Asia Oceanian Computing Organisation (ASOCIO)

ASOCIO 2010 Summit

The ASOCIO ICT summit was held in Taipei early December. There were representatives from 22 countries in the region plus observers from the USA, Canada , and Europe.

The Summit focused on ICT best practices in the region and included special topics on e-government; e-business, Cloud computing, and ICT for SMEs.

What was impressive about the ICT summit was the momentum in the ICT industry across the region. This momentum provides real opportunities for NZ companies looking to develop and expand into those markets, but also some risk: the market is moving VERY quickly.

The topics which were of major interest were Cloud computing and e-government. In these areas NZ can contribute, but also we can learn a lot about the direction of the technology in these areas, especially how Government organizations are involved (for better or worse) with the private sector.

The impressive takeaway from this session was to hear how a national organization, Institute for Information Industry (III), is setting a vision for Taiwan to be a global leader in the provision of cloud services, and not just with Infrastructure (Iaas) and platform (PaaS) but also in software (Saas), which is an area that the Taiwanese have not traditionally focused on. Here is quote from Dr George Wang on the urgency for Taiwanese companies to move into this space:

“Taiwan has been leading hardware manufacturing for many years, but has little presence in software. As Cloud Computing accelerates commoditization, a rapid transformation to software and services is urgently required.

As other countries/enterprises are adopting Cloud Computing to lower operating cost and improve efficiency, Taiwan might lose national competitiveness if fails to catch up.” - Dr George Wang

The same circumstances apply to New Zealand!!

The question in my mind was how can NZ software companies utilise the reach of ASOCIO?

There are a couple of initiatives that ASOCIO is developing to assist member countries:

1. The first is the ASOCIO company database: This is a new concept designed for individual companies to provide product and company background onto an ASOCIO managed portal. The NZ Software Assn will be reviewing and trialling the concept and will report back to members as soon as we consider this to be a viable option-it is planned to be a very low cost mechanism for member companies.
    
2. The second is an expansion of the trade delegations: ASOCIOs prime vision is to promote and facilitate ICT trade development globally, and they plan to expand the trade show/mission concept further in the coming years. Again NZSA will assist member companies where possible with planning around these trade shows.

A final comment: Asia is growing quickly and is rapidly expanding the range of ICT services and products that it can offer. If we are to grow and remain relevant, the ICT sector in NZ we will need to have a vision and strategy to match the rest of Asia/Oceania.

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Steve Corbett
NZ Software Association and ecentre, CEO

The NZSA is a full member of ASOCIO and with the support of NZTE represents represents New Zealand software companies in ASOCIO.

For more information on ASOCIO please visit www.asocio.org, for more information on our membership and how to get the most out of our membership for your business please contact info@nzsa.org.nz.