your company last year?
The continued build-out internally, as well as external acquisitions (such as EDS) have significantly changed the size of our software and solutions business. If you look at the overall change in terms of HP Software and Solutions from 2008 to 2009, we grew at a global level by 20 percent to surpass US$3 billion in revenue, and this is a tripling of overall revenue in four years.

Asia-Pacific and Japan was a strong contributor to this growth and build-out, so we are significantly larger than only one year ago.

Will it be business as usual in light of the recession?
It is never business as usual, as business is never static. If you believe straight-line projections then you will eventually be disappointed.

As we look at the current environment, there are some areas that we will emphasize due to the strategic fit and need for these. For example, our IT Management software is available as a SaaS offering. This is an important option to have available to customers right now due the speed of deployment, cost efficiencies and risk mitigation that a SaaS offering can deliver.

The biggest challenge facing IT departments is...
...being able to truly deliver on an aligned business and IT vision, which means transparency and control over change requests, projects and overall portfolio, and on an ongoing basis measure and deliver this from a top-down, business service perspective. Managing change across the entire lifecycle was already a big challenge due to the increasing complexity of the IT environment and the sheer volume of change facing the IT team--everything from swapping a server, putting in a patch for an application, modifying a service, or major application deployment.

Now, you add in all the volatility the business is facing and in turn the changes to budgets, project and portfolio changes, modifications to services, and IT has an increasingly tough challenge in 2009.

Jens Butler, principal analyst, IT services, Ovum

	Jens Butler, Ovum
	Austerity will be the mother of invention in 2009

Q: What technology innovation or product are you looking forward to next year?

2009 will usher forth a business landscape dominated by the global financial crisis. Organisations will be actively exploring new ways to cut costs, restructure operations and leverage integrated global capabilities.

These imperatives will flow through to the technology sector, with enterprises looking increasingly to industry for radical new ways to source and manage technology, including cloud computing, outsourcing and enterprise 2.0.

As such, critical areas of focus will be access to funding, operational funding, risk management, performance management and M&A.

Some of the specific areas will be:

• Cloud computing and virtualization
• Quality Assurance, Governance and Information Security
• Retained organizations
• Increasing focus on BPO, ITO and Offshoring
• Green IT and Sustainable solutions and their impacts
• Enterprise 2.0 and the benefits associated with it
• How will the Economic Flux/Downturn impact strategies, procurement, servicing and operations

Was there a technology release which failed to live up to its hype and disappointed you this year?
Anything around convergence, and the Web and Enterprise 2.0 trend. General takeup within the enterprise has been less impressive due to the controls put in place and the fear associated with corporate identity risk.

What are some challenges which will IT departments next year, and will there be any new challenges?
From a business perspective, austerity will be the mother of invention in 2009, with the primary drivers being cost leadership strategies and thus, the priority very much driven by responding to the impact of the global financial crisis.

Even in the darkest reaches of a recession, clients will continue to expect quality services delivered at appropriate pricing levels with continual improvements to both. It is vital that vendors retain a sense of perspective: the recession will end; demand for IT services will recover. We do not for one moment suggest that economic conditions will turn around in a few months and we can go back to business as usual. The market will continue to evolve and vendors' strategies must evolve with it.

Expect an increase in demand for outsourcing, especially offshoring and to add extra impetus, a closer alignment of ITO and BPO offerings, as buyers gain more confidence with letting go of non-core operations.

As such, a growth in virtualization and data centre hosting will be a big focus. As will the growth of partner/alliances/eco-systems which benefits not only direct, but indirect partners and associated stakeholders.

Even in light of the recent satyam scandal, there will still be a focus on realizing the benefits associated with offshoring, maybe with a bit more governance wrapped around it.

Gerald Penaflor, senior director, enterprise business, Asia-Pacific and regional head, South Asia-Pacific/Korea, Brocade

	Gerald Penaflor, Brocade
	Management of unstructured data will account for more than 80% of all organization-generated information.

Q: Have you seen a dip in business since the start of the recession?
Despite the negative effects of the recession, Brocade has yet to see a downturn in demand for our solutions as consolidated and managed storage of electronic data are still critical aspects of IT operations for many businesses. However, Brocade is aware of the fact that IT budgets will be tighter than ever due to the recession, and is not complacent of its capability to ride out the economic crisis. We expect our operations in Asia to see a possible shift in investment from the United States to Asia's emerging economies, increasing the pull factor for long-term investments in this region.

The biggest challenge facing IT departments is...

There are a number of key challenges facing IT departments: the scalability and management of data centers, power and cooling, as well as management of unstructured data. Many data centers are incapable of scaling to meet the challenge of growing data that is becoming increasingly complex. Scaling of data centers is further impeded, as funding and administrative staffs remain static.

In fact, not all IT departments have their own professional services teams or support staff, due mainly to a lack of specialized talent who are trained in data center operations and management. This makes it increasingly difficult for data centers to be properly managed and run at optimum efficiency.

Today, data centers and computer rooms across the globe consume approximately two percent of the world’s energy, and the numbers will continue to grow on a daily basis. Rising energy cost and high-density compute equipment has also created power and cooling issues in the data center and increased the carbon footprint in the world.

Due to power and cooling issues, many data centers running are also running out of power to process applications that supports business growth and needs.

Management of unstructured data will account for more than 80% of all organization-generated information. Lack of strategic framework to manage the proliferation of file base data will drive investments in file virtualization and clustered file systems.

Stree Naidu, regional vice president, Tumbleweed Asia-Pacific and Japan

	Stree Naidu, Tumbleweed
	There has never been greater demand for transparency, integration and collaboration.

Q: What was the biggest thing that affected your company this year?

Tumbleweed's merger with Axway is the largest significant change for the company in 2008. Axway is provider of B2B collaboration, managed file transfer, and integration, and Tumbleweed provides content security for email, identity validation and managed file transfer, so our offerings are complementary.

Is all this news about the recession next year expected to affect your business?

During a recession, businesses cannot afford to stop spending on IT security so we are expecting business as usual, if not better. We have not seen spending dip in the security side of the business.

Data leakages in an organization will prove to be disastrous for business credibility, hence there is a real need to stay vigilant and look to cost-effective, scalable solutions that offer both front and back end protection against incoming and outgoing threats. Regulatory compliance is set to be a major focus for enterprises, as governments in various markets step up and tighten their policies.

Due to governmental regulations, changing market conditions and the need for a competitive edge, there has never been greater demand for transparency, integration and collaboration. Every major enterprise must transform fundamental business processes to become a collaborative, enabling interactions inside and outside the enterprise to deliver competitive advantage.

The biggest challenge facing IT departments is...

...keeping up with new threats, as a task that their current technologies are unable to handle. For example, spam delivery methods and content have evolved faster than their filtering solution technologies, such that the blockers are growing less effective with time. The rise in image spam and junk mail takes a serious toll on an organization’s bottom line. Message delivery times, storage capacity needs, bandwidth constraints, and user complaints are high on the list of problems that arise when spam over­loads a messaging system.

The bottom line is, when a problem occurs with email or a problem arrives via email, most companies aren’t covered beyond the basic solution that they have in place. And increasingly, the basic solutions aren’t flexible enough to handle new threats.

To achieve regulatory compliance and avoid risk, companies must institute thorough outbound mail scanning and encryption. In order to avoid IT overload, a situation commonly faced by organizations, these security solutions must be easy to configure and manage.

Steve Felice, President, Dell Asia-Pacific and Japan

	Steve Felice, Dell
	Cloud computing and green IT will hit mainstream audiences in 2009.

Q: What is your game plan for the recession?
The current economic uncertainty has surely affected many companies one way or another. Everywhere, companies are looking at how to best meet 2009 with a solid and competitive plan to maintain what they have got and grow where they can.

To address the global financial crisis, we reduced costs and improved efficiency across our various business units.

In Q3, we lowered operating expenses to 12.1 percent, the lowest level in seven quarters, which has resulted in increased profitability.

We are confident that we are in a good position, especially in Asia Pacific, to emerge from the global economic downturn in 2009.

What technology innovation or product are you looking forward to this year?
Cloud computing and green IT, arguably the most talked about trends in 2008, will hit mainstream audiences in 2009 as companies look to the pair to help cut costs and increase efficiency.

The biggest challenge facing IT departments is...
...finding solutions that minimize investment costs but provides maximum flexibility is probably going to be the biggest challenge that our industry faces in 2009.

Ryan Chioh, executive director of Far East Flora.com

	Ryan Chioh, FarEastFlora.com
	The IT department needs to contend with productivity if too much controls are put in place.

Q: What technology innovation or product are you looking forward to next year?
I am looking forward to lighter notebooks with longer battery life. I do travel a bit, and sometimes enjoy watching some movies on my laptop. That’s why I wish for that. On top of that, if they can be charged wirelessly, it will be great. I think the part about batteries being charged wirelessly may become a reality soon.

Was there a technology release which disappointed you this year?
I think the 3G iPhone was a bit of a disappointment. The fact that it did not allow SMS-forwarding and video recording kind of baffles me for a company that is known for their multimedia. Maybe they are holding back the features so that customers will upgrade their phones when they roll out the new ones.

The biggest challenge facing IT departments in 2009 is...?
I believe security continues to be a bugbear for IT departments. There are too many loopholes for security to be fully enforced. The IT department also needs to contend with productivity if too much controls are put in place. It's not a position that I would like to be in.

Do you expect it to be business as usual, in light of the recession?
I think that business can be as usual for software and application development companies. This is because companies will now have time to talk to vendors about the processes that they have been wanting to do but have not done so due to good times last year. In terms of hardware sales, I think if customers can hold, they will. They will think very hard if they want to spend the money to buy that new computer or they can live with the current one.

Stanley Lee, general manager, Torex Southeast Asia

	Stanley Lee, Torex
	Retailers in Asia will have to strive to excite, engage and retain their customers.

Q: What was the biggest change affecting your company this year?
During the year Torex defined and commenced implementation of a revised go-to-market strategy that ensured we properly managed both our direct customers whilst building a channel network for the licensing and support.

In addition, we implemented a new product strategy identifying our existing global applications and new products including customer loyalty, mobile POS (point-of-sale) and merchandise allocation.

We hope these will help us achieve better brand awareness worldwide as well as improve customer understanding and continuing commitment to the Torex brand.

How will the recession affect your customners?
Retailers are looking for savings, with a more immediate ROI. Therefore, while retailers are continuing to invest around point of service, labor scheduling, merchandising, loyalty and so on, it is our belief that their focus will be less on hardware and/or other transformational projects.

With increasing competition and the challenging economic climate, Torex believes that retailers in Asia will have to strive to excite, engage and retain their customers. They will have to adopt latest technologies including software applications to help them improve customer experience, increase their margins and improve their bottom lines. This could be done by focusing on areas like building loyalty programs, loss prevention, merchandise and assortment planning, queue busting and online shopping.

The biggest challenge facing IT departments is...
...ROI, speed of deployment, reduced total cost of ownership.

Peter Chai, vice president and general manager, 3Com Asia-Pacific

	Peter Chai, 3Com
	Technology companies focused heavily on the Western markets now have plenty to worry about.

Q: What was the biggest thing that affected your company this year?
3Com's biggest technology threat--as well as opportunity--would be the commoditization of network equipment. That's why we have put in place an open services networking (OSN) strategy to create an open source-based network platform for all services that both 3Com and third-party software developers can ride on. So rather than avoid commoditization, 3Com encourages it and works towards an infrastructure that will become a flexible platform for delivering business applications and services.

How do you expect the recession will affect 3Com?
The scale, speed and intensity of the global economic downturn have caught businesses by surprise. Some analysts have forecast tech spending in the United States and Europe to decline, while expecting Asia to buck the trend with modest growth.

Technology companies focused heavily on the Western markets now have plenty to worry about. It has suddenly become urgent for them to ramp up their sales in the Asia and other emerging markets. 3Com is fortunate that it has a head start in this area--more than half of 3Com's revenue currently comes from established operations in China and the Asia-Pacific region.

We also believe the financial crisis will also usher in an era of prudent tech spending, where more businesses will start to look for alternatives that offer the best value performance in terms of technological innovation, business relevance and reliability.

What technology innovation or product are you looking forward to next year?
We are eagerly anticipating the start of broad-based adoption of the 802.11n protocol to deploy new wireless applications.

With mobile devices becoming more pervasive and finding application across verticals, mobile technologies that enable high user volumes, high bandwidth voice services, seamless roaming and adaptive mesh creation, as well as industry-specific services like asset tracking, will become important for businesses and consumers.

We expect uptake to be especially fast in verticals like logistics, manufacturing and retail, which can immediately leverage advanced 802.11n wireless connectivity to provide high performance and reliable wireless control and tracking solutions.

Charles Reed, CEO, Docomo interTouch

	Charles Reed, Docomo interTouch
	In this global financial crisis, it is more critical than ever for IT executives to invest strategically in the right solutions to maximise the return-of-investment for their companies.

Q: What was the biggest thing that affected your company this year?

Our acquisition of major rival MagiNet was our biggest milestone in 2008. As a result of the acquisition, we now cater to over 1,400 hotels worldwide, making us the biggest hotel technology provider in the Asia-Pacific region and one of the biggest in the world. In terms of global headcount, we’ve also increased our team of employees to 1,000.

The acquisition was a strong driver in helping us start 2008 with US$50 million recurring annual revenue and ended the year with an estimated US$160 million.

How will the recession impact businesses?
The recession will definitely impact all, if not most, businesses. There are two areas where significant impact will be seen. Firstly, obtaining credit will be more challenging and companies with weak balance sheets will be in a disadvantaged position and unable to capitalise on new opportunities.

Secondly, there will also be a sharp decline in general spend. As a result, organizations that have strong balance sheets with good fiscal discipline are more likely to ride out the crisis better. In my opinion, this unique environment will create a whole host of opportunities for companies who are able to use these conditions to their benefit.

In the hospitality industry, some establishments will inevitably cut costs on technology but prestige hotels and global chains will continue to invest in technology solutions that will help them retain guest loyalty and rise above the competition.

The biggest challenge facing IT departments is...
...justifiying and measuring results for their investment in technologies and solutions. In this global financial crisis, it is more critical than ever for IT executives to invest strategically in the right solutions to maximise the return-of-investment for their companies.

Docomo interTouch, for example, has recently invested in Google Apps--a cost-efficient solution for managing email and data for our employees worldwide. Not only does it offer us real-time collaboration and access anywhere and anytime, we estimate that Google Apps brings us about 40 to 50 percent cost savings compared to other third-party hosted solutions over a three-year period.

Matt Kolon, CTO, Juniper Networks Asia-Pacific

	Matt Kolon, Juniper Networks
	The recession presents us with an opportunity to selectively invest in emerging markets and benefit from the rapid pace of change seen there.

What was the biggest technology innovation that affected your company last year?
The biggest change I see is in green networking. The green trend brought about cost savings, network and data consolidation and virtualization. While it's been on the agenda for some time, 2009 is likely to see quantifiable metrics for efficiency and power consumption become a core element to RFPs.

To date, it's been a nice-to-have with vague, unquantifiable goals. There are now testing standards that allow more rigorous demands to be placed around the green credentials for networking equipment.

Is there an industry trend you are looking forward to next year?
Against a backdrop of economic uncertainty, environmental pressures and tighter budgets, I'm looking forward to the continued convergence and cost reduction in 2009. The industry will see a focus on consolidation and reduced complexity, alongside the long anticipated adoption of IPv6.

The biggest challenge facing IT departments is...
...always "doing more with less", and especially so in 2009. IT departments will be encouraged to deploy simple, fast security, enable effective management and compliance response, and improve overall IT efficiency.

Will it be business as usual next year with the recession, or will there be changes Juniper intends to make?
In this tight economic conditions, we are generally optimistic and believe that there's opportunity for the company. The focus for the company this year is on ROI and with the expansion of our product portfolio, the recession presents us with an opportunity to selectively invest in emerging markets and benefit from the rapid pace of change seen there.

Tan Aye See, managing director, Asia-Pacific, Savvis

	Tan Aye See, Savvis
	Emerging technologies and infrastructure models are allowing an increasing number of CIOs to focus on their core business strategies and applications, instead of maintaining their own IT infrastructure.

Q: What was the biggest thing that affected your company this year?
2008 was a great year for Savvis. We grew the number of our data centers globally by 45 percent, ending the year with a total of 29 data centers totalling 1.43 million square feet in space.

We also expanded our data center in Singapore, and launched a data center in Japan.

Is all this news about the recession next year expected to affect Savvis? Or do you expect it to be business as usual? We have already felt the impact of the recession both in our U.S. and Europe operations, mainly with customers who have deferred expansion plans and for those who were unable to ride out the crisis.

While this is an unfortunate result of the recession, it was not completely unexpected. That said, given shrinking budgets and greater economic constraints on data center consumption and space, we are seeing a new customer emerge from the economic crisis--one with a single-minded focus to cut costs and stay financially viable.

What technology innovation or product are you looking forward to next year?
In 2009, we are looking forward to further enhancing our SaaS (software-as-a-service) product to enable fast, economical, and reliable deployment of SaaS applications.

Also, we intend to take utility services and evolve them into enterprise-class cloud computing products. We hope to combine the power of cloud networks with a "pay-as-you-go" service to meet customer requirements.

The biggest challenge for IT departments is...
...dealing with the multiple applications necessary to support their business in a cost-effective manner. Reducing this complexity is the single biggest pain-point for IT departments.

However, emerging technologies and infrastructure models are allowing an increasing number of CIOs to focus on their core business strategies and applications, instead of maintaining their own IT infrastructure.

Sunny Lee, CIO, Hong Kong Jockey Club

	Sunny Lee, Hong Kong Jockey Club
	I'm looking at pay-as-you-use options, and how we can leverage on service oriented approaches to promote reusability and also be able to engage more utility models.

Q: What technology innovation or product are you looking forward to this year?
The Web is one area. I think we will see further interesting or drastic development in the Web space. Even though the Internet has been around for a number of years [and] we've already entered into the Web 2.0 [era], consumers are getting excited and there are a lot of models being proven. I'm keen to see that being leveraged to serve our customers, and bring that sort of technology as a means to enable [better] efficiency through collaborating internally, for example.

Mobility--that ties back to the Web--[is important for users], especially those in Hong Kong, Singapore and [other] more advanced economies. The infrastructure is getting ever so mature, with wireless connectivity options everywhere and at very affordable pricing. And devices are widely available. This is when people are staying connected wherever they go.

[We want to continuously explore] how we can offer to people on-the-go, experience as good as the home or the office. There will be more intelligent phones with better browsing and Internet connections, with more security [features] built into them. Also, with netbooks quickly becoming popular, and wireless hotspots everywhere, this is an area I'm watching for new developments.

I'm looking at what we call pay-as-you-use type of options, and how we can leverage on service orientation type of approach so we can promote reusability and also be able to engage more utility models.

I'm also looking at virtualization to optimize our asset utilization--we're already have a trial in our testing environment so we'll continue to roll that out to the production area. We're working on server virtualization first, and I'm also actively looking at desktop virtualization. On the desktop side, we have been for a number of years looking at thin client-type desktop virtualization. This technology is maturing--a few years back we didn't find good solutions, but we're hopeful that in the coming year we will be able to see some good breakthrough in that space.

Was there any technology that disappointed you, or you felt didn't live up to its hype?
I have to say, service oriented architecture (SOA). It was heading there but not totally there. It has been talked about for a long time, and at least in Asia we're not seeing a whole lot of success stories. I'm hopeful that it'll mature further, with standards in place, services being offered by different vendors, and frameworks being in place.

Another thing on my mind--it's not so much about technology but more of a concern. The recent consolidation through vendor acquisitions, concern me. From a buyer [point of view], I'm seeing that I have less and less choice. I used to have different products, and now it's one product. I don't know whether this affects healthy competition and the ability to not put all eggs in one basket.

I also have some disappointment regarding talent--the ability of our vendors to be able to have qualified people to help us deploy, not bleeding edge, but relatively new technology. In this part of the world, whenever there's a new product that's introduced usually by a company in the western world, the support doesn't come so fast. And the professional know-how, the talent and the consultancy usually lag behind, and as such it creates some unnecessary hiccups from time-to-time. Local people are still catching up with the new products, or the whole bug-fixing cycle is not satisfactory or not up to my expectations.

What do you think is the biggest challenge facing IT departments this year?
The biggest challenge is being able to perform in an uncertain business environment. In stable times, businesses will be able to tell you what's going to happen next. But now, everyone says 'I don't know what will happen next' or 'I don't know if we need to cut a product'...We're still suffering from the big shock of this financial tsunami, and everyone is off-balance. People are still trying to figure out a strategy moving forward...so if that's the case, then it's a big confusion for IT.

The challenge moving forward is how IT can be agile and respond to these uncertainties, while at the same time being able to deliver quickly the enabling technologies to help businesses cope with these changes. This translates to a lot of requirements--it translates to having the right people; right management, operational and project processes; right technology approach; how the IT organization is being structured and what sort of alignment with the business; and how well you understand and are up to date with the business.

Gerry Chng, partner, Ernst & Young solutions

	Gerry Chng, Ernst & Young
	Keep cloud computing on your agenda over the next two years as the market consolidates and matures.

Q: What technology was under- or over-hyped last year?
2008 saw cloud computing as a contender to be an over-hyped technology. That's not saying that there aren't clear benefits of cloud computing. With cloud computing, businesses can focus on their competencies rather than worry about keeping the systems running as they start using infrastructure and/or applications as a service in the cloud. Functionalities can also be enabled or disabled as required in a more flexible manner to suit the market conditions and strategic intents of the business.

However, with the buzz created around cloud computer, we have seen technology companies rushing to align their solutions to be cloud-enabled, resulting in solutions that only address very specific needs. This often causes confusion as to what the cloud really is, the extent of its coverage, and what business benefits can be derived from it.

Taking an internal view, most infrastructures and applications are currently built up on-premise, and are usually heavily tailored to each organization's needs. It will be an upheaval task to dismantle the entire core facilities and move it to the cloud, and it will take several years before organizations can reasonably justify switching the capital build-up to an expense model through cloud computing.

Even if such a task can be achieved now, such a migration will likely happen in a very disconnected manner due to the niche nature of existing industry players, for example different providers for incident management, email and communications, customer relationship management. At its current stage, there are likely more inefficiencies than promised as each solution plays a niche role, and there will be greater challenges in getting two service providers to inter-operate when the organization does not actually own the equipment.

Do not disregard cloud computer totally though. Keep this on your agenda over the next two years as the market consolidates and matures. The hype is likely to clear up and leaders will emerge with a sufficiently broad coverage. And that’s when the industry will see the full promise of cloud computing.

The biggest security/risk management challenge facing businesses in 2009 is...
...managing information security in a cost-effective manner. Compliance has been a primary driver for information security over the last few years and organizations have benefited from more robust controls and processes. CIOs now need to turn their attention to making IT a business enabler, and transforming the risk management initiatives into one that is sustainable and cost-effective. This current climate makes it even more important for IT to prove its value to the business by truly being an enabler of business processes.

The cliché of doing more with less cannot be more true. At the same time that IT discretionary budget is reduced, organizations find themselves needing to be more innovative in its use of IT to enable the business to reach out to new channels and achieve new possibilities. This antagonizing situation of reduced budgets, and increased information mobility and system complexity, places a heavier burden on the information security function. This challenge becomes more complicated for organizations that are undergoing restructuring or mergers where two different risk cultures, policies and controls, and IT systems are brought together.

Organizations need to adopt a holistic view of how their security initiatives are performing through rationalization of controls, mapping of policies to controls, and management of security events by exceptions. This will require a system of identifying necessary security requirements, understanding how these requirements are achieved through system controls, establishing cost-effective means to monitor controls effectiveness, and alerting management to key exceptions.

How do you expect the current economic climate to impact the security posture of enterprises?
Given the general uncertainties and increasing demands precipitated by the current economic climate, there may be increasing probabilities of fraud or insider theft of information. Hence, organizations need to be ever more vigilant to possible information security lapses and be prepared to deal with recovery should such incidents occur.

One of the beauties of technological evolution is the mobility of information. However, information security practices may not necessarily have kept pace, as some organizations still hold a traditional view of information security, where the focus is on keeping the bad guys out, and less emphasis is placed on monitoring how and where information is being exposed by internal resources. By internal resources, we mean both employees with privileged access to information, as well as outsourced vendors that have been contracted to handle various processes such as facilities management or backup media management.

The information security policies of today need to be as mobile as the flow of information--it should follow the information throughout its lifecycle, regardless of whether it is residing with trusted employees, business partners, or outsourced vendors.

With the pressures caused by the economic climate, leading organizations will start to identify and classify their business data, and subsequently establish processes and technological controls to monitor and safeguard information against accidental or deliberate loss or theft. The current climate will likely be a catalyst for organizations to start focusing on possible losses due to insider threats, resulting in a more holistic view of information security – which is to protect the information, and not just the infrastructure.

Alex Chua, regional director, Promethean

	Alex Chua, Promethean
	Schools tend to regard ease of use, interactivity and value-added content as main criteria for their technology investments.

Q: What are some ways catering to the education sector differs from other commercial sectors?
The education sector views its return on investments (ROI) differently from the commercial sector.

The commercial sector tends to view the bottomline as the main yardstick for making purchases. Schools tend to regard ease of use, interactivity and value-added content as main criteria for their technology investments.

Schools also work with limited resources in-house when it comes to maintaining IT equipment and solutions. Products and IT solutions for schools have to be easy to learn, easy to use and easy to maintain to ensure that these equipment last and stay relevant for schools in the long run.

Having said that, education organizations are still businesses at the end of the day, so costs, performance and value are still high priority.

True or false: the education sector is insulated from the upcoming recession.
True, to a certain extent--the public education sector receives budget allocations from government. During times of recession, education continues to be a focus for governments and these budgets will not be impacted to a large degree. Some may even argue that education budgets should increase in times of economic turmoil.

Private education organizations still rely on investors and shareholders for funding and these may see an impact on IT spending.

Governments understand the value of pushing education to the next level in terms of interactivity, innovation and leveraging technology to inspire the next generation of leaders. Therefore, technology spending in education is seen as an investment for the society in the long term.

What are some challenges IT departments face?
One major challenge is aligning IT investments to business objectives. In the case of education, it is having to convince shareholders how a certain technology can help improve efficiency within the organization, or help teachers better access the development and level of engagement of students.

IT departments in schools have to provide solutions within a limited budget and often need to anticipate needs of teachers and students before technology requirements become an issue. The major challenge is having to balance the need for IT equipment with how these purchases can add to the learning experience in schools.

IT departments in schools often have to consider how a certain technology will be received by students, teachers or parents, or if a certain technology will be well received. The IT departments have to gauge how receptive these 'audiences' are to using technology in schools.

Gavin Selkirk, corporate senior vice president and general manager, CA Asia-Pacific and Japan

	Gavin Selkirk, CA
	One overarching technology issue will be about helping the world of business to manage IT in a way that will satisfy performance, competition and growth demands at the same time as reducing harmful impact on the environment.

Q: What was the biggest thing that affected your company this year?
The most significant event of the year was, without doubt, the global financial tsunami. We are working through one of the most challenging periods that many of us can remember.

Operationally, CA's biggest event of 2008 in the Asia-Pacific and Japan region was our shift to a new go-to-market model, by which a number of partner organizations became the primary sales interface for CA’s portfolio of IT management software in Greater China, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and New Zealand.

This was designed to drive sales and improve our sales relationships with customers.

What technology innovation are you looking forward to next year?
Innovation for the sake of innovation doesn't really interest CA, unless it can be channeled into solving problems for client organizations and making them more successful.

Having said that, I believe that the one overarching technology issue throughout 2009 will be about helping the world of business to manage IT in a way that will satisfy performance, competition and growth demands at the same time as reducing harmful impact on the environment.

The biggest challenge facing IT departments is?
Their biggest challenge for the foreseeable future will be to govern, manage and secure IT to optimize business performance and sustain competitive advantage.

Geraldine McBride, president, SAP Asia-Pacific Japan

	Geraldine McBride, SAP
	IT should be a business enabler and not an inhibitor to corporate streamlining and growth.

Q: Is the recession this year expected to affect business?

SAP's business fundamentals are strong and our financials are solid. We have reacted fast and taken the right measures, and we remain convinced that we will emerge from the current economic circumstances stronger than ever.

Despite the unfavourable market conditions in the later half of 2008, we are pleased with SAP Asia-Pacific Japan's (APJ) performance in 2008 to date.

We have taken some prudent steps in these uncertain times to help us to manage our cost base in volatile market conditions.

Going forward, we will continue to assess and monitor the situation carefully and make adjustments where necessary. We are clearly aware of the current market conditions, and yet do not wish to sacrifice potential growth when the environment recovers.

What is the biggest challenge IT departments face?
Given the uncertainty surrounding the current economic and business environment, organizations across both public and private sectors increasingly realize that IT is not just an efficiency enabler, but can enhance innovation of business models and processes.

We see many companies prioritizing their spending on strategic IT initiatives, often concentrating on more narrowly focused projects which directly address business pain points and provide rapid return on investment.

Oliver Foo, managing director, Singapore and Brunei, Alcatel-Lucent

	Oliver Foo, Alcatel-Lucent
	Fiber optics, driven by the National Broadband Network project will be very hot [this year].

Q: What was the biggest thing that affected Alcatel-Lucent in 2008?
2008 saw the rapid proliferation of Web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0 applications which altered the way people and organizations personalised, collaborated and shared information.

Recognizing this, Alcatel-Lucent focused on improving the Web experience for end users and enterprises.

Moving forward, we will be working closely with service providers, customers and application providers to effect this positioning of the company.

What impact do you expect the recession to have on the telecoms space?
Anyone following the global telecoms industry will tell you that major operators are reducing investments in their networks and buying less equipment. No service provider or vendor will remain unaffected.

Having said that, we believe that acting on our new strategy will bring new business opportunities, as we work closely with service providers, customers and application providers.

What technology innovation are you looking forward to in 2009?
Specifically for Singapore, fiber optics, driven by the National Broadband Network project will be very hot.

Kwang Tat Ang, CEO, ANTlabs

	Kwang Tat Ang, ANTlabs
	Confidence in the system is an invisible foundation that once broken, will have potential cascading and damaging consequences.

Q: Do you have plans for the impending recession?
I think no business entity today can operate "business as usual" in these tumultuous times. However, for ANTlabs we do see a shift in the proportion of the types of projects and customers that will be the key focus this year. We do expect more local mega-projects coming online as government-announced long-term projects like the FTTH (Fiber To The Home), NAF (National Authentication Framework) and Wireless@SG expansion are being materialized this year.

In fact, we expect higher local sales increase to more than compensate for the reduction in the export sales in 2009. We do see good opportunities in China and the Middle East and we will continue to invest in R&D for product upgrades and new innovation development.

What technology innovation or product are you looking forward to next year?
On an industry basis, we are really looking forward to seeing the new FTTH network come online in Q4 of 2009, as well as hoping for wider WiMax adoption. There are quite a few interesting items that we are developing in-house and working with partners in anticipation for exploiting this new high-speed connectivity medium. All these will drive consumer usage, and the demand for these products that we have developed that help service providers to deliver more fun, value-added and yet secured and seamless web experience.

The biggest challenge facing IT departments is...
...juggling key areas on a likely reduced spending budget for 2009.

One of the things that I believe is that spending on IT security will be resilient. If anything that this financial storm has taught us, it is this: Confidence in the system is an invisible foundation that once broken, will have potential cascading and damaging consequences.

Consumers need to know that their transactions are secure, and their personal identity or confidential information has protection.

Consumer trust and confidence in the security and integrity of the transactions will be similarly important, IT departments will need to invest in good cost-effective solutions that address security in an end-to-end fashion, rather than in a piecemeal manner.

Lionel Lim, president, Asia-Pacific, Sun Microsystems

	Lionel Lim, Sun Microsystems
	Cloud computing levels the playing field for start-ups and small businesses to access high performance computers without the need to invest heavily.

Q: What technology innovation or product are you looking forward to this year?
Cloud computing is very exciting right now. It is an area of opportunity for most of the technology sector. The ability to access remote resources and infrastructure which are scalable, flexible and customizable for both businesses and consumers. This levels the playing field for start-ups and small businesses to access high performance computers without the need to invest heavily in computing hardware.

Open source in storage will also be an interesting development for 2009. We see it as a disruptive technology because of the industry standard hardware components, flash memory or solid state devices (SSDs) and open source operating system.

What is the biggest myth about virtualization and why?
Myth: Virtualization is a new technology. Fact: Despite the recent buzz, virtualization is by no means new. Mainframe computers have offered the ability to host multiple operating systems for years.

Myth: Virtualization is only applicable to servers. Fact: Virtualization has quickly become an important technology across all aspects of the IT environment. It is rapidly being deployed in server, storage, networking, as well as client environments. Users can even try virtualization on their desktop computers for free with new open source virtualization software for personal computers.

Chip Salyards, vice president, BMC Software Asia-Pacific

	Chip Salyards, BMC
	Investment in management tools such as business service management, is expected to continue throughout the region.

Q: What was the biggest thing that affected your job last year?
The challenge in 2008 was obviously dealing with the financial changes and constraints of the macroeconomic environment. Many things changed very quickly, including the needs and demands upon IT professionals. Fully understanding the ramifications of those challenges and the shifting priorities of business and IT professionals was difficult given the continued state of flux and uncertainty that surrounded the market.

In the past few months, we've gained some clarity on technologies that will and will not be viable in the coming year. Investment in management tools such as business service management, is expected to continue throughout the region.

What technology innovation or product are you looking forward to next year?
We believe that one of the breakthrough technologies for us in 2009 will be service automation. Useful in physical and virtual environments, the efficiencies that it provides and the ease with which many labor-intensive tasks it can aide with is what organizations are going to turn to as budgets and IT staffs grow smaller.

Adoption has taken off already in the United States and EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) and we are starting to see some of the major players make moves in the Asia-Pacific region as well.

Will it be business as usual in light of the recession?
There are many studies that show that IT spending is going to decline in the coming year, particularly in areas like hardware. The outlook is much brighter for software and management offerings.

Andrew Dobbins, regional vice president, Verizon Business Asia-Pacific

	Andrew Dobbins, Verizon Business
	Our customers have to cope with downward financial pressures and are trying to do more for their business with much fewer resources.

Q: What was the biggest thing that affected your company in 2008?
The biggest challenge we faced in 2008 was the continued global expansion of our business to support the evolving needs of our multinational customers. Our customers obviously have to cope with downward financial pressures. They are trying to do more for their business with much fewer resources. For our part, Verizon Business has invested in our global capabilities to help our customers meet their these challenges.

Also, finding appropriately skilled IT and security professionals has contributed to the demand for more flexible and selective outsourcing and managed service arrangements. More global customers are adopting managed services, rather than investing in expensive local-to-global, in-house expertise.

As a result, in 2008 we saw continued strong demand for what we call strategic services, which include professionally managed security, IT, communications and network solutions. Overall, strategic services generated US$1.6 billion in revenue, up 15.4 percent from third quarter 2007.

What will business be like as the recession looms?
One way or another, the recession will have an impact on businesses and individuals alike. However, in our region, firms always value the concept of efficiency, and robust and effective IT and communications infrastructures allow them to have that, and at the same time give them cost savings.

In 2009, enterprises will continue to try to extend their reach to their fullest potential by implementing the appropriate IT and communications products and services, and become more flexible and adaptable entities. Key will be the availability of reliable, available, secure and far-reaching and very high-bandwidth networks that support companies' business aims.

The biggest challenge facing IT departments is...
...the fear of more budget cuts, which are made more complicated by the inability to find experienced IT and security professionals.

To cope with these challenges, IT departments may want to consider options like managed services, rather than investment in expensive local-to-global in-house expertise.

Further, the security of the extended enterprise will continue to be a deciding factor in overall business success.

Gery Messer, president, Red Hat Asia-Pacifc and Japan

	Gery Messer, Red Hat
	IT organizations must do things differently from previous times.

Q: What was the biggest thing that affected your company this year?
The financial crisis. It has woken up enterprises to the value of open source more powerfully than anything else before.

In the prevailing environment, IT professionals are adopting open source to save money and enhance their competitiveness, to carve costs out of their IT infrastructure.

These are severe economic times. As enterprises redouble their effort to contain IT costs, the economic conditions present them with the opportunity to redefine the way they develop and consume software. IT organizations must do things differently from previous times. It can no longer be business as usual if they are to help their enterprises grow efficiently and effectively.

What is the biggest myth about open source and why?
The biggest myth about open source software is that it is not ready for the enterprise. It very much is.

Just because open source software does not lock in customers with proprietary licenses does not mean it is not capable of mission critical operations.

Open source is as robust as it is disruptive of industry norms--it delivers flexibility through open standards; accelerated innovation through collaboration; choice through the subscription model. It forces the enterprises to rethink they way things are done.

What technology innovation or product are you looking forward to next year?
2009 is the year of the Cloud. Red Hat believes that grid-based,cloud computing will gain traction simply by taking advantage of the efficiency provided by virtualization, the flexibility provided by open standards middleware, the robustness of messaging realtime grid (MRG) needed for real-time transaction processing, as well a Virtual Desktop Integration platform as a consumption device.

Lim Kok Hin, senior director and general manager, business imaging solutions and business solutions division, domestic, Canon Singapore

	Lim Kok Hin, Canon
	Better alignment of technology to business direction will see companies making it through the tumultuous times.

Q: What was the biggest thing that affected your company in 2008?
The financial crisis aside, 2008 was an extremely fruitful year for us.

For example, Canon's marketing department freed up 46 sq meters of workspace by employing its own technology to automating workflow and digitize documents. The number of filing cabinets in the office were reduced from 150 to 40. This space has been converted to a meeting space helping to improve staff interaction.

Apart from cost savings of storage space, it also allowed for faster retrieval of digital documents thus increasing staff productivity. Small measures can go a long way and the potential for innovative thinking is limitless, especially in these times.

What are your plans in light of the recession?
The rapidly-unfolding global financial meltdown is a wake-up call for enterprises to take a relook at its business strategy. While there has been no direct consequence of the recession so far, it has definitely brought us even closer to understanding our customer's needs, since the price for not doing so can be quite high in these turbulent times.

We will continue to look for and train our people to meet the needs of our customers and helping them to be more productive, as a tactical measure to ride over the crisis.

What printing innovation are you looking forward to next year?
The way we see it, technology is beginning to have a strong impact on the traditional print industry. The dynamics of the business climate has resulted in significant growth of the digital print industry. I believe that it is the wave of the future as digital production offers a number of tangible benefits like shorter turnaround time and print runs, high color quality, flexibility and precise editing, which is what the market needs.

Digital print technology is improving in line with the changing market landscape, which is getting increasingly crowded. The need to stand out from the clutter is greater than ever leading to frequent last minute changes on print materials. This is where digital print technology can step in and bring about a huge difference with its ability to accommodate last minute changes to suit market demands. The potential is huge and presents a world of opportunities to print service providers and that is what we look forward to in 2009.

The biggest challenge facing IT departments is...?
...the alignment of technology and business objectives. The competitive and now uncertain business landscape demands technology investments to be justified by business returns, and not just by what has been automated or how much has been saved. Properly understood, technology alignment is the optimum use of technology resources to build business value strategically. IT departments still grapple with this issue, and better alignment of technology to business direction will see companies making it through the tumultuous times.

Gary Liew, director and telecommunications industry lead, Asia-Pacific, Convergys

	Gary Liew, Convergys
	Efficiency and output of alternative fuels, power generation systems will find exciting, if not tremendous growth.

Q: What was the biggest thing that affected your company in 2008?
2008 has been a very exciting year for us. We saw tremendous business growth as we expanded our operations in China and the Philippines, and acquired Shanghai-based BMI Asia to expand our footprint in China. We also set up a joint venture to provide contact center consulting services in Korea and extended contracts with SingTel Group companies, Telkomsel, Optus and Advanced Information Services.

In addition, Convergys expanded operations in the Philippines by nearly 50 percent with the addition of five new integrated contact centers throughout the country earlier in 2008. The five new sites brought the total number of Convergys contact centers in the Philippines to 14. At capacity, the new facilities will employ up to an additional 7,000, bringing Convergys’ total employment in-country to approximately 20,000.

Is the news about the recession going to affect business?
Convergys is based and listed in the United States, so there has been some impact on budgets, a freeze on non-client-related travel and strict guidelines on operating expenses and new hires.

That said, a major part of our business is derived from the Asia-Pacific region, and the markets here have remained somewhat buoyant. Asia continues to be an important growth market for us, and in order to build and maintain our customer relationships our executives continue to travel around the region to attend client meetings, steering committee meetings and maintain the ongoing dialogue with customers. The majority of our business travel is considered necessary travel, so in that area there has been minimal change.

The biggest challenge we faced was that in light of current market conditions investment decisions were generally being delayed as companies underwent management changes and budgets were more closely scrutinized. On the whole we consider this a short-term challenge.

What technology innovation or product are you looking forward to in 2009?
Wireless Internet: going forward, we see the high volume and mass take-up of high speed wireless internet access via PDAs and handphones. In the past, although devices could cater for high speed data access, the footprint and screens were not as user friendly or at a footprint that provided comfortable viewing and surfing, thus the take-up and usage being relatively low.

Now with the Apple's iPhone leading the way and with latest range of PDAs and mobile phones that are in the market, the shift from laptops and desktop for internet surfing will truly gravitate towards the wireless handheld devices. To add to take-up, there are now dozens of new micro notebooks which are at a price range of a top end mobile phone--these will certainly add to the wireless internet usage.

Alternative and solar power: although oil prices have come back down since the global financial crisis, the broad and deep R&D that has been accelerating on solar research has reach new levels. Efficiency and output of alternative fuels, power generation systems will find exciting, if not tremendous growth.

SaaS: Software-as-a-service will continue to drive the growth of cloud computing and other related technologies such as server virtualization and consolidation of applications. The current global financial crisis has made many organizations refocus their energies back into their core business and increasingly, they understand and see the benefits of moving large scale software expenses from the traditional Capex into Opex.