SG Tech

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT

INTODUCTION

SINGAPORE TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT A crucible of innovation, Singapore is a beacon of forward-thinking technology. We take a dive into the industry as the nation endeavours to reach Smart Nation status Writer: Phoebe Harper | Project Manager: Matt Cole-Wilkin

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oasting one of the most technologically advanced Infocomm and Communication Technology (ICT) markets in the world, Singapore has long been regarded as the tech hub of Asia Pacific. According to the International Trade Administration, Singapore’s wireless broadband penetration rate was recorded at 173.2 percent in December 2020, with mobile penetration at 148.2 percent.

With its reputation for technological prowess expanding to a worldwide reach, multiple global titans of technology, including Google, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services, have strategically selected the island city-state as an overseas base to expand their footprint. This is largely thanks to

2 | APAC Outlook issue 56

Singapore’s enabling and competitive status as an early adopter of new technologies.

Indeed, Singapore is well-established as a playground for trialling and testing new digital solutions, with the country positioning itself as the go-to destination for product testing and development. Significantly, the nation shares a mutual recognition agreement (MRA) with the US for the certification of telecom equipment. Meanwhile, Singapore is also a hub for global data management, hosting 15 active submarine cable systems.

For companies of a smaller scale, the nation is renowned for its dynamic start-up economy, which continues to receive significant attention from venture capitalists as a hotbed for innovation.

SGTECH

Singapore continues to advance its thriving digital economy, with a robust 5G infrastructure as the solid foundation. In this way, Singapore advances an agenda of continual innovation, specifically into the relatively nascent fields of cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, data analytics and other technologies spanning healthcare, security, fintech, energy, aviation and defence.

As the nation’s best prospect industry sector, Singapore’s technological development is intrinsically social, harnessing the digital potential for socio-economic progress. This people-centric focus on technology as an enabler for social good is best reflected in Singapore’s journey to become a Smart Nation.

A scheme that began in 2014, the Smart Nation Singapore initiative has been described by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong as a means to “create possibilities for ourselves beyond what we imagined possible.”

THE FIVE KEY DOMAINS OF SMART NATION SINGAPORE • • • • •

Transport Home and environment Business productivity Health and enabled ageing Public sector services

Encompassing a myriad of initiatives across a host of sectors, from autonomous vehicles (AVs) to telehealth, the vision is centred on three key pillars for the seamless integration of technology – Digital Society, Digital Government, and Digital Economy.

As the Smart Nation journey continues, Singapore will create a stronger community with the integration of technology positively transforming the way that people live, work, and play.

INTODUCTION

SGTech CXO with Minister Josephine Teo

APAC Outlook issue 56 | 3

DATA

ON THE CLIMB Allowing customers to colocate with confidence, Iron Mountain’s data centre presence in APAC enables organisations to achieve hybrid IT success

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ounded in 1951, Iron Mountain is trusted by more than 225,000 organisations around the world, including 95 percent of the Fortune 1000, to store, protect, and manage information and assets.

A global leader for storage and information services, Iron Mountain has a regional presence throughout Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia-Pacific (APAC), with a real estate network of nearly 93 million square feet across approximately 1,450 facilities in 56 countries.

As the world has changed from analogue to digital, it was the natural step for Iron Mountain to expand from physical record storage to protecting and interconnecting its customers’ valuable digital assets through data centres.

The company’s data centres allow

organisations to colocate with confidence, and enables them to achieve secure, compliant hybrid IT success with efficient access to top carriers, cloud and IT service providers.

Iron Mountain Data Centers strives to accommodate businesses by providing these highly connected, built-to-suit data centres, which adhere to the highest levels of compliance and corporate responsibility. As IT becomes more and more complex, Iron Mountain is there to offer a wide range of data centre infrastructure and colocation solutions.

One of the new and innovative sustainable solutions introduced

by Iron Mountain Data Centers is the Green Power Pass, a renewable energy solution developed to help their customers lower their

carbon footprint and achieve their sustainability goals, and to add to their corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts.

They have also announced their goal to become 24/7 carbon free globally, by using 100% renewable energy 100% of the time by 2040.

To-date, Iron Mountain Data Centers remains the only colocation data centre provider to set this ambitious goal.

Entry into Singapore Iron Mountain Data Centers has seen very strong regional demand from global customers, following the grand opening of its Singapore data centre, SIN-1, in 2019, the company’s first facility in the APAC region.

Located in Serangoon, a 15-minute drive north from the Central Business District, SIN-1 is part

of Iron Mountain’s global data centre portfolio. The 14,600 sqm Singapore data centre was once a Credit Suisse facility, and is still operated to the same exacting standards with the addition of Iron Mountain’s own industry-leading compliance programme.

As well as housing a range of carriers on-site, the facility is close to multiple regional MeetMe Rooms (MMRs) which provide

full physically diverse connectivity to each data hall and deliver low-latency access to hundreds of network, cloud and IT service providers.

Whether an enterprise looking for large deployment or a growing local company hosting a few critical cabinets, SIN-1 can provide the necessary space, standards, and power configurations.

With a huge selection of carriers APAC Outlook issue 56 | 5

and cloud on-ramps in and around Serangoon, SIN-1 also adheres to the industry’s most comprehensive compliance programme, and is complete with physical security layers designed to meet exacting standards in financial services.

SIN-1 utilises physical and logical security throughout, including three-factor biometric access controls and fully backgroundchecked officers and employees.

Although the data centre has only been operating in Singapore for a short amount of time, developing strong relationships with suppliers remains essential. Iron Mountain Data Centers works with a huge ecosystem of partners to maintain SIN-1, a critical data centre that has to be kept running around the clock and always provides power and cooling to customers.

Having a data centre in Singapore allows an organisation to easily connect to all countries in the region, with multiple redundancy options and the lowest latency.

Singapore has the largest concentration of subsea cables in Asia and offers excellent

connectivity to the rest of Asia and the world, making it the obvious choice for many organisations together with the country’s stable political and pro-business climate.

Regional expansion In 2019, Singapore issued a moratorium freezing all data centre construction, due to high demand, land shortages, and in response to international sustainability concerns.

Indeed, the average data centre typically occupies up to 50,000 sq ft of land space, with a power capacity sufficient enough to supply energy to more than 12,500 five-room flats in Singapore.

Data centres use around seven percent of Singapore’s electricity, and as the country gets almost all of its electricity from natural gas, operators located there struggle to meet renewable power commitments.

Data centre companies such as Iron Mountain are therefore challenged to find ways to expand to locations where its customers want it to be, and doing so sustainably whilst

coping with the demand for more data centre solutions.

One solution is to tap into a resource-rich country – enter India, one of the world’s most capacityhungry data centre markets which still relies heavily on IT infrastructure from Singapore.

Iron Mountain recently expanded its data centre footprint by forming a joint venture with Web Werks, one of India’s top colocation data centre providers. To succeed in a new location where you need a lot of know-how, the Joint Venture approach was a natural step that led Iron Mountain to team up with Web Werks, combining a global organisation with a local company that has deep regional knowledge of the market.

Iron Mountain Data Centers’ panIndian expansion provides data centre customers with access to three rapidly growing Indian markets, including the country’s financial centre and largest city, Mumbai.

Earlier this year, Web Werks acquired a standalone facility in the Indian city of Bengaluru, an

emerging data centre market. The first phase of delivery for the newly converted, 110,000 square foot data centre, which will offer up to 20 MVA of gross power capacity, is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

Web Werks is also set to open a brand-new data centre in the commercial business district of Hyderabad by Q4 2022, offering 120,000 square feet of colocation space supported by up to 10 MVA of gross power capacity.

Future sustainability standards As a followup to the moratorium, the Singapore government in Q2 2022 announced new conditions with higher environmental standards for new data centre applications as part of a pilot project.

Though data centres contribute to Singapore’s growth, they must now be even more sustainable, with the country set to become more selective of data centre projects in the future as well as ensuring

that the efficiency of existing data centres is improved.

The Singapore government is working with the industry to find more sustainable power solutions to support its growing data centre needs. Even though the data centre industry in Singapore has grown exponentially in recent years, there is great potential in the market to grow even more.

The country ratified the Paris Climate Agreement in 2016, under which Singapore is committed to fulfilling its environmental obligations through greener data centres, whilst supporting the growing needs of its digital economy.

Application criteria for a new data centre in Singapore must include innovation and sustainability solutions, and applications with a track record of building and operating data centres in Singapore will be considered favourably.

Iron Mountain Data Centers applauds the new sustainability standards set by the Singapore government. Having operated the SIN-1 data centre in the country since 2019 with continued efficiency and sustainable improvements carried out on the data centre itself, Iron Mountain Data Centers is therefore well-positioned to expand its presence in Singapore in the future with a greener footprint.

www.ironmountain.com/data-centers datacenters@ironmountain.com iron-mountain-data-centers @IRMDataCenters IronMountainDataCenters IronMountainDataCenters APAC Outlook issue 56 | 7

Taking Control of Communication with NetSfere “NetSfere is the most robust, secure and scalable enterprise messaging and collaboration platform on the market today enabling rapid pace of digital transformation, which accelerated in response to pandemic in 2020, and continues to transform how businesses communicate in 2022 and beyond.”

Anurag Lal

The opening words of Anurag Lal, President and CEO of NetSfere encapsulate the spirit of rapid innovation and security-first mindset at the heart of one of the leading messaging and mobility solutions providers of the world.

With office locations spanning the US, Germany, the UK, Singapore, and India, NetSfere encompasses over 300 employees dedicated to delivering the company’s flagship patented technologies, used to power both products and services, award-winning products and platforms.

The company boasts significant employee combined experience of more than 2000 years in mobile and messaging technology, leveraging its rich heritage based on acquisitions from technology giants, including Motorola, Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent.

NetSfere also benefits from the wider experience of delivering mobility solutions to Tier 1 mobile operators across the globe.

Since inception under a decade ago, the NetSfere name has become synonymous with industry excellence. Its secure enterprise messaging service includes global cloud-based service availability, device-to-device encryption, location-based features, and administrative controls. The NetSfere portfolio caters to a host of industries, from healthcare to finance and banking, supply chain, retail and many more.

Following a next-generation approach, NetSfere’s user-friendly Web interface and mobile messaging apps are designed to cater to industry-specific challenges on a case-by-case basis.

SAFEGUARDING SECURITY At the heart of Netsfere’s solutions is the concept of security.

This is assured through total compliance with all major regulatory requirements, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and Sarbanes-Oxley to name just a few.

NetSfere is well-equipped with industry-leading end-to-end encryption (E2EE) that plays a critical role in safeguarding a client’s intellectual property and all sensitive business data.

When working with NetSfere, enterprise privacy and security is instantly protected, since the company’s built-in, always-on E2EE does not require configuration nor does it need to be turned on.

Applied across every device, this ensures that employees are able to share information without jeopardising the risk of data.

The combination of E2EE with advanced algorithms and an industry-leading secure messaging platform provides enterprise grade technology that encrypts all text, media and files to guarantee their protection in transit across devices.

The necessity for businesses to secure enterprise communication and collaboration has risen to the fore now more than ever, as hybrid working and non-location specific work has become the norm in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the face of the growing risk of cyber-attacks, NetSfere offers reliability and reassurance through its uninterrupted data security, with strict adherence to stringent data protection regulations and compliance mandates. It is fully alert to the

possibilities of cybercriminals adapting to the remote-working transition and exploiting a larger threat landscape where companies’ exposure and vulnerability are heightened as a result of a distributed workforce.

Although this is a relatively recent phenomenon, NetSfere has long been alert to these shifting technological priorities, anticipating the need for security and compliance in business communications well in advance of the pandemic.

NetSfere understands the critical power of secure mobile messaging as a tool to transform businesses and propel them into the future, by strengthening employee engagement and increasing productivity. Indeed, the company’s enterprise- grade security and control work in harmony with robust real- time interaction features that are designed to support remote and hybrid communication and collaboration.

A STRATEGIC PARTNER OF CHOICE NetSfere’s success in this regard is best evidenced by a host of success stories, where the company has proved itself as a trusted partner.

A recent significant example of this is its partnership with HP earlier this year, in which NetSfere was selected as the official Independent Software Vendor (ISV) partner to further the digitization of healthcare communication. The partnership is critical in ensuring secure communication, eliminating the need

for clinicians and healthcare professionals to resort to consumergrade apps with a high level of risk.

“As the industry with the highest risk for cyberattacks, it’s no surprise that healthcare enterprises put security, privacy and regulatory compliance at the top of the must-have list when it comes to adopting new technologies like cloud-based SaaS. Maintaining the security and confidentiality of patient records and staff information is mission critical in an era of increasing cyberattacks and headline- making data breaches,” Lal comments.

Another key example in the healthcare realm is NetSfere’s partnership with Deutsche Telekom GmbH, one of the world’s leading integrated telecommunications companies, to deploy its secure mobile messaging platform in all St. Augustinus hospitals, a leading German healthcare group.

This came as the St. Augustinus group observed a significant increase in the APAC Outlook issue 56 | 9

use of personal devices and popular messaging apps like WhatsApp, which pose critical privacy and compliance risks. As such, NetSfere’s HIPAA and GDPR compliant messaging platform – which functions in a similar manner to WhatsApp – proved the perfect solution for accessible communication that benefits from the secure E2EE through the highly secure data centres provided by Deutsche Telecom.

On the Asia Pacific digital landscape, NetSfere is a leading voice in sharing its technological expertise and stands as a proud member of SGTech. The company lends its perspective to industry-wide events, as evidenced by the virtual webinar, ‘Workplace Communications in 2022 – Out of Control?’, hosted

by SGTech, NetSfere and the Singapore Business Federation.

Here, NetSfere leaders including Mr Loy Chee Leng, Regional Vice President for Asia Pacific and Middle East and Mr Harsh Mamgain, Vice President of Product, shared their insights on the risk involved in consumer mobile applications and the real-time threats they pose to a company’s data security.

As observed by Mamgain, “in the implementation of digital tools, the human element is often the weakest link. Thus, the first step that any organisation can take is to start educating your remote workers on the dangers of using unofficial workplace messaging applications.

Harsh Mamgain Equipped with this knowledge, the effective and secure control of workplace communications will be integral to your company’s productivity and the strength of your team.”

NetSfere is widely deployed in this region. One big example is a major private healthcare group headquartered in Singapore, is getting benefitted by using NetSfere’s enterprise-grade secure messaging platform for internal communication and collaboration. “We’re pleased to establish a precedent of secure healthcare messaging in Singapore,” said Chee Leng Loy,

Regional Vice President for Asia Pacific and Middle East. “NetSfere’s end-to-end encryption provides the security a hospital needs to protect its patients information, as compared to consumer-grade apps that we’ve seen compromise sensitive data and regulatory Chee Leng Loy policies time and time again because they are not secure and compliant.”

AN OMNICHANNEL FUTURE NetSfere Omnichannel provides secure customer communication at scale that improves customer engagement, driving greater share of wallet and increasing customer loyalty.

It has been proven a leading player within the communications PaaS (CPaaS) segment, encompassing vendors that offer APIs, SDKs and libraries intended to allow developers to integrate voice, video, chat and messaging communications into their web and mobile applications.

A relatively recent development, CPaaS leverages NetSfere’s considerable history in mobile messaging and secure encrypted communications. Through this differentiated offering, NetSfere enhances its appeal to verticals with strict security and compliance regulations, such as healthcare and for financial services institutions (FSIs).

Allowing enterprises to yield true business value and ROI, NetSfere Omnichannel empowers FSIs with the technology they need to deliver on digital-first mandates for strengthening cybersecurity and improving employee experience and customer experience.

Through Omnichannel, real-time customer communication and high-quality customer experience is facilitated without the need to compromise on security, ultimately transforming the CX journey on a bespoke basis for each enterprise.

By so doing, companies can outperform the competition with a personalised, frictionless, real-time and unified experience.

HOW BUSINESSES BENEFIT Protect Your Data and Intellectual Property Built from the ground up with multiple layers of protection, NetSfere’s industry-leading end-to end encryption protects your sensitive business data and intellectual property ensuring a secure communication environment for the enterprise.

Keep I.T. in the Driver’s Seat NetSfere provides IT administrators with a powerful centralized administrative control panel to manage all aspects of the communication platform. IT administrators can provision, manage and enforce end-user policies and privileges as mandated by the enterprise, providing total control to IT Teams.

Stay Compliant and Safeguard Your Business NetSfere provides all the necessary administrative, physical and technical safeguards, enabling your

enterprise to be completely compliant with the regulatory authorities. NetSfere allows enterprises to meet the most demanding and evolving global compliance and privacy requirements of GDPR, HIPAA, FINRA, SOX, DFA, and more.

Drive Productivity Gains NetSfere drives collaboration and productivity by empowering employees to communicate securely and safely with their preferred channels for communication – text, voice and video in an instantaneous, contextual and highly engaging mobile messaging environment.

Engage Your Customers Seamlessly Across Channels of Choice - Anytime Anywhere NetSfere’s future-proof mobile-first, messaging-first, cloud-based carrier-grade platform orchestrates customer digital journey with multiple channels to securely communicate and engage at a global scale.

20 Changi South Ave 2, Singapore Phone: +65 6385 3648 Email: sales@netsfere.com www.netsfere.com

APAC Outlook issue 56 | 11

Compliance is a pain! I need a painkiller.

Software development is no longer just about writing code and making applications work. In many industries and systems, the expectation is that the application must also be safe, secure, stable, and scalable. In fact, there are countless pages of compliance standards that define what should and shouldn’t be done when we develop applications. And now, they want us to do it faster and have less errors! It’s no longer fun.

that provide development teams a compliance framework to work on for the automotive industry. OWASP, SEI CERT, CWE are standards used for security and vulnerability analysis across industries. Many of these standards are there to help identify the problems early in the developmental phase before it becomes a bug that would cause more pain after the application has been deployed.

But such compliance standards can sometimes become painful for the application teams! Imagine having to spend hours to remediate a coding error by tracing the origin of an error.

Or trying to find ways to scale up the tests to ensure that a higher number of users will be able to use the system without it crashing or experiencing slow response times. All this adds to the delay in deploying the software. And ultimately to the failure to recoup the costs for building the software.

This might lead misguided developers or project managers to find ways to circumvent such compliances and worse still, ignore them. This may lead to detrimental outcomes.

But that is the challenge in the modern world where most of our devices, systems, and government is run on software.

Whether it’s a mobile device or a vehicle or the distribution of electricity, it’s all driven by the humble application that is built from the ground up with code. And for instances of safety and security critical software, certain levels of compliance and certification are required. Hence, the headache increases with complexity.

Take, for examples, the automotive, aeronautics, and medical device industries where software failure could cause loss of life. Organizations cannot leave it to chance that the software for brakes or flight instrumentation might fail while in use. Or the possibility that a medical device suddenly stops working because of a software bug. All of these scenarios have played out in real life. And in the financial industry, a life may not not be at risk, but arguably as important is ensuring that no glitches exist that cause money to be transferred incorrectly.

As such, compliance standards are provided to ensure safety, security, reduce risk, and manage the consistency so that we can go about our lives without too much stress or worry.

ISO 26262, MISRA, AUTOSAR, and UL 4600 are standards

What development and quality teams need is a way to modernize and automate the compliance and testing infrastructure to alleviate the pain of achieving compliance, while also providing an environment to do their work efficiently and flexibly.

With Agile and DevOps methodologies as well as CI/CD pipelines, we need to update and shift left in the development and quality life cycle. Leveraging on the prevalence of containers and using the various quality processes and standards, you can automate and integrate the processes of static code analysis, unit testing, coverage analysis, functional testing, load testing, penetration testing and regression testing into the compliance requirements. In this way, the safety, security, and stability of the application is built into the processes rather than done as an afterthought.

Finally, to manage the pain, an overview of the performance of the development can help teams understand their roles better and provide training for the new developers to integrate them into the team. We find that giving the tools to the various teams is not sufficient. Understanding the rationale and the buy-in from the teams on why compliance is needed and how to make it easier for them to do their job would make life a lot easier for all concerned.

At Parasoft, we believe the success depends on more than the products and tools in use. Just as important is aligning the people, processes, and policies to support the push to make software compliant, high quality, and satisfy certification needs. In this way, the desire to do well permeates from the management team all the way to the project managers, developers, testers, and end users.

Parasoft has assisted organizations developing software in many industries to establish auditable quality processes that include complete visibility into compliance efforts. For more information about how to deploy Parasoft’s complete software development management platform as well as the tools for compliance and quality testing, visit www.parasoft.com.

Contact us to find out how our painkillers can work for you and your team.

ABOUT PARASOFT

Parasoft helps organizations continuously deliver quality software with its market-proven, integrated suite of automated software testing tools. Supporting the embedded, enterprise, and IoT markets, Parasoft’s technologies reduce the time, effort, and cost of delivering secure, reliable, and compliant software by integrating everything from deep code analysis and unit testing to web UI and API testing, plus service virtualization and complete code coverage, into the delivery pipeline. Bringing all this together, Parasoft’s award-winning reporting and analytics dashboard delivers a centralized view of quality enabling organizations to deliver with confidence and succeed in today’s most strategic ecosystems and development initiatives—security, safety-critical, Agile, DevOps, and continuous testing.

For Parasoft South East Asia: 60 Albert Street #09-08 OG Albert Complex Singapore 189969 Tel: +65 6338 3628 Fax: +65 62977597 For ASEAN inquires: info-sg@paraosft.com For Parasoft Corporation, USA: 101 E. Huntington Drive Second Floor Monrovia, CA 91016 USA Within the US: +1 888 305 0041 International: +1 626 305 0041 Fax: +1 626 305 9048 For all inquiries: info@parasoft.com APAC Outlook issue 56 | 13

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT

Interview: SGTech Marking its 40th anniversary this year, SGTech is the leading trade association spearheading the technological future of the Smart Nation of Singapore

INTERVIEW

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ince inception, SGTech has evolved in alignment with the ever-transforming tech realm. Keeping pace with the advancement of technology from mainframe computers to personal devices and on to telecommunications, SGTech continues to champion a thriving technological ecosystem for Singapore. Indeed, consolidating over 1,000 member companies, ranging from innovative start-ups to vast multinational corporations (MNCs), SGTech represents the largest technological community in Singapore.

We catch up with Executive Director at SGTech, Ms. Yean Cheong, as the association undergoes its three-year transformation plan to explore its role within the Singapore Green Plan, and the necessity of engendering digital trust.

APAC Outlook (AO): Can you talk us through the origins of SGTech, how it came about, and its initial vision?

Ms. Yean Cheong, Executive Director (YC): SGTech traces our beginnings to 1982 as the Singapore Federation of The Computing Industry (SFCI) when IT was all about mainframe computers. In 1986, another group came together to form the Micro Computer Trade Association of Singapore (MTAS). They represented the power of the personal computer. The two worlds eventually came together in 1999, with the merger between SFCI and MTAS to form the Singapore IT Federation (SITF). The Association was renamed as the Singapore Infocomm Technology Federation (SiTF) in 2012 to include telecommunications.

14 | APAC Outlook issue 56

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INTRODUCTION

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CHANGING THE NARRATIVE OF AI ADOPTION

nt.io AI Team Spaces Whitepaper

Since 2017, Sentient.io has established a name for itself as

By Sentient.io Pte Ltd an AI-as-a-Service platform on a trajectory of scale.

December 2021

Delivering unparalleled value for enterprises, Sentient.io enables software developers to build AI and Data-driven solutions quickly and easily by offering domain-targeted AI Data and API services. This unique offering accelerates innovation and protects existing AI investments whilst increasing AI’s accessibility.

Above all, Sentient.io reduces IT complexity, placing the unlimited potential of AI at its users’ fingertips and allowing anyone, regardless of their experience in AI, to adopt ready-touse models. This is a revolutionary tool for businesses lacking such skills in AI or Data Science, in order to build, deploy, and adopt advanced technologies quickly and seamlessly.

In addition, all models are pre-trained, making it a seamless transition to adoption. Should there be a need for customtrained models, Sentient.io is more than capable of handling any such requests.

From its base in Singapore, the start-up has now entered its Series B1 phase of funding after receiving significant investment that amounts to over USD$7 million since inception.

With primary backers including A*STAR and global technology giant BEENEXT, this funding will fuel Sentient.io’s ambitious growth into markets across the Asia Pacific, answering the global call for digital transformation, particularly from Japanese corporations. On local terms, the start-up will continue to drive the growth of Singapore as a SMART Nation in the era of the digital revolution. We speak with Founder and CEO, Christopher Yeo, to find out more.

APAC Outlook (AO): What makes Asia Pacific a strategic area of growth for Sentient.io?

Christopher Yeo, Founder and CEO (CY): The entire global AI market expects to see a CAGR of 35.3% from 2019 to 2024, forecasted to have a value of $193.8B1 in 2024. The global AI Software & Service market is also forecasted to reach $37.9B2 in 2024.

Further streamlining the deployment of its solutions, Sentient. io has recently launched TeamSpaces – a collaborative workspace embedded within the company’s native platform that enables teams to collaborate and build within a safe and secure space. TeamSpaces is instrumental in enhancing business practices when it comes to the adoption of technologies in the development space, bringing creative visions to life. Not only does the platform bolster collaboration, it’s the foundation on Role-Based Access Control means that data is handled in a secure manner with no risk of leakage.

With the overall ambition of benefiting humanity through access to augmented intelligence, Sentient.io’s scalable solutions respond to the burgeoning market demand from businesses seeking to adopt AI-enabled processes. For Big Data owners, such as MNCs and governments, the platform enables streamlined collaboration between multiple developers whilst all AI algorithms and data are securely stored within one central repository.

Sentient.io is excited and gearing up to pursue opportunities in SEA, Japan and Australia in the coming years as APAC itself accounts for 30% of the market3 which is valued at $11.37B. A very sizeable marketplace with a strong AI revenue with a CAGR forecast* above 28% from 2019 to 2024 across all the main markets in SEA and Japan. AI is also expected to provide a 10% -18% uplift across SEA GDP** by 2030.

Our AI focus on four domains is also aligned with industry AI adoption. We are in the right place for such tremendous growth opportunities and looking forward to be part of the impact AI is providing to SEA, Japan and Australia markets.

Footnotes: 1.

Global AI Market Size: Marketline report 2.

AI Services Market Size: https://pureai.com/articles/2021/02/24/ ai-growth-to-reach-300-billion.aspx 3.

AI APAC Segmentation: Marketline report AI Business domains Segmentation: * GlobalData Market opportunity forecast **https://www.kearney.com/digital/article/?/a/racing-toward-the-future-artificialintelligence-in-southeast-asia

AO: What differentiates Sentient.io from other market competitors?

CY: TThe use of AI in today’s world will greatly impact business operations and daily lifestyles. However, building AI applications is difficult, requires specialized skill sets that are costly, and takes a long time for companies to acquire.

We want to change the AI narrative by focusing on Software Developers instead. These programmers generally specialisein building applications and system deployments and thus rely largely on ready- to use AI models and Data science given their limited skill in deep development tech.

We enable software developers to build AI and data-driven solutions quickly and easily by offering domain-targeted AI and data as API microservices. Plugging the gap between “plug and play” and “train your own” models.

We handle all the heavy lifting from developing, deploying, managing and monitoring AI models. Also, our platform is multi-cloud and highly scalable. We offer enterprises, SMEs and their development teams quick access to AI models for the development of AI solutions for their applications.

deeply interpret data and efficiently solve a wider range of business problems: • •

Providing broader information context Creates powerful synergies with machine learning

We started with AI TeamSpaces, launched in March 2022.

Collaboration is key to development work for teams that are based everywhere - offshore, own country as well as development teams from the ecosystem. AI Team Spaces enables software development teams to very quickly carving out safe and secure private spaces of enterprise datasets and algorithms in order to facilitate custom training of own models and collaboration between teams of software developers and business users, with the aim of rapidly developing business applications and solutions with our own AI models using low-code editor.

We hope to be able to benefit humanity with augmented intelligence through the platform enhanced with TeamSpaces and ready to use microservices via APIs.

AO: What are Sentient.io’s key priorities for the years ahead? Have you identified any other notable areas for expansion?

Sentient.io Pte Ltd 3 Fusionopolis Place, #03-56, Galaxis WorkLofts, Singapore 138523

CY: We want to build and strengthen our composability functions whereby we combine multiple AI techniques to more

https://www.sentient.io/en/

Sentient.io AI Team Spaces Whitepaper

By Sentient.io Pte Ltd December 2021

APAC Outlook issue 56 | 17

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT

With technology at the heart of everything - driving industry, driving new business - the Association saw the need to transform once more, to represent companies with tech at their core, into SGTech in 2018.

AO: Since inception, how has SGTech developed and progressed in terms of its key objectives and the messages it tries to get across?

INTERVIEW

YC: SGTech’s work has correspondingly evolved as the core of our membership shifted, and companies themselves have evolved over the years. What has not changed is the concept of member-centricity in our work - we exist for our members.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought into focus the role of trade associations and chambers (TACs) as the bridge between government and industry, which is in line with our purpose. While SGTech is a TAC for the tech industry, we adopt a horizontal approach to integrating tech in businesses across all industry sectors.

SGTech’s three-year transformation plan announced last year (2021) after extensive discussions within the Council, spells out our

18 | APAC Outlook issue 56

strategic thrusts: • To position Singapore as a global node for digital data, based on trust.

• To lead the tech sector to take collective action and be part of sustainable solutions in Singapore and the world.

The dual strategic thrusts are underpinned by talent for tech, which we will continue to champion.

These priorities are aligned with our mission to catalyse the ecosystem to accelerate tech innovation and pervasive tech adoption, which will realise our vision of a thriving ecosystem that powers Singapore as a global tech powerhouse.

AO: What do you find most exciting about working in Singapore’s technology sector?

YC: First of all, technology is ever-evolving. The constant change in the sector means that we are always exploring new things and new ways of doing things. It is a privilege to work with the brightest, most innovative business leaders across sectors.

Our approach is always to support tech companies in their expansion strategies to integrate vertically

HIMS Management & IT Consultants PL HIMS provides customised management consultancy services, proprietary software solutions and training to organisations of all industries in both private and public sectors.

HIMS Signed Strategic Partnership MOUs with two prominent organisations in Chongqing, China, witnessed

by IMDA CEO and SGTech Chairman in 2020 Singapore.

HIMS specialises in organisational development and transformation and assists organisations upgrade, transform, attain sustainable development, and move towards business excellence.

Holistically, HIMS assists organisations in executing their strategic plans effectively, achieving their organisational goals, mission, vision, and core values, and moving towards business excellence through harnessing their total factors productivity and utilising HIMS proprietary HIMS-BESTTM Business Excellence Software Solutions.

Fundamentally, HIMS assists organisations improve quality, enhance productivity, reduce cost, and prevent risk.

HIMS is recognised by the China Commission of Development and Reform in 2019 as an organisation that “helps create industry leaders through the trilogy of moving towards business excellence”.

Asia Brand Association, Hong Kong, conferred 3 awards on HIMS in 2013: HIMS Group of Companies was awarded “Top 500 Asia Brand”, HIMS LLP was awarded “Asia Famous Brand”, and HIMS Founder was awarded “Asia Brand Excellent Manager”.

In short, HIMS assists organisations “Make Money with Ease and Peace”.

Please browse through HIMS E-Commerce Website: www.himsdms.com for more information on HIMS Companies, Software Solutions, and Total Services.

INTRODUCTION

Recently, HIMS-BESTTM Business Excellence Software Solutions is endorsed by the China government as the China Standard in business excellence software solutions.

HIMS founder wrote his fifth book “Moving Towards Productivity and Quality Excellence” in 2018.

269-A, Sixth Avenue, Singapore 276561 | hims2@himsdms.com | +6597560468

INTERVIEW

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT

and horizontally, thus we get the opportunity to make an impact across a wide spectrum of businesses.

In the shift to leapfrog digitalisation adoption by enterprises in Singapore, we have embarked on more outreach, together with the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and TACs for other sectors, to steer and support the digital transformation of industries.

We support our members in their digital transformation journey by ensuring there is a steady pipeline of talent to fulfil the needs of the tech sector through the workforce initiatives in partnership with government agencies, such as the Career Conversion Programmes and Global Ready Talent Programme.

20 | APAC Outlook issue 56

AO: On the flip side, what are its biggest challenges?

YC: As a small country, we are a price taker and not a price setter. This means that we are very exposed to global trends and phenomena, and our ability to influence and set the global agenda is limited.

This comes with other associated challenges of not having direct access to bigger economies, hence we need to leverage FTA networks to achieve the same level of access.

However, our size and hyper-connectedness give us the advantage to be a testbed for new technologies and ideas. We think this can allow companies big and small to springboard into the region.

Post-Covid-19 consumer business within retail, telecoms, and the hospitality sector has seen Vouchermatic implemented in creative ways to engage with their customer base, improve ROI on their marketing spend and has additionally even found new pockets of customers in the form of millennials/GEN Z. In a post-COVID-19 landscape, companies have shown a strong desire to use tools like Vouchermatic, in order to bring their customers back, scale customer acquisition, engage customers using segmentation, automation and additionally focus on the online sales of vouchers and subscriptions.

New age digital companies are using incentives to grow revenue and build brands, employing innovative strategies such as direct to consumer marketing, customer segmentation, push and pull marketing and incentive automation. Vouchermatic then helps administer these attractive strategies for growing online businesses, whilst also offering an effective implementation service for robust online to offline strategy.

This ground-breaking product helps with marketing efforts, improves customer engagement, optimises costs and creates meaningful customer relationships in the digital era.

Vouchermatic can offer a diverse platform to design and jump-start your incentive programme. This initiative also allows you to engage with your digitally savvy clients and succeed by converting them as your loyal customers.

Inventrik has invested in building a modern cloud-first platform (Vouchermatic) delivered as SaaS to fulfil these

needs. Over the years, vouchermatic has been deployed to successfully solve problems such as: accelerated customer acquisition, continuous engagement for brand building, automated service recovery, customer loyalty, online to offline transition and enabling a growth in revenue from digital commerce.

This Incentive platform offers multiple modules to implement gamification ,contests, stampcard, lucky draws, KOL (Influencer) Marketing and rewards wallets to name just a few. Using this service for marketing automation will keep a track of how many times your customers shop from you and additionally thank them for their loyalty by sending automated mobile vouchers as a reward. Alternatively, ‘online 2 offline Rewards’ (O2O) helps to incentivise customers online and drive enormous amounts of foot traffic to your physical stores.

Vouchermatic allows users to gamify incentives using games such as spin-the-wheel, Scratch card, pick a box, etc. Such games can be designed to attract customers during holiday seasons & other major sales events. These games can be easily integrated with your website & mobile app to keep the users engaged and spend more time & money with you.

There are games such as “shake the tree” for christmas holidays and e-ang-bao for chinese new year, which can be easily setup with custom branding, various reward rules and play frequency.

Using Vouchermatic, Businesses are able to overcome reward fatigue, captivate users, drive innovation, and ultimately increase their revenue.

Need Advice? Contact us for a demo, free consultation or general inquiries on our products and services. For urgent quotes email neha@inventrik.com

INTRODUCTION

Inventrik is a truly modern tech company offering a vast array of new-age solutions to enterprises, government and SMEs. Their flagship product is the highly successful “Vouchermatic”.

3 Shenton Way, #24-05, Shenton House, Singapore 068805 Call: (65) 64920137, (65) 81189106 Email: contact@inventrik.com Inventrik.com Vouchermatic.app

INTERVIEW

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT

AO: What trends are currently transforming the sector in your region? How are you responding to them?

YC: The increasing importance of data privacy and data protection of consumers cannot be ignored. With businesses relying on data to create personalised products and services in the battle for the customer’s favour, the industry as a whole must engender trust. This digital trust is something that companies must be able to win from users, not simply in themselves, but also in the intricate digital value chain of suppliers and partners.

To steer the thinking of the industry as a whole and to help our companies understand the intricacies and take the relevant actions to tap the opportunities in this space, SGTech formed a Digital Trust Committee in 2021. The Committee will be the trailblazers who find the way forward for the industry and the region.

Sustainability is another important area, as the whole world races to meet our commitments in the Paris Agreement, and more importantly, to save planet Earth. Our Sustainability Committee is helping to shape the thinking and activities of all our Chapters and Committees and define a programme of work that can help Singapore meet the objectives

22 | APAC Outlook issue 56

of the Singapore Green Plan.

AO: Has SGTech got any projects in the pipeline you wish to highlight?

YC: • Digital Trust - SGTech is taking the lead in putting together a landscape study on digital trust and a major event that will take place in Q3 this year.

We will be organising a forum to provide global thought leadership in this space to inspire a generation of thinkers who can help build a trusted ecosystem for consumers and businesses to connect.

• Digital Transformation Centre (DTC) - SGTech DTC will be the underlying platform that galvanises the ecosystem to deliver an integrated experience of digital transformation for local SMEs. The services are categorised into a ‘3S’ Framework, comprising the three key pillars of Strategy, Solutions and Skills, that outline a holistic approach to the digital transformation process. Digital transformation is only meaningful in the broader context of a business’ overall transformation. It starts from clear business objectives – why the organisation needs to

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INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT

sector-specific application of the 3S framework.

By combining SGTech’s resources in technology with domain expertise, we can significantly increase the likelihood of success.

INTERVIEW

transform, and how they want to change their business model to meet evolving customer needs and the challenges of the macro environment.

With the objectives defined, digital transformation becomes the enabler to allow the business to move smoothly and swiftly to execute what it has to do, to meet the desired outcomes.

SGTech will also directly partner with other industry associations to deliver a contextualised,

SGTECH AND SINGAPORE’S TECHNOLOGICAL FUTURE – SEVEN MAJOR DRIVERS • Digital trust to enable SGTech to safely and confidently leverage tech to propel Singapore forward.

• Developing, upskilling and training the tech workforce to stay current with technology evolution and industry demands.

Simultaneously, having the policies and culture that embrace diversity and inclusivity to support foreign talent to fulfil the widening demand of businesses for talent.

• Enhanced digital connectivity and digital infrastructure, facilitated by bilateral and multilateral digital trade and digital economy partnership agreements.

• Singapore’s continued neutrality to play a key role in tech and digital mediation or linkages amid the East-West technology bifurcation, also predicated on strength in SGTech’s digital trust industry.

24 | APAC Outlook issue 56

• Sustainability - We are poised to do our part to reduce Singapore’s electronic waste by concurrently focusing on businesses and consumers: first, by getting Singapore SMEs started on mounting their internal campaigns to reduce their e-waste, and second, by scaling up efforts to grow consumer demand for extending the lives of electronic devices and appliances. We have plans in the works to mobilise industry and the public to help reduce Singapore’s packaging waste or packaging sustainability, beginning with packaging surrounding ICT devices. Our passionate members in the specialised domain of ICT devices are working closely with us to identify addressable problems whose solutions could be innovatively crowdsourced. We are also preparing to mount a small but ambitious pilot to encourage

• Further strengthening the private-public partnership to jointly tackle future challenges.

• Orchestrating sustainable digitalisation by casting aside the false dichotomy between sustainability and technological growth to create powerful solutions, products and services that can be exported to the region and the world.

• An autonomous, trusted, intelligent Internet founded on blockchain, AI and other disruptive technologies, with solutions by many innovative Singaporean companies and start-ups. Singapore can be the preferred innovation enclave to hub Web 3.0 services if multi-ministries and agencies collaborate closely with industry to develop policies and regulations in an agile manner to support the emerging opportunities. Singapore as a global node for digital and data can become a reality if SGTech can drive the hyper synergy and collaboration among government, the private sector and the community, as well as embrace diversity and inclusiveness, sprinkled with some imagination and a dash of ambition.

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and ease SMEs into taking their first steps towards Environmental Social Governance (ESG) compliance, which in the long run will increase their competitiveness at home and abroad as they prepare themselves to compete in large procurement calls.

• Talent for Tech - SGTech will be playing a key role in the Government’s initiative to nurture a future-ready workforce, working closely with the polytechnics, ITE and IMDA, as announced in Minister of State Tan Kiat How’s speech at the Committee of Supply debate. This initiative aims to enhance the quality of internship opportunities for Polytechnic and ITE students by allowing them to apply their knowledge outside of the classroom.

For a start, we are looking at 1,000 polytechnic and ITE students participating in this enhanced internship initiative over the next three years. Upon graduation, students will also have the opportunity to take up apprenticeships at participating companies to learn the ropes of ICT roles and for those who are interested in further studies, they will be supported through Work-Study Diploma or Degree programmes related to growth areas such as AI, cloud and cybersecurity.

AO: How do you see Singapore’s technology sector developing over the next five years?

YC: Singapore is well-positioned to take advantage of the opportunities and challenges that may come our way. Although COVID-19 has accelerated digitalisation or digital transformation across all sectors, the Russia-Ukraine conflict will further amplify supply chain disruption, making things even more challenging. Adding to that are the adverse effects of climate change, creating an overhang and threatening all of humanity.

Against this backdrop, we observe that Web 3.0 is coming on fast and furious. It is disrupting and threatening existing business models and also challenging the sovereignty of current monetary, fiscal and regulatory frameworks. Singapore’s tech sector has the opportunity to gain momentum over the next five years, and Singapore can become a global node for digital and data within the next decade.

INTERVIEW

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info@sgtech.org.sg www.sgtech.org.sg APAC Outlook issue 56 | 25

SG TECH 79 Ayer Rajah Crescent, #0203/04/05, Singapore 139955 info@sgtech.org.sg www.sgtech.org.sg

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