Brunei PR wins at Apicta 2009 Awards

FOR the first time, Brunei representative Foo Boon Seng has brought honours to the Sultanate by winning the "E-Logistics and Supply Chain Management" Award with his "Tango Solution" in the Asia Pacific ICT Alliance (Apicta) 2009 Awards held recently in Melbourne, Australia.

Foo is the managing director of Mars Enterprise, an IT solutions company in Brunei. Foo danced his way to the award by using the Tango theory — "One step backward, two steps forward", and triumphed over competitors from Australia, India, Hong Kong, Pakistan, Malaysia and Thailand.

Speaking to The Brunei Times in an exclusive interview, the 60-year-old said he prepared almost two months for the competition, and is excited with the achievement. This is the first time Brunei won a category in the ICT awards.

"I consider the 'E-Logistics and Supply Chain Management' category as the toughest among all the categories in the competition as they are hotly contested by multinational companies with vast resources, and I guess for me to outperform them is something that caught even the judges by surprise," he added.

Foo was up against companies like Infocomm Software and 2ic Software from Australia, Kerry Logistics from Hong Kong, Pos Malaysia Bhd from Malaysia, Lumensoft Technologies from Pakistan, Dreamsofts Optimisation from Thailand

"Being able to present clearly my theory of how the system should be implemented probably helped raise my score with the judges," he said. "My presentation using Tango's 'One step backward, two steps forward' might have strike a chord among them," he added.

The "One step backward, two steps forward" rule, is when implementing an electronic system using the Internet, companies should take "one step backward" by installing the software on the local hard disk, and let most of the process take place in the local computer. This will ensure that the Internet bandwidth does not get bogged down by all the data transmission.

When most of the processing is done, the application can then be submitted through the Internet. As the data crunching is now not as intensive, the submission should go through in a breeze, and approval can follow efficiently, which will represent the "two steps forward".

The goal, according to Foo, is to achieve less Internet traffic, less connectivity and less data entries and access on the web server by doing most of data-intensive and time-critical process on the local computer.

Currently, almost all major forwarding agents and importers in Brunei like DHL, FedEx, UPS and NBT use BRULINK, short for Brunei Link, for their daily declaration since the Brunei e-Custom started. BRULINK is a platform developed by Foo.

Foo included his idea of realising the Asean Single Window touted by the bloc to enhance information connectivity among the countries by advocating the use of BRULINK. "The individual countries can easily establish a "National Single Window" to be the system within each country, and if everyone is using the same platform, it can easily expand to become an Asean Single Window."

Foo has been in the ICT industry for more than 30 years. He recalled his experience in writing programmes for major companies in Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia and Indonesia, and said those experiences gave him confidence when facing challenges.

He said that he returned to Brunei in 1996 because he wanted to contribute to the Brunei society and economy. Before returning, he was always jetting between Singapore and Indonesia to conduct his software business.

"I truly believe in 'Brunei Yakin', and I think Bruneians can really stand on their own against the best of the best," said an upbeat Foo.

The Brunei delegation was led by officials from the Authority for Info-communications Technology Industry (AiTi) and Ministry of Education, and the team also included students from Sultan Saiful Rijal Technical College (MTSSR) taking part in the Tertiary Student Project category, Chung Hwa Middle School, Kuala Belait in the Secondary Student Project category, and ICT company Teleconsult and GisCom in the Tools and Infrastructure category.

A total of 158 nominees from the Apicta member economies, which included China, India, Australia, South Korea, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and most Asean countries, took part in the three-day competition.

The Apicta is an international awards programme aimed to increase ICT awareness in the community and assist in bridging the digital divide.

The programme was designed to stimulate ICT innovation and creativity, promote economic and trade relations, facilitate technology transfer, and offer business matching opportunities to venture capitalists and investors.

The Brunei Times