SUPHAJEE SUTHUMPUN
DON SAMBANDARAKSA
 |
| IBM' s manager |
IBM Thailand country general manager Suphajee Suthumpun joined IBM for her first job in Thailand 18 years ago and has seen first-hand the transformation of one of the world's most famous names of the 20th century from a hardware vendor into today's provider of business services.
The head of IBM Thailand remembers the '80s as a time when people were beginning to change from large mainframe systems to departmental mini-computers and the first signs of the new client-server architecture.
One of the biggest changes was that back in 1987, IBM Thailand was an internally-focussed company which did business in US dollars even though all their customers were Thai. It was not until 1989 or 1990 that IBM started to work in Thai baht.
Revenue back then was mainly from hardware rental and sales. Today, it is predominantly software and services.
Earlier, during her studies in the early 90s, she recalled how she used to have to hand-compile flowcharts onto code and onto punch cards and take them to be run at a computer at Chulalongkorn university. Programming in that era would have been unimaginable to someone graduating today, though some anachronisms such as COBOL remain, especially in large legacy systems.
Suphajee said that Thailand's has built up a strong industry around financial services and today, many of IBM's clients from the region come to Thailand to see best practices at work in major banks.
Yet while the past two decades is scattered with minor success stories, Suphajee says that her biggest disappointment was the lack of integrated e-government. True, the Ministry of Interior has a citizen database, but it was not designed to be shared with other agencies. In fact, she says that the Government is littered with too many central databases, leading to data redundancy, data silos and an inability to interoperate.
There is no government standard for attaching and signing electronic documents even today, she said.
It is no secret that IBM is now one of the world's most vocal proponents for open standards and in particular the Open Document Format. Suphajee reiterated that and pointed out how open standards are needed for government projects, such as our bid to become a regional logistics hub or medical hub.
In both cases, rather than focus on the physical ports and hospitals, what is as important is to focus on ensuring open standards and interoperability. This will allow shipment data or patient history to be shared with other ports or hospitals in a secure and efficient way.
For government, Suphajee said that she thinks the matter goes beyond merely the ICT Ministry. For instance, if we want workforce skills, it is a matter for both the Ministry of Education and of ICT. "Even the Ministry of Industry needs to get involved to ensure our graduates have a career path," she said.
She said that the government should focus on open standards, human resources and investment in research and development. However, to this she added that the government should clarify regulations and its stance on data protection, data privacy and security.
"We need clear laws on whether Thai companies can hold and process data in other countries. Already, some banks are running their entire credit card systems from abroad. Without such laws, countries with economies of scale might end up running our country for us," she warned.
But is this not against the spirit of Business Process Outsourcing, a concept that IBM has made its fortunes on lately? Suphajee explained that processing data where it is the most cost effective is always a good thing, but if everything - data, operations and processing - are all done overseas, there will be nothing left here and Thailand may end up in trouble.
Prev
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
Next
