Google Indonesia Wants to Know Your Business and Help You Market It

Jakarta Globe, Tabita Diela, May 07, 2015

A logo is pictured at Google’s European Engineering Center in Zurich,
Switzerland on April 16, 2015. (Reuters Photo/Arnd Wiegmann)

Jakarta. Google Indonesia, the local arm of the global Internet giant, launched on Thursday a free platform called “Google Bisnisku” that will allow small and micro businesses to register and promote their works over the Internet.

The service will let Google to recognize almost every small and medium-size enterprise in Indonesia, offering free services to widen the businesses’ exposure to markets.

“Every kind of business can have the online presence while building its credibility and visibility on the eye of the customers without any charge with Google Bisnisku,” said Mira Sumanti, Google Indonesia’s head of small and micro business.

A recent study by Google and  Ipsos MediaCT, a Paris-based media research firm, fund that business with complete information on the internet can attract 29 percent more customers, Mira said.

Indonesia is home to 56.5 million SMEs with monthly sales between Rp 100 million and Rp 4 billion ($7,700 and $308,000), data from the Cooperative and SME Ministry showed.

A business owner can register with the program simply by logging in to the “Business” section on the Google.com home page. The owner must wait for around two weeks to receive the verification code mailed.

“We need to send it by mail to make sure of the validity and the presence of its owner is such as the address,” Mira said.

After the validation process has been completed, anyone who has registered can then find the business’s name, address, operating hours and phone number at the right side of Google.com’s page. Both customers and the business owner can leave ratings, feedback or comments on the page.

Maulana Cristanto, who owns Locco Gelato, a small ice cream shop in Bumi Serpong Damai City at Tangerang District, is enthusiastic of the new Google facilities. “I’ve been wanting to have my shop on the right side of Google’s search page, just like those big companies do.”

“I hope it will increase awareness about my shop because they can see my shop address right on the first page,” Maulana said.

Right now, search results for “Locco Gelato” only show lists of some blogs, its website and Twitter account.

Google also offers business owner the ability to view simple statistics that might help the business, such as how many people search for their business, how often they look for it, and when is the busiest time at the store.

“We want to introduce hundreds of Indonesia’s local business with the importance of being online,” said Jason Tedjasukmana, Google Indonesia’s head of communications at the press conference on Thursday.

“Small businesses help the economy. We’ve seen how Indonesian economic growth was very slow in the first quarter — 4.71 percent, the weakest since the 4.12 percent pace in the third quarter of 2009. With those small businesses thriving, we might have a chance to grow,” he said.

GlobeAsia

China Everbright Bank joins hands with telecom giant in mobile finance

Want China Times, Xinhua 2013-08-19

An advert for China Everbright Bank. (Photo/CFP)

China Everbright Bank signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the telecom giant China Unicom on Sunday to develop business in mobile finance.

As the first Chinese bank to join hands with China Unicom in mobile finance, China Everbright Bank will focus on mobile payment service to facilitate near field and online payment as well as promotion in technological support and commercial applications.

Mobile payment can be applied in retail stores, public transportation, gas stations,restaurants and other locations, the bank said.

Their cooperation will also target financial smart card research and development to enable cross-sector services such as paying social insurance, utility bills and buying bullet train tickets.

Mobile finance has become an emerging market for banks as China's cabinet unveiled details of financial support for the cash-strapped small businesses, encouraging the innovation of online financial services via Internet and other new technologies in early August.

Salesforce.com offers software for tiny businesses

Reuters, Wed Sep 2, 2009 12:02pm EDT

BOSTON (Reuters) - Salesforce.com Inc (CRM.N) introduced software targeted at tiny businesses and individuals that costs $9 a month per user, pricing it for less than a third of its previously least-expensive product.

The Web-based software, which the company introduced on Wednesday, allows no more than two people to manage business contacts and track customer relationships.

Salesforce offers two other customer relationship software products with more features -- one for up to five people for $35 per worker per month and one for an unlimited number of users at $65 per person per month.

The San Francisco-based company's goal is to get entrepreneurs comfortable using its products while their companies are still small, and boost sales to them as their businesses grow, said Salesforce.com spokesman Bruce Francis.

The Salesforce.com products are compatible with Google Inc's (GOOG.O) Web-based email, word processor, spreadsheet and presentation, which businesses can use at no charge.

The software maker's shares rose 4 cents to $51.18 in morning trade on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Derek Caney)

Microsoft launches new servers for small companies

Reuters, Wed Apr 1, 2009 9:21am EDT

SEATTLE, April 1 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) on Wednesday launched a new range of server systems for small companies, scaling down its existing offerings to attack one of the fastest-growing segments of the business computing market.

The world's largest software company is launching into the market for small companies as competitors introduce cheap, open-source alternatives to its relatively costly Windows-based servers, and the use of pirated Windows products proliferates.

Microsoft's new product line, called Windows Server 2008 Foundation, can accommodate up to 15 users and will cost less than $1,000 for the hardware and software combined, the company said.

A server is essentially a powerful computer that provides services to other computers. A doctor's office, for example, might use a server to allow staff to share files, access the same systems or maintain a website.

Analysts reckon the low-end server market for products costing less than $1,000 has grown four times faster than any other price range for comparable single processor servers.

Microsoft's new offering is a stripped down version of its Windows Server family of products, which tend to be beyond the price range of small businesses.

Microsoft said Windows Server 2008 Foundation software will be sold already installed on machines sold by computer makers such as Acer Inc (2353.TW), Dell Inc (DELL.O), Hewlett-Packard Co (HPQ.N) and IBM Corp (IBM.N).

The computer makers will set the prices for their products, which may vary by country. (Reporting by Bill Rigby, editing by Maureen Bavdek)

Intel cheap laptops expanding to U.S., Europe

Wed Mar 19, 2008 8:13pm EDT

By Jim Finkle and Duncan Martell

BOSTON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Intel Corp (INTC.O: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Wednesday sub-$300 laptops initially designed for poor children will soon be available to U.S. and European consumers in a move that could further push down computer prices.

Craig Barrett (C), chairman of Intel, looks on as a student of Gwarinpa secondary school uses a laptop computer in Abuja, Nigeria, October 31, 2007.

PC makers in the United States and in Europe will sell a yet-to-be-unveiled, second-generation version of the Intel-designed Classmate PC for $250 to $350, said Lila Ibrahim, general manager of Intel's emerging market platform's group, in an interview with Reuters.

"This is a very big deal," said Laura Didio, an analyst with Yankee Group who follows the personal computer industry.

While the machines are intended for children, analysts said the launch will add momentum to the low-cost computing movement -- and will likely mean this year's bargain-basement laptops will have more power than in previous years.

"Particularly in a recession year, quality low-cost products are going to move well," said Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group. "But the key is for them to be quality."

He said while he hasn't yet seen the machines that will be on sale this Christmas, he suspects consumers will be able to get "a pretty decent" laptop for less than $600 and perhaps for less than $500.

Didio said retailers might throw in another $50 to $100 in rebates or other incentives.

Laptop prices have been under extra pressure since last year, when Taiwan's Asustek Computer Inc (2357.TW: Quote, Profile, Research) introduced the $399 Eee PC, which has flown off store shelves from Asia to North America.

The machine runs on the Linux operating system, and people used to Microsoft's (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) Windows and Apple's (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) Mac OS X operating systems have had trouble adapting to the system, Enderle said.

The new, cheap laptops being developed from Intel's technology will likely run on Windows, he added.

The movement toward low-cost computing was also spurred by the XO laptop, the brainchild of Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nicholas Negroponte and his One Laptop Per Child Foundation.

The foundation began producing a laptop running on Linux at a cost of $188 in November. They sold them in the United States and in Canada for $400 through a charity drive that also provided one machine to a poor child overseas.

The chipmaker has conducted pilot tests of the Classmate PC at schools in Texas, Oregon and California, along with some schools in Australia, said Intel spokeswoman Agnes Kwan.

Intel said manufacturers in India, Mexico and Indonesia already have begun selling Classmate PC laptops on the retail market.

To date, Intel has sold fewer than 100,000 of the Classmate PCs, but plans to ramp up production in 2008.

Intel declined to identify the PC makers or discuss the features of the second-generation machine, which has not yet been released in developing markets, at the request of the companies.

It has already begun work on a third model, the Classmate 3, said Ibrahim.

The second- and third-generation models of the Classmate PC design give manufacturers flexibility to build a range of laptops with different memory configurations, screen sizes and peripheral devices including cameras, Ibrahim said.

Inventor Mary Lou Jepsen, a scientist who developed the XO Laptop, resigned from the One Laptop Per Child Foundation at the end of last year and started her own company Pixel Qi with the goal of building a $75 laptop by 2010.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston and Duncan Martell in San Francisco; editing by Carol Bishopric/Jeffrey Benkoe)

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China SMBs set to spend US$42B on ICT

By Vivian Yeo, ZDNet Asia

Friday, March 07, 2008 06:12 PM

ICT spending by small and midsize businesses in China will grow 12 percent year-on-year to reach US$42 billion in 2008, says AMI-Partners.

Boosted by strong results in 2007, small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in China are set to continue their uptrend in ICT spending over the next 12 months.

According a new report from AMI-Partners, SMBs will spend US$42 billion on infocomm technologies this year, a 12-percent increase over 2007. The New York-based research house specializes in SMB research.

The study also found that about 70 percent each of small businesses with fewer than 100 employees and medium-sized businesses with between 100 and 999 employees expect revenue growth this year. Some 55 percent of small businesses, and 53 percent of midsize ones, reported a jump in revenues in 2007.

"The bulk of the spending in 2008 will come from telecom services, computing and Internet technologies," said Samuel Chen, research data analyst at AMI-Partners. "Also experiencing double-digit growth will be areas like data security, storage and networking spend. About 46 percent of like security spending (US$289 million) would come from security software solutions."

Additionally, the need for SMBs to stay cost-effective is driving two trends in the country's ICT market, said AMI-Partners. Firstly, there is an emerging demand for on-demand and scalable software models, although the software-as-a-service phenomenon is very much in its infancy.

Domestic demand has also been growing at a phenomenal rate. SMBs in China have turned to "relatively well-equipped" local brands that are priced lower than big global names, and this has led to local players featuring among the top brands in various technology areas.

Singapore-based Chen, however, pointed out that with U.S. recessionary fears, businesses would increasingly target their efforts toward China's domestic market to "fuel" their revenues.

"Although there appears to be some worrying threats like rising inflation rates and high oil prices, their impact on China's domestic demand so far appears to be relatively marginal," he added.

Google launches Web site tool

Online search and advertising company debuts new tools for setting up Web sites to compete with Microsoft's SharePoint.

CNN Money

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Google, already the world's most popular spot for finding Web sites, is aiming to become the go-to place for creating Web sites too.

The Mountain View-based company is taking its first step toward that goal Thursday with the debut of a free service designed for high-tech neophytes looking for a simple way to share information with other people working in the same company or attending the same class in school.

With only a few clicks, just about anyone will be able to quickly set up and update a Web site featuring wide an array of material, including pictures, calendars and video from Google Inc.'s YouTube subsidiary, said Dave Girouard, general manager of the division overseeing the new application.

"We are literally adding an edit button to the Web," Girouard said.

All sites created on the service will run on one of Google's computers.

Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) acquired many of the Web-site tools when it bought a Silicon Valley startup, JotSpot, last year.

The tools are the latest addition to a bundle of applications that Google offers to consumers and businesses as alternatives to similar products sold by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT, Fortune 500), one of Google's fiercest rivals.

Google's latest service represents a challenge to Microsoft's SharePoint, which charges licensing fees. Google is unveiling its alternative just a few days before Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft hosts a SharePoint conference in Seattle.

While Microsoft's programs typically are installed on individual computers, Google keeps its application on its own machines so users can access them from anywhere with an Internet connection.

By gradually introducing free versions of word processing, spreadsheet, and calendaring programs over the past two years, Google has been threatening to siphon revenue away from Microsoft, which makes most of its money from software sales.

Microsoft, in turn, hopes to take a bite of out Google's bread-and-butter in online search and advertising by buying Yahoo Inc. (YHOO, Fortune 500) for more than $40 billion.

Google says more than 500,000 companies, government agencies and schools use at least some of its applications. The company won't say how many of those organizations subscribe to a premium version of its software suite, but the fees haven't made much of a dent at Google so far.

Last year, Google's software licensing and other products generated $181 million in revenue while $16.4 billion poured in from advertising.

Amazon.com adds web services to its offerings

CNN

SEATTLE, Washington (AP) -- Critics thought it was over the top when Amazon.com Inc. expanded from books into music in 1998. When the Web retailer let competitors start selling things alongside its own inventory in 2000, they said Amazon had gone nuts.

Amazon.com employees pack books for shipment in July at the company's facility in Fernley, Nevada.

In both cases, Amazon proved them wrong. Media sales now total in the billions each quarter, and third-party merchandise, more profitable for Amazon than its own wares, makes up nearly a third of everything sold through the site.

Now, Amazon is making an even greater stretch -- selling storage, computing power and other behind-the-scenes data center services.

The venture, which Amazon expects will grow into a significant business segment, could help keep the company strong if retailers get hit by an economic downturn.

More broadly, Amazon Web Services, as the business is called, could improve chances for a new generation of Web startups by slashing how much they spend up front on costly infrastructure.

MileMeter Inc., a Dallas-based startup that plans to sell auto insurance by the mile, started out running its own server in a data center. Recently, it moved most of its applications onto virtual computers in Amazon Web Services' Elastic Compute Cloud.

EC2 lets its customers quickly start up a virtual computer in the "cloud" -- industry slang for data centers around the world -- then use it as a Web server or for crunching data and shut it down just as fast.

"I don't need to have a systems administrator or a network administrator," said Chief Executive Chris Gay. "I don't have to worry about hardware becoming irrelevant."

Gay said he also uses Amazon's online payments service and is evaluating its data storage and simple database services. During the first dot-com boom, he said, "It was a badge of strength to have as much as possible in house.

"Now, unless that is your core business ... it's a liability."

Adam Selipsky, vice president of product management and developer relations for Amazon Web Services, said Amazon wants entrepreneurs to focus on their ideas, not on hardware leases and crashing servers.

"We want to let developers innovate and make money," he said.

Amazon is certainly not the only player. James Staten, an analyst at Forrester Research, said Akamai Technologies Inc., Enki and Terremark each offer at least a portion of the Web services Amazon is selling. IBM Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. offer pricier versions aimed at big businesses, while Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are thought to be working on services similar to Amazon's.

Amazon comes closest to utility-style billing, Staten said. Most competitors demand a contract or minimum payments.

Read More ....

SMBs to drive Indonesia ICT spend

By Lynn Tan, ZDNet Asia, Monday, January 28 2008 08:21 PM

Small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in Indonesia are projected to spend about US$7.2 billion on infocomm technologies (ICT) in 2008, according to a new market report.

In its study released Monday, AMI-Partners said Indonesian SMBs are projected to grow their ICT expenditure by some 11.2 percent over last year, fueled by a boom in the overall economy and a surge in the number of small-sized businesses.

Prasannavadan Gaitonde, a Singapore-based research manager at AMI-Partners, said in a statement: "In Indonesia, more than 99 percent of SMBs are [small-sized businesses], and they account for about 78 percent of the total ICT spend."

Gaitonde noted that approximately 80 percent of these small-sized businesses--defined as having fewer than 100 employees--are startups, or are staffed with between one and four employees. He added that these companies will account for 50 percent of the overall small-sized business expenditure in 2008.

According to AMI-Partners, Indonesia has a "young and dynamic" business environment. The average age of business owners and managers is 33 years, and over 66 percent of these professionals have a graduate degree or higher education qualifications.

Gaitonde said this pool of young decision makers, along with a burgeoning domestic demand, has resulted in a "positive" environment with over 40 percent of SMBs expecting growth of between 15 percent and 20 percent in 2008.

"This optimism is also prodding more SMBs to consider hiring more people, [and] that will help relieve pressure on an otherwise high unemployment rate in Indonesia," he said. "The wage pressures are expected to remain flat through 2008."

Growth potential is also encouraging Indonesian SMBs to increase branch locations, where over 25 percent plan to add one to two branches this year, AMI-Partners noted.

As such, connectivity between branch offices and remote locations will be a top priority for SMB IT decision makers this year, the research house said. It added that the highest growth is expected in data security deployments at 33 percent, followed by data storage at 26 percent and Internet-related implementations at 24 percent.

Gaitonde said Indonesian SMBs will depend more on the Internet in 2008, adding that this increase in online usage will prod more SMBs to invest in basic security tools.

Mobility is another "hot" area because Indonesian SMBs are at the "cusp" of broader adoption of mobility-enabled devices, AMI-Partners said, driven by a desire to improve productivity of their mobile workforce.

For instance, the awareness of WiMax in Indonesia is "very high" and uptake of the technology could accelerate rapidly if the "right" products are offered at the "right" price points, AMI-Partners said.

The analyst company added that VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) and IP telephony tools are still "attractive" alternatives to reduce calling costs.

"Indonesian SMBs expect telecom service providers to play a stronger role in offering them various bundled solutions especially for voice-related services, [and] it is important that service providers rise to fulfill this need of a growing market," Gaitonde said.

Lynn Tan is a freelance IT writer based in Singapore.

SAP brings hosted ERP to Asia

By Victoria Ho, ZDNet Asia, Tuesday, January 29 2008 07:30 PM

SINGAPORE--SAP has brought its hosted ERP (enterprise resource planning) suite to the region.

Announced Tuesday, the company is releasing its Business ByDesign product to Singapore--the sixth country globally to receive it. The product is currently available in Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, France and China.

Hans-Peter Klaey, president of SAP's SME division, said at the launch event that Singapore was chosen because many regional offices are headquartered in the country.

SAP is targeting the suite at SMBs (small to medium sized businesses) employing between 100 to 500 staff.

Klaey said that a hosted solution "makes the most sense" for an SMB, because it takes the burden of building expensive infrastructure off the shoulders of the companies that may not have the capital freely available.

Historically, SAP has been in favor of on-premise installations. However, it launched a hosted CRM service in 2006, in a bid to capture the growing hosted CRM market.

Similarly, the company is eyeing the growing SMB SaaS market, which it estimates to be worth some US$15 billion.

According to Klaey, 74 percent of SAP's customers are SMBs, with this proportion expected to go up in the years to come. Having offered only on-premise ERP products till this, Klaey said that he expects this to fill the void in the market for a hosted ERP service that is "end-to-end".

Eric MacDonald, SAP Asia-Pacific and Japan president and CEO of South East Asia, said: "[Business ByDesign] addresses the 'testing out' market--the users who don't have the bandwidth to take on huge IT projects but are interested in trying out a product which gives them improved control."

Klaey did not comment on whether SAP's acquisition of Business Objects would see business intelligence functionality added to the product.

Presently, users' data on the system is hosted in Waldorf, Germany with prices beginning at US$149 per user, per month, for a minimum of 25 users.

IBM Unveils Plans for Collaboration Software and Services for Small-and-Medium Sized Businesses

Yahoo Finance, Monday January 21, 9:00 am ET

ORLANDO, FL--(MARKET WIRE)--Jan 21, 2008 -- LOTUSPHERE -- At Lotusphere, IBM (NYSE:IBM - News) announced plans for a software portfolio expansion geared to the needs of millions of companies from 5 to 500 employees that want to focus on growing their businesses instead of running their office systems.

IBM Lotus Foundations is a future line of small business software servers, installed on-premise, and is expected to be offered primarily through IBM Business Partners. In addition, IBM announced a managed beta of a Web-delivered service codenamed "Bluehouse." "Bluehouse" provides extranet services that make it easy for small-and-medium sized companies to securely collaborate beyond their organizational boundaries.

The combination of Lotus Foundations and "Bluehouse" will provide essential software solutions in simple to acquire and manage packages. Small-and-medium sized businesses (SMBs) need superior collaboration and business solutions as much as large companies. With Lotus Foundations and Bluehouse, used separately or in combination, organizations will be able to take advantage of proven enterprise-strength software delivered as a turn-key package for start-up businesses without IT staff.

"Small-and-medium sized business represents a significant growth opportunity for IBM," said Mike Rhodin, general manager, IBM Lotus Software. "Our SMB approach -- which combines easy-to-deploy, self-managed on premise servers with Web-delivered, extranet collaboration services -- uniquely empowers SMBs to succeed in any market."

Based on Linux, IBM Lotus Foundations is expected to provide server software that requires minimal technical expertise and is autonomic -- able to manage and heal itself. This will allow small-and-medium sized companies to focus on their business, rather than spending time and resources managing information technology. Lotus Foundations will be built on the principles of IBM's Express Advantage program for small and medium business such as ease-of-installation and ease-of-use.

The first component of the Lotus Foundations family is currently expected to include a pre-loaded, one-stop-shop solution for small companies: Lotus Domino mail and collaboration platform, file management, directory services, firewall, back-up and recovery, and office productivity tools. Designed to accommodate growth, customers will be able to easily add more users or servers as needed. In addition, as planned, Lotus Foundations will give system integrators and independent software vendors the opportunity to integrate their new or existing applications into the Foundations platform with minimal effort.

A key component of the Lotus Foundations family will be technology acquired through IBM's purchase of Net Integration Technologies, which is expected to close later in the first quarter of 2008, as announced last week. Industry observers have favorably rated the Net Integration Technologies small-business server against Microsoft's Small Business Server. Net Integration Technologies features have consistently received high marks for ease-of-use, installation and disaster recovery. IBM plans to integrate the innovative Net Integration's technology into its Lotus Foundations family of software servers. Lotus Domino is already integrated into the Net Integration platform. IBM's strategies for SMB, collaboration and acquisitions are among the keys to its growth.

"Bluehouse," will offer a suite of collaboration services that allows businesses to work together by sharing contacts, files, project activities and interacting with chat and Web meetings. This new set of services will enable small companies to easily collaborate beyond their organizational boundaries without the need for any in-house technical expertise. "Bluehouse" is now available as a limited beta offering and will be progressively unveiled throughout the year.

SMBs have the same types of business challenges as large corporations but must solve them with limited or no IT resources. They need to compete globally and they require industry-specific solutions that help them automate, simplify and speed product-to-market cycles.

Consequently, small-medium companies need powerful collaboration and business solutions to allow them to work more easily with their customers and suppliers. These new offerings from IBM Lotus software draw upon 20 years of innovation in collaboration with world-class business expertise and research delivered in a way that is easy to access and use.

Today's announcement illustrates the future of work and how IBM operates as a globally integrated enterprise in the 21st century workplace. Global integration has become embedded in IBM's workforce, strategy, leadership and operations -- affecting how the company collaborates across time zones and cultures and locates its operations, functions and leadership anywhere in the world based on the right skills and business environment. Small and medium businesses are increasingly going global and becoming more competitive through technology. Accessing world-class collaboration is the next step.

For more information, please visit http://www.ibm.com/press/lotusphere

Internet allows Cirebon furniture firm to taste success

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The World Wide Web offers immense marketing opportunities for businesses of any industry and size, in any location, as it allows them to transcend traditional market boundaries.

But in a country like Indonesia, where Internet penetration is still low, selling a product through the Internet is probably the last route any enterprise would dare to take.

Taking a risk, however, has proved worthwhile for Tonton Taufik, a 34-year-old civil engineering graduate living in Cirebon, West Java.

PT Rattanland Furniture, which he established in his town in 1999, has turned into one of the most successful companies in the country thanks to the power of the Internet.

Rattanland, which exports almost all of its rattan furniture to over 40 countries worldwide, banked sales of up to US$1.42 million in 2006 despite the slowdown in the country's furniture industry that year.

The company's sales grew by between 20 and 50 percent per annum over the past five years -- a stunning performance that led it to win a 2007 Primaniyarta Award, the government's highest recognition for export performance.

This scent of success was far from Tonton's senses when he first started business eight years ago. Like many of his school mates, he went to Jakarta to find a job following graduation. But it was not easy at the time to find a good job in the big city. Unemployed and frustrated, he decided to return to his hometown Cirebon.

"Soon after, I attended a workshop on marketing by management guru Rhenald Kasali, who just happened to be in town, and then a course at the Indonesian Export Training Center in Jakarta on establishing business networks online and a Web site-design workshop in Bandung," the father of two said.

Tonton then tried his luck in the rattan furniture industry with nothing more than a desktop computer, a printer and a dial-up modem, which he bought after selling several personal items and borrowing money from friends, which he eventually paid back after making his first sale. He spent a full week, day and night, to set up his first Web site.

"I remember first hosting my company's homepage on a free Web hosting Web site: 'welcome.to/rattanland', before finally purchasing my own domain name for $70, which at that time I felt was quite expensive," he said.

He began his business by selling rattan furnitures produced by small furniture shops in the town, known as the center of the rattan furniture in the country.

"At that time I didn't have the money to purchase a furniture workshop nor hire woodcraftsmen. I also didn't know how to deal with export documents, so I passed the first order to another furniture company and collected a commission," Tonton said.

He continued to serve as a middleman between international buyers and rattan furniture manufacturers for several years until he finally purchased a 9,000 square meter plot of land and built his own workshop in 2004, which now employs 100 skilled woodcraftsmen.

About a year into the business, in 2000, Tonton hit a crossroad. His company faced a damage claim worth Rp 75 million, an amount beyond the capacity of his startup to pay.

"I tried to keep smiling and feel upbeat about the business, despite having this massive debt creeping from behind. It was a very difficult time; I really had considered giving my business up altogether," he said.

But he persevered and kept on marketing his products online until a buyer from Canada placed a significant order, the profits of which soon covered his debts.

Tonton also had his share of being cheated by buyers in payment arrangements. Learning from his mistakes, he later required interested buyers to make a down payment before the furniture was delivered.

Soon after Tonton completed his company's Web site, his only competition in business took place on the net, as he competed with other rattan furniture companies worldwide on major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

"Do you know that 85 percent of buyers come from search engines like Google? That is what I learned from a CNN news report and I have kept that information in mind ever since," he said. "The trick to advertising online is to get as many visitors or potential customers on your Web site as possible. So I had to come up with as many keywords as I could to define www.rattanland.com and in turn boost my site's hyperlink popularity on pages containing search results."

In addition to search engines, Tonton also registered his company's homepage on several trade leads like AliBaba.com and TradeWorld, which he says did wonders for his business, with noticeable growth performance taking place between 2002 and 2006.

"From 2002, the company's year-on-year sales grew by 50 percent up until 2005. The growth rate has since slowed down to 15-20 percent, but this is largely due to a shortage of raw rattan caused by illegal smuggling abroad," he said.

One of the primary advantages of marketing products online, he added, was that it had allowed his company to serve the global market with little in the way of advertising costs, especially when compared to the fees for participating in trade exhibitions.

Tonton said he had only once participated in a trade exhibition in Jakarta, back in 2002, and the result was quite disappointing. His customers still mostly came from the Internet.

His buyers mainly come from the European continent, with Spain being the largest market. His company has also penetrated North and Latin America, as well as East Asia and Oceania.

He added that buyers commence their orders by emailing him for quotes after perusing his Web site which is accessible to English, German, Dutch and Spanish speakers and displays the images of more than 1,000 furniture items his company is able to manufacture.

Tonton's ambition is to turn Rattanland into a household brand worldwide and to help Indonesia become a country that is able to export finished high-quality products, shifting its current reputation as a raw material exporter.

At present, he exports about 20 containers a month and says he confident that in the next few months this will increase to 30 containers.

Asian Governments Promote Open Source Development

Government support for open source is helping Red Hat grow its business in the Asia-Pacific region.

PCWorld

John Ribeiro, IDG News Service

Saturday, October 27, 2007 5:00 PM PDT

Asian governments are pivotal to Red Hat Inc.'s goal of earning 60 percent of its revenue from outside the US by the end of 2009, said Matthew Szulik, the company's chairman, chief executive officer, and president, in a conference call on Thursday.

Governments in the region are beginning to see open source as a boost for their economies and a way to increase technological innovation in the region, Szulik said. The governments of South Korea, Japan, Australia, and China have been "positive spokespeople" for the growing adoption of Linux and open source software in the region, he added.

Most of the business for Red Hat in the region, as in the rest of the world, is in the transition from Unix and legacy systems to the Linux operating system. Customers are typically in the financial services, telecommunications, technology and the government sector, Szulik said.

At the end of August, Red Hat's revenue for the first six months of its fiscal year was US$246 million [m], up 34 percent from the previous year. About 85 percent of its revenue came from software subscriptions with the balance coming from services like consulting and training. The company does not break out revenue by regions.

Red Hat also had $33 million in operating income for the six months period, up 48 percent from the same period in the previous year. The company has over $1.3 billion in cash on its balance sheet, said Charlie Peters, Red Hat's chief financial officer.

Apart from continuing opportunities in the market for replacement of the Unix operating system with Linux, Red Hat is also seeing revenue coming in from middleware, Peters said. The company acquired JBoss Inc., a vendor of open-source middleware, in June 2006.

Red Hat plans to roll out new technologies in the coming months that will help customers build global virtualized computing infrastructure, Szulik said. The company introduced server, storage, and desktop virtualization as part of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 earlier this year.

An increase in availability of third-party applications around Linux helped boost demand, as Linux has been expanding its share of servers based on Intel Corp.'s x86 architecture and IBM Corp.'s mainframe and server environments, Szulik said. In addition, there has been an increase of technically trained staff with Linux and open-source skills, he added.

Gmail Now Has IMAP Support

Announced at Interop New York, the e-mail feature synchs with Outlook Express, Outlook 2007, Outlook 2003, Apple Mail, Windows Mail, and Thunderbird 2.0.

By K.C. Jones, InformationWeek, October 24, 2007 01:30 PM

Gmail users can now use IMAP to synchronize e-mail on their iPhones and desktops.

Matthew Glotzbach, product management director for Google Enterprise, announced the release of IMAP support in Gmail Wednesday at Interop New York. Glotzbach, a keynote speaker, said Gmail account holders can begin using IMAP immediately.

He held it up as an example of Google's attempts at continuous innovation, saying it's one of many new features Google has added since launching Google Applications in February.

"IMAP isn't new, but bringing it together is," he said.

David Murray, associate product manager for Google, wrote about it in a blog posted Wednesday.

"There are two online petitions I've signed in my life," he said. "One was for a 'Xena: Warrior Princess' movie. The other, which I signed a few months before starting at Google, was for Gmail IMAP... It keeps the same information synched across all devices so that whatever you do in one place shows up everywhere else you might access your e-mail. For example, I can read an e-mail in Gmail, then move it to the 'Starred' folder on my iPhone, then archive it by moving it to 'All Mail' in Thunderbird, then see all of those changes on my BlackBerry."

Google has placed a video demonstration on YouTube. Users must change their settings to enable IMAP in their Gmail accounts and configure their mail client or wireless device to download Gmail messages. Google provides instructions on how to do that.

Once the configuration settings are changed, everything users do through e-mail on their iPhones and desktops will be immediately visible on the other device because the changes have been stored on a server. The feature works for several e-mail applications, including Outlook Express, Outlook 2007, Outlook 2003, Apple Mail, Windows Mail, and Thunderbird 2.0.

IMAP Gmail access will work on a Blackberry, but Google tells Palm users to take note: GMail IMAP access isn't yet compatible with VersaMail. Users' clients must support SMTP authentication to send mail using a Gmail address.

SAP to buy Business Objects in strategy U-turn

Analysts caution the $6.8 billion deal looks late and pricey

By Aude Lagorce, MarketWatch, Last Update: 5:38 AM ET Oct 8, 2007

LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Shares of SAP AG fell as much as 5.5% on Monday after the world's largest maker of business software agreed to buy business intelligence firm Business Objects for more than 4.8 billion euros ($6.8 billion) in cash over the weekend.

SAP will offer 42 euros in cash for each share in Business Objects, a 20% premium over the stock's closing price on Friday. SAP will finance the deal with available cash and borrowed funds.

The acquisition is SAP's largest to date and a reversal of its avowed organic-growth strategy. The Germany-based giant said the primary driver for the deal was the opportunity to gain new business. The company is racing to double its customer base to 100,000 by 2010 by wooing more small- and medium-sized firms.

"The acquisition of Business Objects is in keeping with SAP's stated strategy to double our addressable market by 2010 as announced in 2005,"said SAP Chief Executive Henning Kagermann.

The purchase comes in the wake of a shopping spree by rival Oracle Corp which has spent more than $25 billion on acquisitions since 2005. Earlier this year, Oracle bought Business Objects' competitor Hyperion Solutions for $3.3 billion.

SAP shares were last down 5% in Frankfurt morning trading. Business Objects shares rose 17.2% to 41 euros in Paris.

Analysts were quick to point out the U-turn in SAP's strategy.

As recently as last month, Kagermann indeed said he wasn't under any pressure to make a large acquisition.

Read More ....

IBM Lotus Symphony--Fully Orchestrated Office Suite

Why should we even care about IBM Lotus Symphony?

Kevin Tolly, Network World

Friday, September 28, 2007 12:00 PM PDT

Alternative office suites are nothing new. For users requiring the trio of word processing, spreadsheets and presentations there have always been options. For some years, it has been possible to get OpenOffice for free and the commercial version, Sun's StarOffice, for $69. More recently, Google Apps has been enticing business users by adding collaboration as an integral part of its office alternative. So why should we even care about IBM Lotus Symphony?

Given the myriad potential uses of "office" applications, your reasons will likely differ from mine. but for me it represents the first time I've tried an alternative office and found the user experience to be every bit as good as using Microsoft Word.

Despite the fact that it is free, Symphony is powerful, deep, well written and well documented. Aside from a minor formatting issue, I had no problem opening and editing documents, spreadsheets and presentations created with Microsoft products.

Not having used IBM Lotus products for many years, I still was able to edit using my favorite features in just a few minutes. When it comes to core office applications, it isn't hard to navigate.

For example, "word count" is on the Tools menu. Looking for track changes mode is under "Edit... Revisions ... Record". A little different than Microsoft users are accustomed to, but no impediment. (And, yes, this column is being written using Symphony.)

A quick search of the Internet uncovered a handy two-page document that guides MS Word users on finding equivalent functions in Lotus Symphony.

Read More ....

Yahoo to Target SMB E-mail Market

Inc.com

Yahoo has announced plans to buy Zimbra, Inc., a next generation e-mail and collaboration software provider for a proposed $350 million. The acquisition would enable Yahoo to target the small and midsize business market.

Zimbra's e-mail service would allow small and midsize companies to host e-mail on or off premises with their own domain. Zimbra offers rich, AJAX-based email, calendar and contact management features, as well as creative mash-ups called Zimlets that tie in Web value to e-mail. Zimbra's open platform allows features to be customized to each customer's needs.

The acquisition is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of this year.

SAP unveils Web software, new business model

Wed Sep 19, 2007 5:42pm EDT

By Georgina Prodhan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - SAP AG unveiled a long-awaited line of Web-delivered software on Wednesday that will radically change the company's business model and may shake up the Internet software arena.

Called Business ByDesign, the software is initially a one-size-fits-all, subscription-based package aimed at mid-sized companies and is a crucial plank in SAP's strategy to more than double its customer base to 100,000 by 2010.

"It's not just a new product for us," Chief Executive Henning Kagermann told journalists and analysts at a company event in New York. "It's a new era for SAP."

SAP, the market leader in complex suites of software for large enterprises, is the first major software maker to enter the market for so-called software as a service delivered over the Internet.

It said it will have invested up to 400 million euros ($559 million) in marketing and ramping up Business ByDesign by the end of next year. One-fifth of the company's 12,300 developers are working on the project.

Business ByDesign, which integrates management of areas including financials, human resources, supply chain and customer relationship management will cost $149 per month per user and $54 per month per five users for a pared-down version.

The offering is both more complex and more expensive than competing products from the likes of Internet software pioneer Salesforce.com Inc, which has 35,000 customers and whose prices start from $60 per user per month.

Read More ....

IBM Launches Free, Online Office Applications

By Chloe Albanesius. PCMagazine.com

IBM on Tuesday launched a beta suite of free, online office applications intended to compete with the ubiquitous Microsoft Office and boost the presence of IBM's Lotus Notes.

The IBM tools, dubbed Symphony, are available for download free of charge online and will provide access to documents, spreadsheets and presentations on machines supported by Windows and Linux desktops, according to IBM. Customers who purchase the latest version of IBM's Lotus Notes will also receive Symphony.

Symphony will also feature optional, fee-based support for businesses, Ed Brill, a business unit executive for worldwide sales at IBM/Lotus, said at a Tuesday launch event in Manhattan.

Symphony is based on the open document format (ODF), which allows for the open standards favored by IBM but generally shunned by Microsoft. IBM last week joined OpenOffice.org, an open source project founded by Sun Microsystems in 2000, to which IBM will be making code contributions.

ODF is an "incredibly important initiative as an industry," Brill said. IBM is looking to see the "proliferation of tools that use [ODF] standards."

Framing Symphony as a free, web-based open source office suite offering puts it opposite Microsoft's $150 proprietary Office suite. It is unlikely, however, that Symphony will overtake Office in the near future given the proliferation and brand-name recognition of Office. Symphony also faces competition from other free online office applications like those from Google.

Read More ....

IBM extends IT package to small businesses

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Responding to the need for affordable communications technology, PT IBM Indonesia is reaching out to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) through a new version of its Express IT package.

Launched Thursday by the local unit of IBM Corporation, the fifth edition of Express offers a wide range of both software, hardware and related services at affordable prices to SMEs.

With component prices ranging from US$1,000 to $15,000, the new scheme will also offer investment-optimization and data-backup features, according to IBM Indonesia country manager Achirul Djamal.

Achirul added that Express was intended to answer the needs of SMEs for accessible technology at relatively affordable prices so as to enable them to compete with their larger competitors.

"The domestic IT market for SMEs currently stands at around US$1.6 billion, up 18 percent from last year. We hope Express will be able to capture around 20 percent of this market," said Achirul.

Currently, IBM Indonesia services around 2,500 SME clients in various industries, Achirul said.

First launched in 2002, Express, which is distributed by around 45 suppliers, accounts for more than 20 percent of IBM Indonesia's revenues.

Express was developed as part of a 10-year-old IBM Corporation worldwide business plan to tap the SME market.