There was a time during the height of the dot-com boom when executives in
Silicon Valley believed that Washington, DC was irrelevant. As two
generations of entrepreneurs strived to build The New Economy, it was
laughable to think that the ancient dunderheads back in our nation's capital
had any notion about - or right to tamper with - what was going on in the
tech world.
This was the era of the Clinton Administration, a time when the President
himself had declared that "the era of big government is over." Defend the
shores, deliver the mail, and otherwise stay the hell out of the way - this
was the thinking in the tech world during the bubble.
Clinton's years were peaceful from the perspective of people living in the
US. A few targeted attacks here and there, with even the major, US-backed
military action by NATO in Serbia having little effect in day-to-day American... (more)
Enthusiastic startup communities continue to emerge in the Philippines. Last
fall, I reported on an event known as "Startup Weekend Manila." Now a vibrant
event has concluded in Cebu City, the country's second-largest metro area.
Startup Weekend Cebu produced some 20 software ideas over the course of 54
hours, at an event hosted by the University of the Philippines Cebu. The
first-place team demonstrated a mobile app called "WaitKnowMore," which
addresses the problem of insanely long waiting lines in the Philippines; no
doubt the idea could be useful in many other places as well.
... (more)
Yesterday, I wrote about Greece and neighboring Bulgaria, contrasting two
seemingly similar nations and their respective commitments to ICT. The
verdict, based on research I've been conducting for the past 18 months, was
that Bulgaria is doing much better than lagging Greece.
Today, let's take a look at a lagging region: Latin America. When thinking of
the region, people often think first of Brazil, the Portuguese-speaking giant
in a sea of mostly Spanish-speaking nations. Brazil ranks fifith in the world
in area, and is in fact larger than the continental United States. It also ... (more)
Although 91% of organizations in India "consider cloud relevant to (their)
business," according to the recent Cloud Maturity Index, two-thirds "strongly
agreed" that data privacy and residency is a major concern, and 61% expressed
fears of vendor lock-in.
The Index is based on survey results conducted by Forrester Consulting on
behalf of VMware. It noted that the interest in cloud in India was equal in
Asia to Japan, China, Malaysia, and Thailand, and that "the country's
understanding of cloud computing is higher than (in) Singapore and Malaysia."
A total of 87% of respondents sa... (more)
Oracle, PwC and five telcos are leading the charge in the formation of the
new Asia Pacific Cloud Alliance, announced in Hong Kong. Members plan to work
to develop private-cloud interoperability standards for Hong Kong and China,
Malaysia, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. Oracle and PwC are also
members.
The five telcos are Hong Kong's Hutchison Global Communications, VADS (from
Malaysia), LG CNS (South Korea), and Telstra and AAPT (for Australia and New
Zealand).
PwC says its role will be to act as an indepdendent advisor, Oracle plans to
integrate its Exadata and Exal... (more)