News > Business

By Staff, ZDNet Asia
Friday, March 14, 2008 06:39 PM

Andrew Cocks, director of strategy execution and solutions development group, Datacraft Asia

	Andrew Cocks, Datacraft Asia
	With the [recession] problems in the United States, global organizations are looking to "pick up the slack" in Asia to cover losses elsewhere.

Q. Work-life balance is...
Cocks: With the wide array of technology allowing us to be contactable anytime, people are expected to work while on holidays and responses are expected after official working hours. While the drive for efficiency constantly pushes the adoption of these tools, the very same technologies that were once touted as work-life balance is now removing it.

The remedy lies within ourselves; we need to manage our time instead of allowing technology to mange it for us. Take for example, the usage of presence technology. Its "find me, follow me, hide me" functions allow our contacts to know where we are and on what device they can contact us. When used properly, the same features allow you to inform them not to disturb you during Johnny’s soccer match or while out having dinner with your wife.

So, in essence, work-life balance is a choice.

Name three hot technologies to watch in 2008.
The first is unified communications. In a recent survey conducted by Datacraft/Dimension Data, it has been showed that the adoption of unified communications is now mainstream. Companies are now starting to expand on the usage of such technology to derive real value rather than a simple dial-tone replacement. The introduction of technologies to enhance productivity and improve customer satisfaction like presence, video, collaboration will become more widely adopted. Integrating technologies from Cisco and Microsoft is going to drive real value for investment.

The second is virtualization. The data center space in Asia is at its premium as virtualization sits high on the CIO's agenda. VMWare had first-mover advantage and leading IT companies such as Oracle, Microsoft and Citrix are unleashing competitive and rich offerings such as firewalls, load balancers and storage to automate the entire virtual environment.

The third is end-point security. Providing security based on device and access rights is key. Devices should be quarantined until their patch and security level are ascertained to ensure viruses are not introduced into the network. Constant monitoring will ensure these levels of security are maintained. Ultimately providing a more open network whilst maintaining security.

Most IT heads often forget...
... The importance of data recovery. Investments in IT resources are usually into business systems where there is an apparent ROI (return on investment) or gains in competitive advantage. Data protection is usually the last piece of IT infrastructure that the IT heads invest in. These investments are usually subscale and more than often unable to meet the challenges of an ever demanding SLA (service level agreement).

The importance of data recovery only rise to the fore when there is data loss. Therefore it is imperative that considerations go into the SLA and applications that needs data protection.

Name up to three security trends that IT heads should look out for in 2008.
1) Compliance and regulatory issues are driving IT security across the entire network. It's no longer totally focused on the perimeter.

2) The application is quickly becoming the next hotspot for attack. IT heads should be looking at penetration testing all Web applications and applying data protection technologies to all internal documents.

3) Guest and partner access to the network is rampant--wireless hotspots are creating vulnerabilities--network access control in Asia finally comes to life.

Gartner issued a report warning IT heads to prepare a recession budget. What is your view?
We are seeing our clients being quite upbeat about the Asian market; major banks are still continuing with projects in Asia Pacific, possibly accelerating outsourcing to cost-effective countries in Asia.

With the problems in the United States, global organizations are looking to "pick up the slack" in Asia to cover losses elsewhere. Increasing disposable income from countries like China and India, means companies are looking to invest faster into these markets.

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