How to Choose a Public Cloud ?

This is a popular question, especially for startup and SMB leaderships, whom may not have an advance tech team at their disposal to support with queries and selections when picking a public cloud that returns the most value for new development or migrate existing workloads. Please note that these questions and methods are skewed towards screening IT infrastructure and platform service provider and not so much the Saas provider (we might cover that in another piece of cheat sheet separately).

Ask Questions
Here are couple of things (in no particular order), that your team can use to prepare before meeting the service providers.  

Please note that it's a really bad idea to meet them unprepared, as it provides a white canvas opportunity for the vendor to paint anything they like. It is highly recommended that you avoid such situations. 

Here are the questions/ areas worth exploring;

1. A list of current IT operations (e.g. applications, tools, analytics, security, data-warehouse and etc.) and technologies in place (e.g Operating systems, databases, development tools and languages, security, infrastructure or even other clouds in place).
2. A list of projected/strategic business activities and their automation/digitalisation needs (e.g mobile app, big data analytics, buyer & seller optimisation, etc.)
3. Customisability of compute and memory requirements (in other words, how much control do you have on your VM or VMs).
4. Pro and cons of owning the PaaS level...
5. Standard tech questions - Interoperability, portability,  new app development cycle, security, redundancy, backup and recovery features.
6. The type and size of technology eco-system that the cloud provider connects to - here you are simply looking for three things; suitability of the technology to your operation; standardisation and; provider that connects with a larger eco-system of technologies (e.g Hadoop, ML, AI, Blockchain, Mobile App Platform and a host of other opensource pieces).
7. Pricing mechanism and projections for on-boarding; utilisation blocks (e.g by minutes, hours, monthly, yearly, types of workload - predictive and unpredictive); exit or off-boarding (be aware that some vendors charge even during off-boarding to migrate data and other intellectual assets off of their platform – this happens when you complete contractual term and don’t plan to renew);
8. Discount and rebate applications - when you get them, and when you don't (ask both questions)?
9. What is the lock-in period (e.g 1 to 3 years). What happens if you exit prematurely. What is the unnatural discontinuation cost?
10. What service guarantee does the vendor provide (e.g. SLA, compliance, security)?
11. What happens when vendor fail to deliver service (system performance, security, data, compliance)”according to contractual term? 
12. What support procedures are in place when a support request is registered?
13. What if you need to scale ? How quickly you can scale the needed footprint?
14. What about trainings and upskill activities?
15. What SMB focused programs does the vendor have in place? Some service providers might have special programs for you to mingle with other users in your category and connect. This can be an added bonus to your business as you can tap onto the knowledge and resources of a wider network.

Request for a Pilot Test

if you are happy with the information gathered through the pre-meeting research and cloud salesperson's answers to aforesaid questions, move on to a test request for the tools and  platform services in question.  Scope the test areas according to your procurement needs to stay on course with your current needs. Look out for performance, usability, flexibility, scalability, security and inter-operability results to support and corroborate information you gathered (unless the test fail to do so).

Tap Talks in the Grapevine
It’s a good idea at this point to fraternise with other fellow startups and SMBs who may have already been using the services first hand.  Their experience could be a valuable addition of information to your decisions. Though, when collecting information from informal sources such as this, be aware of the timelines - a problem or disadvantage that existed a year ago may not apply anymore as cloud companies improve (especially the largest 3 or 4) at a rapid pace.

What is a Satisfactory Outcome?
What are you looking to map with these initial questions and explorative activities?

1. Your IT computing and operational requirement based on business roadmap.
2. Suitability of the service provider/s and their offerings to support your business and future growth.
3. Good understanding of tools and services recommended by vendor before you embark on them.
4. A clear idea on pricing matters; discounts and rebates applications; contractual terms.
5. Outline or scope of duties and responsibilities between you and your vendor in regards to your IT footprint. 
6. Cost of discontinuation of business relationship upon completion of contractual terms.
7. Cost and consequences of discontinuation of business relationship due to premature termination of contract.
8. Your rights when service provider fails you? e.g service delivery, compliance, security or data breach.
9. Exit and migration path to other clouds.

Finally, a piece of useful advice to stay productive and avoid frustrations. Expect for contact points to change at anytime while dealing with vendors or any external parties for that matter. As such, it would be wise to document all requirements, arrangements and agreements to terms, contractual and non. This will help you save time in the reestablishment and reinstatement of such interactions which looses sight due to change of contact points.

In addition, get feedback from both business(finance included) and technical team members on the selection before concluding.

Happy Screening!!!!

Will Data Privacy spark the next Wave of Innovative Applications?

Privacy is a top agenda as we live in an era where data is a fundamental requirement to access healthcare, education, financial facilities, commercial services, employment, security, welfare, social networks, media and even exercise voting rights. Everything around us is designed to optimise and improve by harnessing data, that it has become an undeniable asset with unprecedented utility. 

This makes data a prime heist for unethical hackers and modern day criminals who steal, doctor and manipulate it for illicit purposes including financial gain, scams, terrorism, identity theft, spreading fake news or spying. Some notable breaches from 2018 are the Aadhar breach involving a staggering 1.1 billion records, forum site Quora, Googleplus, Facebook, several airlines and other online entities.

This is why many large corporations that gauge petabytes of user data are under heavy scrutiny by privacy enforcers and regulators such as National data protection authorities in the European Union through the much debated GDPR guideline. For instance a recent announcement by one of Alphabets subsidiary, Sidewalk Lab on a plan to package and sell cellphone data for various service enhancement sparked outrage from various ethics observer and human rights groups, even when the company justified that the unique identifiers will be removed from the dataset.

Staying connected at all time and living somewhat transparently, is the future reality...

But harnessing data is an unavoidable exercise when it comes to achieving greater quality of life, good decisions and optimal utilisation of natural resources.  As such, refraining from the internet, social networks, online media and performing digital transactions will only result in disadvantages, inconvenience and missed values from economic, social and safety standpoints.

Even if we successfully retained a mysterious existence, we will not be free from unwarranted surveillance by both businesses, independent institutions and governments in public places for various reasons as cities, buildings and public amenities become embedded with sensors, camera feeds and chips that connects to the Internet or clouds to perpetually collect data and create values.

Privacy in Asia....

Asia witnessed multiple incidents of data breach last year among CSPs, healthcare providers, financial service providers and even government sources that lead the public to question credibility of domestic institutions in protecting personal, usage and behavioural data. According to a report by Gemalto, Asia Pacific region contributed to over 35% of cybersecurity incidents last year. 

In most cases, institutions took no further action to restore user confidence apart from the breach announcement, which is a mandatory compliance requirement. Gemalto further stated that the numbers could have been much higher in reality, due to unreported incidents especially in Southeast Asia. Singapore is an exception to this as the authorities take great pride in concluding data breach cases successfully to safeguard the regional digital economy.

Asia also suffers from an overall weaker legal framework and laws for privacy though dedicated privacy task force is emerging in India, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Philippines, out of which Singapore perhaps is the most advanced in ratifying and enforcing the aforesaid laws. 

At the same time, there is a rise in governments that are explicitly developing and extending state surveillance under the pretext of national agenda, security and cyber crime laws for political reasons. Technologies such as facial recognition, artificial intelligence, biometric, advanced identity card systems, ever increasing compute capacities and various citizen facing applications are converging into social scoring systems that provides granular monitoring of individuals, regardless of their consent. 

But there is a new way to tackle privacy - a new form of application architecture is on the rise .....

Apart from comprehensive legal framework, enforcements and the use of advance security architectures, strategies and tools, the application design and architecture itself can serve as a mechanism to protect privacy by separating personal data and identities from applications.

For instance, a project led by Led by Tim Berners-Lee called 'Solid' and is currently run from MIT, consist a set of tools and conventions that helps to preserve integrity of identities, privacy and data ownership while enabling developers and businesses create a new wave of innovative web applications. Solid is a web decentralisation project that aims to put rightful ownership of data back to every users and empower applications that are completely decentralised. 

Currently the use cases are limited for developer community alone, though discussions on Solid servers and tools are beginning to emerge in Quora, Reddit, FB Groups and GitHub.

Similarly Digi.me and HAT are all projects aiming to decentralised applications on the web, where users can create libraries of their data and is completely in control of how the data is used by corporations and governments.

Privacy concerns will lead to new opportunities ....

Most large businesses perceive privacy as a critical challenge to overcome with growing pressure from regulators. Though regulators approach are not helping as solutions developed around privacy laws are difficult and expensive to attain technically, especially for Internet giants.

In the end, solution might just emerge from the tech world itself through new architectures and business models lead by smart startups willing to embark on new frontiers such as Solid, Digi.me and HAT to develop fully decentralised applications that satisfy users, businesses and regulators.

Larger companies might use 'business within business' approach to innovate in the privacy space or quickly get onto the new themes through acquisitions, mergers and rethinking business models. On the another note, decentralised web may lead to even larger paradigm shift, similar to the ones we experienced when organisations moved from on-premise to cloud of everything, creating new digital eco-systems altogether. The one thing that no one can afford to do, is to remain unchanged.

LK Weekly Precis - New e-Commerce Regulations, Acquisitions and Expansions

This week, new ecommerce regulations in India shook the tech business community and indicated that government meddling and protectionism policies may continue to hinder progress of emerging markets in sectors such as ride hailing, hospitality and many others aside from ecommerce.

Ecommerce regulations was also a topic discussed in Davos at the World Economic Forum (WEF), lead by Singapore. In addition, the event for the first time hosted talks among tech executives and leaders, including from BAT, to shape up AI framework that addresses both the seller and buyer nations.

Other than that, ST Telemedia acquisition of Cloud Comrade and Travelstop expansion to 7 Asian markets simultaneously, along with JD.com's first drone delivery outside of China are some notable developments in the startup sphere this week.

ST Telemedia Acquires Cloud Comrade

Last year we saw a number of consultancy firms such as Deloitte and the likes, hunting for acquisitions in the partner space of large tech companies namely Oracle, Sap, AWS, GCP and Microsoft.  This trend is now picked up by several data-centre service providers in the region.

ST Telemedia is certainly moving in the right direction by acquiring Cloud Comrade to enhance its datacenter service offering portfolio, especially in cloud services, IT management, cybersecurity and overall datacenter performance. 

Cloud Comrade helps customers in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore deploy cloud to accelerate new development and migrate existing business applications for operational excellence. The startup works in alliance with almost all major public cloud providers such as Ali, Azure, AWS, GCP and Digital Ocean. 

Last year, ST Telemedia acquired stakes worth $27 million, in cloud management company, Bespin Global that operates in Korea and China. The new acquisitions will help ST Telemedia complete service offerings in cloud, AI, Bigdata, digital experience and cybersecurity.

https://bit.ly/2Uj7FKe

JD's Drone Delivers Books and Bags in Rural Indonesia

JD.com has been delivering to some rural parts of China using drones for the last two years. This week JD ran its first drone delivery trial outside of China after securing a government license for regional level operation in Indonesia. According to media the drone travelled 250km to deliver boxes of books and bag packs to school children.

Tencent has a 15% stake in JD.com and together the companies co-invested in a number of Chinese companies. Last year Google announced significant amount of investments in JD and Tencent to make inroads in China. 

Soon, same day and next day delivery will be a common offering, sighting of drones in residential areas should be expected and e-commerce logistic players may have to reinvent their game.

https://globalcosmeticsnews.com/jd-com-paves-the-way-for-drone-deliveries-in-southeast-asia-with-first-government-approved-flight-in-indonesia/

Travelstop Expands to 7 More Markets

Travelstop is a year old startup from Singapore, that simplifies business travel and expense management to the SMB and startup segments. Since inception, the T&E Saas platform has been updated continuously with features and functions to sufficiently meet the needs of both travellers and employers in a segment where such services were inaccessible. 

We believe they are in the path to join the likes of 'certify', 'coupa' and 'apptricity' to challenge other established players such as SAP Concur in the travel and expense solution space for the enterprises.

Recently, the company announced service availability in Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam.  The company also announced a mobile app for iPhone users to easily access services. 

https://www.eventsnewsasia.com/20190122052718000454-business-travel-startup-travelstop-strengthens-presence-asia-launches-seven-markets/

New e-commerce Rules/Restrictions in India

The new rule restricts online retailers or marketplaces from sourcing more than 25% of inventories from a single vendor, vendors where the online retailers may have a stake and exclusive deals that results in deeply discounted products. 

The new rules seems to be aimed at protecting millions of small traders, operating offline and suffering from huge losses due to deep discounting practices of both Amazon and Flipkart. According to analysts and mainstream media, the recent electoral losses is seen as one of the contributing factor to this unusually regressive move.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/india-issues-new-e-commerce-rules-to-check-amazon-and-flipkart/

AI Discourse at World Economic Forum, Davos 

Finally AI takes a critical spot in WEF this year with US (Alphabet, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft) and China ( Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) seen as leaders of the space. Economic potential, social threat, globalisation 4.0., ethical practices, AI nationalism, global policies for both AI sellers and buyers were some of the issues beginning to shape the global AI agenda.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Asian-tech-execs-voice-hopes-and-fears-for-AI-in-Davos

Singaporean Ride-hailing Startup, 'Tada' in Vietnam

This year we might see more ride hailing players emerging in the region, including traditional players modernising their business and competing for their pie with larger competition namely Grab and Go Jek. 

New entries might come from taxi operators, affected driver groups and rental service providers. 

We might also see, new country level regulations, niche plays, convergence of industries/sectors, significant mergers and acquisitions in this space as we cool off in quarter four.

https://www.retailnews.asia/singaporean-ride-hailing-startup-tada-launches-in-vietnam/

HG Exchange

HG Exchange, a fintech industry backed initiative has recently submitted a regulatory application to Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). This move will provide investors in the region with better access to high growth companies such as Grab, Go Jek, Didi, Deliveroo and others. 

The exchanged will be built by blockchain developer Zilliqa and Taiwanese digital asset platform MaiCoin.

https://www.techinasia.com/in-brief-hg-exchange-seeking-launch

It's seems to be a slow week in anticipation of CNY next week but we believe businesses will keep up momentum till quarter 3 as a slow down is expected in quarter 4. 

Happy Sunday!