SCS Magazine 2013 Issue 2

THE MAGAZINE OF THE SINGAPORE COMPUTER SOCIETY MICA (P) 001/07/2012

Big Data and Business Analytics R-evolution in Financial Analytics pg 3 Banking on Insights from Analytics pg 4 Unscrambling Big Data pg 7

ISSUE TWO 2013

PRESIDENT’S NOTE

These are

Exciting Times CONTENTS Based on the latest IDA figures, Singapore’s Infocomm industry revenue hit some $83 billion in 2011. With yearon-year growth averaging about 14% in the past six years, the industry now employs around 143,000 in Singapore.

More than 85% of the household here own computers and have Internet access. Globally, the World Economic Forum (WEF) Technology Report 2013 ranks Singapore as Asia’s top networkready nation and No. 2 in the world in terms of “preparedness to use ICT to boost competitiveness and well-being”.

In short, this industry that we are in is going places. And one of SCS’s core aims is to enable our members to ride this wave of our industry leadership, adding value to professional careers and personal development, and giving a voice to the community. Today, our membership is 27,000 strong and growing. At every opportunity, we are bringing people together to exchange ideas, explore possibilities, and get inspired. In February, we celebrated great IT leaders among us, the veterans as well as our next

generation. We continue to go deeper with new chapters to cater to emerging technologies – our newest Business Analytics (BA) Special Interest Group is set to drive our leadership in Big Data and BA. As our new IT Society editor Teng Cheong iterates, change is the only constant, and that is what SCS aims to do. So, if you aren’t already a member, flip to page 22 and find out how to sign up right now. We can’t wait to have you on board. Enjoy your read!

Chak Kong Soon President Singapore Computer Society chak.kong.soon@scs.org.sg

Mailing Address

Tan Teng Cheong

53 Neil Road Singapore 088891

Theme Editor

Email

Contributing Writers Steve Illingworth Eveline Lim David Smith Simon Thomas Irene Xu

Columnists Chandra Sekar Veerappan

Editorial Support Leong Hoi Lan

Advertising Sales & Admin Leong Hoi Lan For ad sales enquiries, Tel: 6226 2567 ext 12 Email: hoilan.leong@scs. org.sg Web: www.scs.org.sg

Regular

01

President’s Note

02

Editor’s Message

24

Calendar of Events

28

Final Say SCS Quiz Feature

03

R-evolution in Financial Analytics

04

Banking on Insights from Analytics

07

Unscrambling Big Data

08

Singapore as a Data and Analytics Hub

10

Analytics: The Real World Use of Big Data People

Editor

Simon Thomas

Pg

scs.secretariat@scs.org.sg

Editorial & Design Oculus Design Pte Ltd

Feedback We value your feedback on this magazine. Simply email scs.secretariat@scs.org.sg with your comments to help us produce an even more interesting and relevant magazine for you in subsequent issues. You are welcome to submit articles for consideration of inclusion.

The IT Society is the official publication of the Singapore Computer Society. Any part of this publication may be reproduced as long as credit is given to the publisher, Singapore Computer Society. The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of the Society.

13

SCS’ 46th Annual General Meeting

14

SCS Chapters’ AGM

16

Five Minutes with Business Analytics SIG Chairman

19

Meet our new Fellows!

20

IT Leader Awards 2013 Meet the Winners!

22

Welcome Aboard!

Forefront

23

A Night to Celebrate Professional Development

26

SCS Certification Enrolment Opens in May!

27

Are you a Certified Software Tester?

Attribution-NoncommercialShare Alike 3.0

For advertising enquiries, please call 6226 2567 or email scs. secretariat@scs.org.sg.

THE MAGAZINE OF THE SINGAPORE COMPUTER SOCIETY

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EDITOR’S MESSAGE

Change is Good

More than 2000 years ago, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, an original guru of change said, ‘Change is the only constant in life.’ Most of us would agree with that. In fact, the IT industry is the very pacesetter for change, dictating how we evolve our businesses as well as our lives.

Change is all around us. And our IT Society magazine is also going through some.

One of the changes, you may have noticed, is the editor. In March, I was appointed to succeed Bernard Leong as editor of the IT Society magazine.

Bernard did a wonderful job as an editor, and it is now my responsibility to take our magazine to the next level.

For starters, we are going with shorter and sweeter. Pithier content that gets to the heart of the matter for a more insightful read. We’ll also be incorporating new content to address a wider range of issues ranging from work-life balance to self improvement, and IT career development tips. You can also hear more perspectives from IT leaders and peers from the industry as we get their views on hot topics. On top of that, this magazine will be more interactive - we are already planning to link this quarterly publication to our online properties so that you can “talk back” to us.

Business Analytics (BA). We look at how analysis of massive and complex data that is now available for businesses is helping them to make better sense of the way forward. Hear the latest on BA from the experts, and learn a useful tip or two that may make a difference at work this week.

In this issue, we discuss one of the key accelerators of the speed of change in business decision making today –

Tan Teng Cheong

Thank you for picking up IT Society. We hope you’ll love the changes, and give us more ideas on how we can continue to evolve the magazine into an even better read for you.

Editor tan.teng.cheong@scs.org.sg

FEATURE

R-evolution in Financial Analytics

The American Century Investments (ACI) quantitative research team introduces a new open source investment platform to simplify the process of analysing the investment worthiness of companies.

The use of analytics in financial firms for research, operational optimisation, and risk management is a well-known and understood practice. ACI is utilising network/graph analysis to predict how information travels from one company/ industry to the next, and to identify companies that are going to perform well in their portfolio strategies. In launching this new package, ACI walked away from the traditional and commercial analytics vendors to embrace the open source R language together with the Revolution R Enterprise analytics software from open source specialist Revolution Analytics.

The result is a new collaborative, quantitative investment platform.

Putting the r in ACI “We began observing how much more quickly the open source community (in R and Python, specifically) was outpacing the analytical capacity of our commercial vendors. In an information and ideadriven business in which proprietary analytics are absolutely critical, we can’t afford to wait for commercial vendors to play catch-up,” says Tal Sansani, quantitative analyst and portfolio manager at ACI. Sansani and his colleague, Sampath Thummati, worked together to build their own package called rACI to serve their large research team, as well as a growing number of investment processes. Their focus on “open” infrastructure/analytics guided their choice as to which technology and data vendors they would work with to scale the package and their platform’s capabilities.

Analysis on a Higher Level

Quick-Time Research

“Our new infrastructure allows us to explore new and innovative ways to integrate “non-traditional” data sets with more common fundamental, macroeconomic analysis,” said Sansani. “We expect economic network analytics, textual analysis, and data from other financial markets to better inform our stock selection models and analytics in the future.” While the introduction of new, non-traditional data sets put the system to greater risks, the ACI team credits their new platform in providing more rigorous and sophisticated data quality controls.

Another consideration in the deployment of the R language for quantitative analysis was its impact on the performance of their platform. A complex and global industry segment like automotive or technology presents the team with large data sets that could degrade system performance.

“We’ve observed our simulations to be 20 times faster compared with base R, which vastly improved research turnaround,” according to Sansani.

“When you are doing exciting things in research, you don’t want to sit around waiting for results.”

Why rACI? A Model to Get the Right Fit

(Continued on next page)

rACI has made it easier to introduce updated data sets to make the application of graph theory (via the “igraph” package for R) meaningful to their core stock selection models.

Applying dynamic network analysis to the man-made network of companies within an industry and mapping the relationships among those companies by analysing the flow of information, can lead to the discovery of individual companies that might otherwise have been overlooked. Mapping the relationships, clusters and tracking capacity based on the data flow between nodes and clusters can lead researchers to identify companies (nodes) within the network that should be researched further. Once identified, companies are then put through a typical regimen of financial and risk analyses in order to determine their “fit” within established portfolio strategies.

FEATURE

At-A-Glance Results

Moving Forward

Finally, in making graph analysis part of their efforts, the team needed to ensure that their ability to visually assess and share results was easily and widely available across all teams. “We’ve connected our Revolution R platform to [the] Tableau [software]. This allows computationally and statistically complex analytics to be easily and efficiently executed by everyone in the group,” Sansani affirmed. Graph analysis is especially powerful in presenting the complexity of a dynamic network of companies within the same industry to demonstrate how and where companies might share characteristics, synergies, and/or dependencies.

Comprehensive results such as these provide analysts with useful information at a glance, without having to go through the pages of a lengthy document.

The quantitative research team has found a way to deliver the benefits of graph analysis to their internal customers while avoiding the risks and limitations that non-traditional, complex sets of data present to current commercial analytics systems. Sansani and Thummati are taking the best of the open source community’s efforts while stabilising and optimising performance with Revolution Analytics. Their efforts have delivered a comprehensive, in-house platform that will support ACI in the development of proprietary analytics to keep them ahead of the curve.

David Smith Vice President Marketing and Community Revolution Analytics

Banking on Insights from Analytics Irene Xu, Director of Decision Management at Citibank Singapore, shares how banks can realise the full value of Analytics to their advantage.

Business Analytics (BA) has increasingly become a competitive differentiator. Banks, in particular, are using them to develop tailored and innovative products and services to suit the evolving needs and expectations of consumers. BA is also helping banks to reach out to consumers with more relevant offers, enhancing client engagements and fostering customer loyalty.

But what is the secret to unleashing the power of BA and how can businesses realise its full value?

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First, What Exactly is Business Analytics?

Often business reporting and BA are considered one and the same. In fact, they are different. Far more than mere reporting, dashboards or metrics, BA is an emerging frontier that takes a multidisciplinary approach. It digs into huge data to uncover business insights and translate them into business actions with tangible impact. BA also helps the businesses to explore new opportunities, identify emerging potential, and shape strategy in today’s fast moving and highly competitive market place.

The banking sector is one of many industries that use analytics to tailor their product offerings and marketing efforts according to in-depth analysis obtained from customer behaviours and preferences. Analytics can also provide banks with insights to help them reduce risk, improve efficiency, and enhance ROI.

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How BA Benefits Citibank At Citibank, we are driven by three key focus– preference, engagement, and potential of our customers, as illustrated in Fig. 1. Understanding these key focus allows us to provide customers with the relevant products or services at the right time. That is why analysts are directly and extensively involved in our business portfolio review, customer performance analysis, and strategy formation.

With this key insight in mind, we developed the Citi PremierMiles credit card to give our customers travel-related privileges and faster air miles accumulation. We also identified a group of customers with similar behaviour but with lower spend in the travel category. To engage them, we tailor-made travel deals to meet their needs, at the same time, increase their spend on their credit card.

Admittedly, there is no short cut to transforming business insights into effective and implementable solutions. At Citibank, we use the SMART Principle.

Citibank’s SMART Principle We use SMART as our motto and guiding principle in making sure analytics is embedded across the entire consumer business in Citibank.

Strategic: Analytics has to be strategic, not tactical.

Hence, it is important to include analytics when forming the business strategy to ensure complete alignment to the business priority and ambition.

Client is at the center stage Fig.1 Segmentation

Cluster analysis is one of the commonly used methods to better understand existing and potential consumers, as well as to develop new products. After grouping customers according to their demographics and spending patterns, we discovered that there is a potential market for frequent travelers, as illustrated in Fig. 2, Segment 8 – Travel, Duty Free & Hotel.

Measurable: Analytics must be able to measure the outcome and effectiveness of the implemented solutions. The business will not be able to determine their next steps if they cannot pinpoint inefficient and unresponsive components of the implemented solutions.

Actionable: Analytics must remain practical and focused on producing tangible benefits and value for both the customer and organisation.

Real-time: Analytics has to be “real-time” in order to make the correct offer at the right time to the right customer at the right place. This will significantly improve the responsiveness of offers, at the same time, provide a WOW experience to customers.

Test-and-learn: Analytics sharpness is developed and refined through a test-and-learn process. Developing this culture is necessary to ensure that learning and knowledge are captured, shared, and leveraged to improve future programmes.

To survive in this competitive 21st century business environment, organisations need to do whatever they can to solve new challenges and remain relevant. BA is capable of achieving that, making it an essential and critical tool for all organisations.

Fig.2 Credit Card Lifestyle

Irene Xu Director Decision Management Citibank Singapore

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FEATURE

Unscrambling

BIG DATA Steve Illingworth, Chief Technology Officer of Big Data analytics company Greenplum, clues us in on how businesses can get ahead with the powers of Big Data.

We are living in an era of industrial revolution of data – a time denoted by the Internet, computing systems and emerging sensor networks. And this acceleration of information generated will only be increasing. To put things in perspective, the world’s information is more than doubling every two years, with a colossal 1.8 zettabytes being created and replicated in 2011 (that’s storage space equivalent to about 60 iPads of the 32GB variety).

We can expect 50 times the amount of information by 20201.

This data deluge phenomenon is notably one of the major platforms of growth in 2012, driving organisations globally to invest in this next “musthave” competency. For enterprises, Big Data has become a reality and represents significant opportunities to create business value. For that to happen, enterprises need to manage and make sense of all these data, in order to make better and more real-time business decisions.

Is Your Organisation Big Data Ready?

There are three main aspects to data management that enterprises should know.

First, is the need to modernise IT infrastructure.

Organisations need to adopt systems and data centres that are flexible, scalable and responsive to the rapidly changing business environment.

Secondly, to build the foundation of the first phase of data management, businesses need to achieve extreme performance and scale. This involves the ability to process hundreds of terabytes, or even petabytes of data – a task that was not possible with the servers and computing capabilities ten years ago. This is where the heart of a significant number of innovations is happening in Big Data technologies today. The third piece to the equation is the formation of an agile analytics team. This is where business users themselves can be much more scientific about how they can use the information they have to understand their business, generate hypothesis or ideas quickly, and then validate them with data. No doubt there are significant hurdles to cross, but the benefits that can be derived through Big Data span far and wide.

Benefits of Big Data for Businesses Targeted Customers Retail bankers, for one, can make use of predictive behaviour to pick out and recommend the right products to their most valuable customers. This can only be done by analysing huge sets of data.

Just like how Amazon makes recommendations through predictive analytics based on mathematical models, banks must segment their customers based on their lifetime value and correlate these data to their product offerings to deliver the most profitable and relevant recommendations at every point of customer interaction.

Many retailers are also trying to grasp and make sense of information on various social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to improve their interactions with customers. However, the promise of the ability to reach out to a segment of extremely targeted and focused consumers through Big Data cannot be more real. As part of the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore’s (IDA) Data & Analytics Programme2, IDA and its industry partners will be investing a total of $5.3 million to develop a suite of business analytics shared services for the retail and wholesale sector.

Prime Healthcare Another vertical which Big Data has great potential to expand into is in improving the state of the healthcare industry. Especially in Singapore with a rapidly greying population and higher demand for accurate and timely health information, there is an impetus to move towards personalised quality healthcare and medical attention while remaining cost-effective. This is exactly the goal of the iN2015 Healthcare and Biomedical Sciences plan3 in striving for different healthcare providers to work together in an integrated and coordinated manner.

The objective of this is to better determine the most appropriate point of care to treat patients, as well as minimise prescription and medical errors.

(Continued on next page)

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THE MAGAZINE OF THE SINGAPORE COMPUTER SOCIETY

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FEATURE

Bringing the Bulk Together The industry is moving in the direction of helping companies analyse their data through simpler and more cost effective ways than before. We are looking at the need for an integrated system for Big Data, one which places great importance on the users of the systems. Big Data processing needs to embrace collaboration in order for individuals to work together to produce insights. This is where data science comes in, where we observe an intersection of skills from mathematics, computer and behavioral sciences to extract value and insight from data. We are likely to see a dramatic increase in demand for millions of data scientists in the next 10 to 20 years. In fact, we are already observing the emergence of new companies formed specifically around Big Data analytics and data science. EMC, in collaboration with IDA,

is working to build a dedicated centre of attachment (CoA) where the next generation of data scientists will be trained and certified in Singapore with a deep dive, hands-on immersion course that will be partially funded by IDA.

RESOURCES

While cloud computing focuses on the bottom line in achieving more efficient use of an organisation’s IT infrastructure to gain cost savings, Big Data adopts a more top line approach in helping businesses generate more revenue and profits. I look forward to seeing a more holistic approach towards data management and for more industries and organisations to benefit from new operation efficiencies, revenue streams, and business models.

3

Obtained from: http://www.emc.com/ leadership/programs/digital-universe.htm

1

Obtained from: http://www.ida.gov.sg/ News%20and%20Events/20120531105601. aspx?getPagetype=20

2

Obtained from: http://www.ida.gov. sg/doc/Collaboration%20Opportunities/ Collaboration%20Opportunities_Level2/ iN2015Healthcare.pdf

Steve Illingworth Chief Technology Officer Asia Pacific Greenplum - A Division of EMC

Singapore as a Data and Analytics Hub Data & Analytics: A key driver of economic growth and competitiveness.

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), the worldwide Business Analytics (BA) market for software, hardware, and services is expected to reach US$123 billion by 2015. MITSloan Management Review Research Report for 2011 has indicated that 1,500 CEOs revealed that their most pressing challenge was to operate in a world that is volatile, uncertain, and complex. More than half of them said that they were not confident of their ability to manage the increasing complexity of doing business. This is where data and analytics can play an important role as insights derived from analytics can not only provide greater clarity and certainty, but also increase speed and accuracy in making business decisions. Naturally, demand for such services also presents significant opportunities for Singapore’s ICT industry and partners.

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The Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), as a statutory board, seeks to take advantage of this opportunity by working with the industry and various government agencies such as EDB, SPRING Singapore, and A*STAR to boost the growth and competitiveness of key economic sectors and develop our local industry and manpower capabilities.

Today, Singapore is well positioned as a data and analytics hub comprising multinationals, local Infocomm enterprises, start-ups, research institutions, and educational institutes.

Some of these successful collaborations help to drive innovations in the codevelopment of analytics products and services, thereby developing local industry’s capabilities in analytics.

IDA’s Role in Driving Data & Analytics

IDA Understands Key Challenges of the Industry

IDA aims to position Singapore as an international data and analytics hub, as well as to create a vibrant data and analytics ecosystem. To that end, IDA takes an integrated approach to seed adoption, develop industry and manpower capabilities for the growing analytics sector, as well as putting in place scalable infrastructure.

Even though data and analytics can help to drive an organisation’s competitiveness, the industry still faces challenges in accessing and building up their internal capabilities such as recruiting suitable manpower to develop and deploy analytics solutions.

Organisations find it hard to justify the value of analytics to their management.

Local Infocomm enterprises and

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service providers also find it challenging to attract and build up their analytics capabilities internally. Organisations will need more resources skilled across multi-disciplines including IT, core analytics, business, and management to manage analytics solutions. In the last two years, IDA also collaborated with major data and analytics technology providers and Institutes of Higher Learning to launch business analytics programmes to develop graduates with interdisciplinary skills to perform analytics jobs.

Initiatives to Help the Industry IDA has established several initiatives to help organisations and individuals develop analytics products and solutions, conduct tests and proof of concepts, as well as build analytics capabilities.

These include: 1) The Business Analytics Innovation Challenge (BAIC) is a competition where global lead users can leverage various platforms (i.e. online system, workshops, hackathons, and industry networking sessions) to crowdsource ideas and develop analytics prototypes for piloting and proof of concepts. It also encourages collaboration with global data science talents, Infocomm enterprises, and service providers, at the same time, learning and discovering the value of analytics.

2) The Business Analytics Translational Centre (BATC) is a cross-agency initiative by A*STAR and IDA that encourages co-innovation with user and Infocomm enterprises to build up industry analytics capabilities and unlocking the economic potentials of the intellectual properties developed in the national Research Institutes (RIs) and Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) to promote the adoption of analytics technologies in industry through technology innovation and translation. BATC provides consultation and support for companies to use cutting-edge Business Analytics tools that analyse big data to gain business insights. In addition, BATC provides training opportunities to develop professionals by collaborating with industry to build up data mining and analytics capabilities among Infocomm professionals.

3) The Business Analytics Shared Services for Retail and Wholesale Sectors is a collaboration between IDA and industry partners that establish analytics shared services for different retail sectors. This collaboration allows local businesses and start-ups to tap on the developed analytics shared services, which cover Operations Analytics, Inventory Optimisation, and Customer & Marketing Analytics, so that businesses can improve their competitiveness through increased productivity and resource optimisation from the use of analytics.

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4) The Government Business Analytics Programme aims to promote and build analytics capabilities in the public sector.

Taking a coordinated approach, the programme will focus on boosting the adoption of analytics, and implementing shared analytics services to develop and deploy analytics applications within government agencies with the industry. This programme will also develop public sector analytics capabilities and create awareness for analytics to improve public sector service delivery and citizen engagement.

5) The Infocomm Leadership & Development Programme Expanded (iLEAD Expanded) is a manpower development programme that aims to sharpen the capabilities of Infocomm professionals in Singapore. To drive Data & Analytics, Singapore will need more analytics manpower armed with critical skills such as large scale data and analytics mining, predictive modelling, risk management, and real-time decision-making using analytics tools.

Under iLEAD Expanded, IDA collaborated with various organisations such as EMC, Microsoft, Revolution Analytics Singapore, and Temasek Polytechnic (in partnership with IBM and SAS) to establish Centres of Attachments (COAs).

Organisations can collaborate with these COAs on project work, training, and mentorship to deepen their Big Data and analytics capabilities.

These IDA initiatives will help companies and organisations to discover the value of analytics, provide opportunities to build up the industry’s capabilities, and effectively apply them to remain competitive in dynamic market environments.

At the same time, these initiatives will create employment opportunities, strengthen the industry’s capabilities, and bring their analytics products and solutions to the global market, thereby growing Singapore into a data and analytics hub.

For more news and information, please visit www.ida.gov.sg

Eveline Lim Assistant Director Enterprise Infocomm, Industry Development Group, IDA Member, SCS Evangelist - SCS BA SIG

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FEATURE

Analytics:

The Real-World Use of Big Data How innovative enterprises extract value from uncertain data.

A global telecommunications company collects billions of detailed call records per day from 120 different systems and keeps them for at least nine months.

An oil exploration company analyses terabytes of geologic data, while stock exchanges process millions of transactions per minute. For these companies, the concept of big data is not new.

So, what is new then? And how have big data activities evolved?

The most notable change is the advancement in technology. Leaps in technology have made it possible for almost everything to be digitised, allowing more industries across the spectrum to analyse larger and realtime data, including non-standard data like stream, geospatial, and even sensor-generated data. Technology has also made analytics techniques better, making it possible to extract insights with previously unachievable levels of sophistication, speed, and accuracy.

That aside, how are organisations viewing big data today – and to what extent they are using it to benefit their businesses?

A Landmark Study To find answers, the IBM Institute for Business Value partnered with the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford to conduct the 2012 Big Data @ Work Study. A total of 1,144 business and IT professionals from 95 countries participated in this survey, while more than two dozen academics, subjectmatter experts, as well as business executives were interviewed. These are some of their key findings:

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THE IT SOCIETY — ISSUE TWO 2013

• Develop an enterprise-wide big data blueprint A blueprint encompasses the vision, strategy, and requirements for big data within an organisation. At the same time, it helps to align the needs of business users to the IT roadmap implementation.

• According to 63 percent of respondents, the use of information (including big data) and analytics is creating a competitive advantage for their organisations. This is a 70 percent increase compared to a separate study done in 2010.

• Respondents whose organisations had implemented big data pilot projects or deployments are 15 percent more likely to report a significant advantage from information analytics, compared to those who rely on traditional analytics.

• Start with existing data to achieve near-term results The most logical and cost-effective place to start looking for new insights is from within the enterprise.

Adopting this pragmatic approach will help your organisation build the necessary momentum and expertise to sustain a big data programme, while keeping in mind its near-term objectives.

• Only 7 percent of respondents viewed social media data as a part of big data. And fewer than half of respondents with active big data initiatives reported collecting and analysing social media data.

Understanding the impact of big data is one thing, but knowing how to use it to your advantage is a whole different ball game altogether. How can these results help your business gain competitive advantage?

Key Recommendations for Businesses Insights of the study have led to five key recommendations for organisations to progress their big data efforts and seek the greatest business value from big data: • Commit initial efforts to customer- centric outcomes Focus big data initiatives on areas that bring the biggest value to the business. For many industries, this means starting with customer analytics. Doing so will lead to a better understanding of your customers’ needs and their future behavior, which, in turn, will lead to better service.

• Build analytics capabilities based on business priorities Organisations are facing a growing variety of analytics tools while also facing a critical shortage of analytical skills. Big data effectiveness hinges on addressing this significant gap.

In short, organisations will have to invest in acquiring both tools and skills.

• Create a business case based on measurable outcomes In order to develop a comprehensive and viable big data strategy, a solid and quantifiable business case is required. Therefore, it is important to have the active involvement and sponsorship from business executives throughout this process.

With these recommendations, you can start developing your big data solutions. Begin by identifying your business requirements first. Then, tailor the infrastructure, data source, and quantitative analysis to support that business opportunity.

(Continued on next page)

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Most importantly, get your organisation’s key stakeholders and IT professionals to work together throughout your big data journey.

Source: Analytics: The real-world use of big data, a collaborative research study by the IBM Institute for Business Value and the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. © IBM 2012.

Please email Antonia Ong (onghha@sg.ibm.com) for a full copy of the study or additional information.

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PEOPLE

SCS’ 46th Annual General Meeting

Overwhelming support for fee revision.

At the Society’s latest AGM held at Grand Park City Hall on 28 March 2013, a majority of the over 100 members who turned up voted in support of the proposed resolutions to revise the membership fees. The last membership fee revision was 17 years ago.

The Executive Councils, past and present, have been very prudent in their spending. As a result, the Society has been able to sustain the costs of operations without having to raise membership fees all these years. However, due to rising costs, many members feel that it is time to update membership fees. The new membership fee structure will take effect in FY2014 and is expected to be a big boost to the Society as it forges on to provide greater value and more services to members.

President

Chak Kong Soon, FSCS Stream Global

Introducing our SCS 2013/2014 Executive Council Members SCS wishes to express our gratitude to all our members who have stood behind us all these years. Your support at the AGM spurs us to work harder for you and to remain focused in our commitment to serve the needs of our members.

The following are the new SCS leadership team:

Vice-Presidents (from left to right) • Howie Lau, SMSCS Lenovo (Singapore) • Tan Teng Cheong, SMSCS Savvis, A CenturyLink Company • Adrian Chye, MSCS MediaFreaks

Honorary Secretary Tham Ai Chyn, FSCS Singapore Institute of Management

Honorary Treasurer

Yap Chee Yuen, FSCS Genting Singapore PLC

Honorary Legal Adviser

Toh See Kiat, FSCS Goodwins Law Corporation

Council Members (1st row from left to right) • Timothy Chan, FSCS Singapore Institute of Management • Cheah Saw Pheng, MSCS IBM Singapore • Andrew Khaw, MSCS Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore • Kwong Yuk Wah, FSCS National Trades Union Congress • Lai Poh Hing, SMSCS Nanyang Polytechnic • Lau Shih Hor, MSCS Elixir Technology

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(2nd row from left to right) • Bruce Liang, SMSCS MOH Holdings • Ng See Sing, MSCS NCS • Ong Whee Teck, MSCS Accenture • Harish Pillay, FSCS Red Hat Asia Pacific • Joshua Soh, SMSCS Cisco Systems (USA) • Yum Shoen Liang, SMSCS Defence Science & Technology Agency

Co-opted Members (1st row from left to right) • Haresh Khoobchandani, SMSCS Microsoft (Thailand) • Robert Chew, FSCS Stream Global • Philip Kwa, SMSCS Integralis Services

(2nd row from left to right) • Miao Chun Yan, MSCS Nanyang Technological University • Ba Thein Naing, MSCS StarHub Ltd • Deep Singhania, MSCS Nucleus Software Solutions

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PEOPLE

SCS Chapters’ AGM Through our various chapters and interest groups, we enable our members to choose the specific fields they wish to immerse themselves in.

Here’s a look at the names that will lead the respective Chapters for the coming year.

Business Continuity Group (BCG)

Vice-President Paul Lee, SMSCS The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Honorary Secretary Jasper Tan, SMSCS IBM Singapore Assistant Secretary David Chew, MSCS Aris Integrated Medical Honorary Treasurer Marc Ng, SMSCS NCS Assistant Treasurer Wong Tew Kiat, FSCS Organisation Resilience Management

President Raju Chellam, SMSCS Dell Global B.V. (Singapore Branch)

Committee Members Ronald Chan, MSCS MOH Holdings Lim Meng Wee, SMSCS SP Consulting (International) Caroline Tan, MSCS Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore Yong Foo Onn, MSCS UBS

Certified IT Project Managers’ (CITPM) Chapter

Vice-President Michael Tong, MSCS Defence Science and Technology Agency Honorary Secretary Jeffrey Ng, MSCS Napier Healthcare Solutions Honorary Treasurer Sean Lim, MSCS Integrated Health Information Systems Committee Members Kelvin Tan, MSCS Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore Ivan Teng, MSCS NCS

Established in 1996, the BCG aims to provide a platform to share and exchange Business Continuity issues and knowledge with fellow professionals. The BCG is recognised at a national level with members providing professional feedback to help form Singapore’s national standards such as SS507 Singapore Standard for IT Disaster Recovery Services and SS540 Singapore Standard for BCM (Business Continuity Management). It has also been instrumental in promoting Business Continuity awareness in the Singapore Police Force, Singapore Stock Exchange, and Polytechnics, among others.

Join the Business Continuity Group today at http://www.scs.org.sg/BCG_ join.php.

The CITPM Chapter encourages skills upgrading and interaction among CITPMs and Certification in Outsourcing Management for IT (COMIT) with the aim of raising the professionalism in IT projects and outsourcing management.

CITPM Chapter organises activities, seminars, and courses that help members to be a more effective leader and gain insights in managing IT projects successfully. Be certified and participate in the CITPM Chapter today!

Seah Hou Liang, MSCS Agency for Science, Technology and Research President Thomas Lai, SMSCS ST Electronics (Info Software Systems)

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THE IT SOCIETY — ISSUE TWO 2013

Sim Boon Hwa, MSCS Kulicke & Soffa Wu Chun Wei, MSCS Accenture

Facebook: www.facebook.com/SingaporeComputerSociety

Interactive Digital Media (IDM) Chapter

The IDM Chapter was formed in April 2009, envisioned to be the catalyst for the convergence of the IDM sector with an emphasis on the IT practitioners for their professional and social development.

Vice-President Daniel Tan, SMSCS Nanyang Polytechnic Honorary Secretary Low Aik Lim, MSCS Xcellink Honorary Treasurer Georgina Phua, SMSCS Singapore Polytechnic

What’s more, the IDM Chapter will be focusing on a dedicated industry awards in conjunction with The Straits Times Digital Life to showcase local innovation and talent this year.

Committee Members Peter Choy, SMSCS Temasek Polytechnic Eric Lam, MSCS Amdon Consulting Luke Lee, MSCS Media Development Authority President Nicholas Aaron Khoo, MSCS Singapore Cybersports & Online Gaming Association

Ng Weng Choh, MSCS Ngee Ann Polytechnic

Mobile and Wireless Chapter

Vice-President Loh Mun Yew, MSCS IDA Singapore

Be constantly overwhelmed by the fascinating Interactive Digital Media technologies and build professional ties with fellow IDM practitioners by becoming an IDM Chapter member here: http://www.scs.org.sg/IDM_mem.php.

Oo Gin Lee, MSCS Digital Life

The Mobile & Wireless (MWL) Chapter aims to develop and enhance Infocomm professionals’ skills by organising discussions and seminars in the area of emerging and matured mobile and wireless technologies. They include talks on Ultra Mobile Broadband, mobile apps development, site visits to iExperience, and many more.

Honorary Secretary Gary Teo, MSCS SIM University Honorary Treasurer Michael Lim, MSCS JamiQ Committee Members Melvyn Suan, MSCS Nanyang Polytechnic

The MWL Chapter will continue to provide members with collaboration opportunities with industry players through networking and sharing of information and experiences. Look out for more exciting events from the chapter.

Tan Kok Peng, MSCS MobileOne President Jennifer Huang, SMSCS SIM University

Yeo Law Learn, MSCS MobileOne

Join the Mobile & Wireless Chapter today at http://www.scs.org.sg/ mobilewireless_form.php.

Quality Assurance (QA) Chapter

Vice-President Quek Ser Choon, SMSCS Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore Honorary Secretary Ang Ho Keat, MSCS Integrated Health Information Systems Honorary Treasurer Esther Khew, SMSCS Housing and Development Board Committee Members James Tey, MSCS Nanyang Polytechnic Santheep Singh, MSCS Accellion Inc

President Francis Mahendran, SMSCS EasyWorks

Web: www.scs.org.sg

Balaji Balasubramanian, MSCS Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore

SCS QA Chapter strives to provide a platform for members to share and learn about Quality and Processes.

There is a lot happening in the IT landscape in Singapore such as the Private Data Protection Act that was passed in parliament last year, the Singapore G-Cloud initiative, as well as e-Governance. This sets the stage for exiting talks and activities to be planned. Stay tuned to the QA Channel.

Join the QA Chapter today at http:// www.scs.org.sg/QA_addmember.php.

THE MAGAZINE OF THE SINGAPORE COMPUTER SOCIETY

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PEOPLE

Five Minutes

with Business Analytics SIG Chairman Simon Thomas shares his personal life, analytics knowledge, and plans for the new special interest group.

1. For the benefit of our readers, tell us what Business Analytics (BA) is all about.

BA uses data to understand a given situation and to determine what action to take next. In business, we have Analytics Applications that take massive amounts of data to derive insights to help a business determine the best course of action.

2. Isn’t BA something successful businesses have been relying on for years? How is BA different today?

Yes, BA has been around from time immemorial. What is new now is that we have much more information, much more powerful computers, and sophisticated Analytics Applications that were not practical even 10 years ago. And it is certainly just the tip of the iceberg.

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THE IT SOCIETY — ISSUE TWO 2013

5. What do you think the next decade will look like for the BA industry in terms of its relevance to businesses?

3. Is BA useful only for the profitability goals of a company? What about other key needs such as human resource development, talent retention?

The application of analytics is only dependent on our imagination. The topic can be just about anything. For example, in HR, it could be analytics on attrition or employee morale. In operations, it could be about efficient use of energy or optimal use of space, etc.

4. What does a business that wants to gain competitive advantage through use of BA need to do?

You will need a BA Strategy that describes your data landscape, processes, as well as systems and map all of this to your business objectives. This “roadmap” forms the basis for your decisions on how to utilise BA to gain competitive advantage and beyond.

I don’t think we need to look into the next decade. Several surveys of the CxO suite have concluded that businesses that take advantage of BA are more successful than businesses that don’t. I am confident that the shape and form of the BA industry even 20 years from now will still surprise the pundits [and be beneficial to businesses].

6. We understand you are a patent holder. Is the patent related to your innovation in creating the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and BA Service Lines?

Yes, in fact, the patent was for an important solution for us to grow the CRM and BA Services business in our delivery centres across the globe. The patent optimises resource deployment activities and helps us to forecast resources needs across a specific skill and capability requirements.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/SingaporeComputerSociety

Business Analytics Special Interest Group (BA SIG) 7. As the chairman of the newly established BA SIG (Business Analytics Special Interest Groups), what is/are your main goal(s) this year?

We would like to establish the BA SIG as THE place to go for information and resources on BA in Singapore.

Our goals are very simple for this inaugural year: • Drive awareness for the BA SIG • Provide IT professionals with training and capability development opportunities • Launch a BA Certification Program in collaboration with SCS and IDA Programme • Create a vibrant BA Community in Singapore to allow IT professionals to network with each other We also have plans to bring together businesses, government, and academia in Singapore. In fact, our first BA SIG event will be held in June. We will also be hosting trainings and skill development workshops throughout the year.

Personal Life and Beliefs 8. Curious. Our research shows that you hold a Masters of Science in Engineering and a Bachelor of Music. These are quite diverse fields to major in.

Can you share how this came to be?

I started my professional life as a musician in Boston, for about five years. Fun, but extremely unpredictable. That’s when I decided to go back to school to pursue my interest in technology and engineering, which eventually led me to consulting, specifically around CRM and BA. It may look quite drastic to move, from music to engineering to consulting, but there was a specific goal in mind at every turn, and I did absolutely everything in my power to achieve the goal.

Web: www.scs.org.sg

9. Name (a) business or thought leader(s) whom you admire.

I generally look to a wide array of historical and current business and thought leaders whom I study and take lessons from. But in terms of basic approach to life, I have my parents to thank for setting a wonderful example.

10.Share something interesting about your life away from work. E.g. family, inspiration in life, leisure pursuits etc.

My family is the main motivation in my life. Watching my three kids grow up and living out their dreams is the thing that gives me the inspiration to strive to improve myself. Spending time with my family also allows me to enjoy my favorite pastimes like traveling, music, and cooking.

11. What is your guiding philosophy about life?

I believe that one’s background, qualification, and experience are far overshadowed by passion, vision, and, the drive to do whatever it takes to reach for a goal. That is why I like to give people the opportunity to prove themselves, as has been offered to me all through my life and career.

BA SIG COMMITTEE LIST

Chairman Simon Thomas MSCS

Deputy Chairman Kelly Choo MSCS

Secretary Swaminathan Rajamanickam MSCS

Evangelist Shridar Jayakumar MSCS

Evangelist Kwa Siew Kuan MSCS

Evangelist Eveline Lim MSCS

Join the SCS Business Analytics SIG today!

If you have an interest in Business Analytics, take the first step today by being part of the SCS BA SIG. To register, please visit www.scs.org.sg/ba_reg.php.

Evangelist Oh Chin Lock MSCS

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PEOPLE

Meet our new Fellows!

From left: John Tan, Ong Lih Ling, Chak Kong Soon (SCS President), Foong Swee Hoon, Lai Kim Fatt and Timothy Chan. Absent: Robert Chew

SCS confers Fellowship to six outstanding senior members.

Their notable contribution brought positive changes to the ICT community. They have established for themselves a reputation of eminence and authority in the field of IT. Let us give our heartiest congratulations to the following individuals who have been conferred Fellows of SCS!

Ong Lih Ling

Timothy Chan Wai Kuen SIM Global Education

Timothy’s involvement with SCS dated back to the late 80s/early 90s when he was an assessor of National IT Power (a national IT manpower development and assessment scheme administered by SCS) and tutored our members for BCS’ professional examination. He was also a member of the Editorial Board of our monthly magazine, SCSNET. For the past three years, he chaired the Professional Certifications Sub-committee.

Foong Swee Hoon

Retired (Previously Singapore Airlines) Swee Hoon worked in Singapore Airlines for the last 40 years, starting with the management of data centre operations. Her last position in Singapore airlines was Divisional Vice President IT Services, looking after both application development as well as IT Operations. The IT services cover world-wide operations including airline reservations, airport check-in, crew management, Engineering, etc. She retired in late December 2012.

Robert Chew

Web: www.scs.org.sg

Lih Ling is an IT veteran with extensive experience in managing large IT departments and government IT projects. She specialises in people and organisation development and is now primarily focused on capability development. Lih Ling was also nominated for three years to the Institute of Systems Science to be the Director for Singapore e-Government Leadership Centre. She was a Council member on the SCS Exco for several terms and continues to serve in SCS committees.

John Tan Chee Thian

Stream Global

Robert was a former partner of Accenture and is now a partner of Stream Global. He was on SCS Exco and chaired the SCS Infocomm Survey from 2009 to 2011. He also served as a council member of SiTF and chaired the Wireless Chapter from 2002 to 2005. On top of that, Robert chaired the IT Standards Committee (ITSC) for six years, starting from 2005. He now serves as a council member to ITSC. Robert was awarded SCS IT Leader Award in 2010 for his influential role in the IT industry. He also received SPRING’s highest award for his contribution to standards development in 2011.

Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore

Nanyang Polytechnic

Lai Kim Fatt

IBM Singapore Kim Fatt is the Consulting Government Programs Leader in IBM Singapore.

Prior to this, he was a Chief Information Officer (CIO) from MINDEF/DSTA, where he retired in 2005. Kim Fatt played a key role in helping MOH develop contact tracing systems and other critical response systems to help contain the SARS crisis. His work won international recognition from the region and US. He was awarded the Public Administrative Service Medal (Silver)(Bar) in 2003 during the National Day, as well as the IT Person of the Year in 2004 by SCS. Kim Fatt is also regularly involved in community activities in his free time.

John Tan, Deputy Principal at Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP), has more than 23 years of experience in the IT industry, R&D, and education sector. As an IT veteran, John was instrumental in developing new capabilities, establishing strong partnerships in the industry, and contributing significantly in IT development. He served four terms as Vice President of SCS. John also devoted time and effort to serve the Singapore Infocomm Technology Federation (SiTF) and the Association of Information Security Professionals (AISP) in various capacities.

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PEOPLE

IT Leader Awards 2013 Meet the Winners!

SCS celebrates the success of our five outstanding IT professionals.

Read on to find out what makes them stand out from the rest.

Yap Chee Yuen IT Leader of the Year

Wilson Tan Hall of Fame

Saurav Bhattacharyya Young Professional of the Year

Chee Yuen is the Executive Vice President of Corporate Services at Genting Singapore PLC, and the Head of Innovation Technology at Resorts World Sentosa (RWS). With over 30 years of experience in managing end-user IT organisations, Chee Yuen is a visionary leader who anticipates business needs and defines IT strategies to ensure that IT investment decisions and initiatives are in sync with business objectives and priorities. Under his leadership, RWS won the National Infocomm Awards in October 2010 under the Private Sector category for the Most Innovative Use of Infocomm Technology. Chee Yuen is currently the appointed Chairman for the National Information Technology Standards Council (ITSC). Under his leadership, ITSC partnered with IDA and other industry members to develop industry standards on Cloud Computing to facilitate the adoption of cloud technologies and services in Singapore.

Wilson is the Chief Executive Officer of Capital Mall Trust. Over the past two decades, Wilson has made many contributions to the Singapore IT industry. His illustrious journey in the ICT arena includes stints as President of SCS and Chairman of the Singapore Federation of Computer Industry (SFCI) – now known as the Singapore Infocomm Technology Federation (SiTF). He was also a past Chairman of the National IT Standards Committee (ITSC), having served two terms as Chairman between 1998 and 2004.

He was conferred the “Distinguished Award” in 2001 and “Outstanding Award” in 2005 by SPRING Singapore in recognition of his voluntary services and contributions to the Singapore National Standardisation Programme.

He was also awarded the inaugural Special Recognition Award by the Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts (MICA), Singapore. In 2005, the Singapore Computer Society recognised him as IT Leader of the Year.

Saurav is the CEO and co-founder of Quantum Inventions (QI), an innovation leader in connected automotive navigation delivering rich on-board information services for consumers’ motoring convenience and Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) for enterprise and government solutions. Graduating with an Honours degree in Computer Engineering in 2000, he started a research-oriented career at the Centre for High Performance Embedded Systems (CHiPES) at NTU. In the five years he spent there, he published over 26 academic papers. After completing his Master’s degree in Computer Engineering in 2006, he moved on to commercialise navigation and routing technology from CHiPES through Quantum Inventions (QI) together with co-founder, Prof Thambipillai Srikanthan. From creating commercial value for its traffic information services, QI has now moved on to provide invehicle information and navigation services to automotive OEMs globally.

Through his leadership, QI has been awarded the Young Innovator award under the Land Transport Excellence Awards in 2010.

From left: Wilson Tan, Chak Kong Soon (SCS President), Sim Ann (Guest-of-Honour), Yap Chee Yuen, Saurav Bhattacharyya, Teh Kaiwen and Liu Junhua

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THE IT SOCIETY — ISSUE TWO 2013

Facebook: www.facebook.com/SingaporeComputerSociety

Teh Kaiwen IT Youth

Liu Junhua IT Youth Junhua graduated from the Diploma in Information Technology from Singapore Polytechnic (SP) and is now an undergraduate at Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD).

While Junhua was in SP, he embarked on a final year project that was aimed at improving the emergency handling systems for crime and fire cases. This project was conducted in collaboration with the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Singapore Police Force (SPF), and Singapore Civil Defence Force

Web: www.scs.org.sg

(SCDF). He led his team, Viva Studio, to win the 2011 SiTF Award (Tertiary Student), SLA Spatial Challenge 2011 First Prize (Tertiary Student Category), and several other awards.

Junhua researches on designing interactive learning experience for IT education. Sponsored by the SUTDMIT International Design Centre (IDC), Junhua conceptualised, developed, and executed an academic study titled ‘Integrating Design-Based Learning and Active Learning in Software Engineering Education’. The results of the academic study will be published by the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) at their Annual Conference 2013.

Kaiwen’s interest in IT began at a young age of nine when he was enthralled by the rich opportunities and wonders of the Internet. He enrolled into Temasek Polytechnic in 2005 after completing his O-Level. However, he failed to clear his studies in his first year despite repeated attempts, and subsequently had to leave the polytechnic in 2006.

After completing National Service, Kaiwen was given a second chance at Temasek Polytechnic where he pursued the Diploma in Cyber and Digital Security. His efforts paid off when he graduated three years later in 2012 and won the prestigious achievement awards in Temasek Polytechnic – Gold Medal for being the Most Outstanding Graduate of the Diploma in Cyber and Digital Security and the Lee Kuan Yew Award for excellence in Mathematics and Science. A natural leader with far-sighted goals, Kaiwen co-founded the Temasek Polytechnic Information Systems Audit and Control Association (TP-ISACA) Student Group and was nominated as President in 2011.

THE MAGAZINE OF THE SINGAPORE COMPUTER SOCIETY

21

PEOPLE

Welcome Aboard!

Welcome New Members!

Let’s hear from some of our new members about what attracts them to SCS…

Tan York Sin

IT Disaster Recovery and Operations Services Manager United Overseas Bank

Siew Chong Keit

Founder and Associate Director Questview Pte Ltd

Top 6 Reasons To Join SCS • Professional Development Keep abreast of the latest development and industry standards through certifications and insightful talks.

I am a returning member of SCS – a society worth joining.

SCS provides recognition for IT professionals and a platform to enhance their professional development. If IT disappears, there would be a lot of inconveniences because we would need to roll back on practices that we carry out with the help of IT in our daily life.

• Engage with Professionals Get involved with events organised by our various chapters and interest groups.

I started my career as a Mainframe Systems Programmer, which I later on switched to the area of Data Centre and Computer Operations management. I hold several professional certifications, including a certification in Business Continuity Management from SCS. I also have a keen interest in applying analytical skills to music to explore a systematic approach to develop Violin/Viola/ Cello techniques and create music using computer software.

• InfoPier Online Network Singapore’s first and only registry for local ICT professional offers you myriad networking and collaboration opportunities.

• Social and Fun Events Have fun while moving towards a common purpose with fellow professionals from all walks of life.

• Stay Informed and Ahead Be updated with the latest Society and industry news through SCS various publications.

• Engage and Inspire the Next Generation Play a part in grooming young industry talents so that they can one day assume the mantle of ICT industry leadership.

Be Our Member Today!

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THE IT SOCIETY — ISSUE TWO 2013

Raja Chowdhury

Associate Director Lithan Education Group I am a multidisciplinary professional with experience in Product Management and Operation Management across two industry sectors: Hospitality and Business IT Education & Training.

Because I have experience in functional areas and international exposure across different industries, I have the competitive advantage that allows me to take up my current role as Associate Director of Lithan Education Group.

However, my move to Business IT training was something that was not planned, as I do not have any prior IT background.

Thankfully, SCS always provides me with fantastic opportunities to be familiar with Singapore’s IT industry landscape.

William Ng

Card System Coordinator Singapore American School My journey with IT only started when I entered polytechnic and later progressed on to a degree in Information Systems. Juggling a career, studies, and relationship was tough but the passion to learn got me through. I usually get an average of 3-4 hours’ sleep a day and anyone who is in the IT industry can easily relate to that.

The thing I really like (and FEAR most) about IT is that it is never boring; It just keeps evolving. IT is like water to me. Too much, I drown. Too little, I get dehydrated.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/SingaporeComputerSociety

FOREFRONT 1

A Night to

Celebrate The SCS Gala Dinner & IT Leader Awards 2013 was a night for members to catch up and network, as we celebrated the achievements of the top IT talents.

Over 900 Infocomm professionals gathered at Shangri-La Hotel on 22 February 2013 to celebrate the annual SCS Gala Dinner & IT Leader Awards 2013. Ms Sim Ann, Senior Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Communications and Information was the Guest of Honour for the evening. This is an event that members look forward to every year as they catch up with old friends and meet new ones. The night also paid tribute to five distinguished individuals for their outstanding achievements and contributions in the IT industry. Flip to page 20 to find out more about the winners of this year’s IT Leader Awards.

Captions 1. A night to catch up with fellow friends in the industry

2

3

4 5

2. The captivating performance

by Jack and Rai 3. An amazing night for the IT professionals 4. SCS President, Chak Kong Soon, giving his welcome speech 5. A toast for the winners

The Singapore Computer Society would like to thank the following sponsors and supporters: Sponsors of IT Leader Awards 2013:

Supported by:

Platinum Sponsor:

Web: www.scs.org.sg

Official Media Partners:

Video Production by:

Gold Sponsor:

THE MAGAZINE OF THE SINGAPORE COMPUTER SOCIETY

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REGULAR

Calendar of Events

May 2013

June 2013

May

CITPM/COMIT/CITBCM Enrolment

5 Jun

IDM Chapter: Create your E-book! Workshop

May - Jun

Splash Awards 2013

7 Jun

4 May

SCS Business Leadership Seminar: Exploring the Shifting Paradigm of Technology

SCS IT Law Seminar: Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act & Its Implications for Businesses

20 - 21 Jun

SCS IT Law Seminar: Fundamental Elements of IT Contracts

18 May

SCS Bowling Tournament 2013

28 - 29 May

BCG: 2-Day Workshop on How to Design an Effective BCM with ISO22301

30 May

BCG & ECCV SIG: Chill Out Night

31 May

QA Chapter: Telecoms Made Easy

July 2013 17 Jul

InforPier: Infocomm Professional Development Forum (IPDF) 2013

19 Jul

SCS IT Law Seminar: Legal Issues of Cloud Computing

August 2013 16 Aug

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THE IT SOCIETY — ISSUE TWO 2013

SCS Golf Day 2013

Facebook: www.facebook.com/SingaporeComputerSociety

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

SCS Certification Enrolment Opens in May! To date, more than 3,200 professionals have acquired SCS’ professional certifications. Gear up and get certified with our industry-endorsed certifications.

The enrolment is open now till 14 June 2013. For enquiries or applications, please email Ms Evelyn Chan or Ms Seah Mee Ling at evelyn.chan@scs.org.sg or meeling.seah@scs.org.sg or call 62262567 ext 14 or 17 respectively.

For those who are keen to enrol for the related courses and examination, kindly contact Institute of Systems Science at 6516 2020 or visit www.iss.nus.edu.sg.

Certification in IT Project Management (CITPM) CITPM is the essential qualification for a career in IT project management that raises the level of professionalism and recognition.

Certification in Outsourcing Management for IT (COMIT) COMIT re-affirms your qualification and competency in designing, implementing and managing IT outsourcing initiatives.

Certification in IT Business Continuity Management (CITBCM) CITBCM is widely recognised as the benchmark for IT professionals involved in the practice of resilience and security in the IT and business environment.

o The world’s first IT centric professional certification in the areas of IT project management, outsourcing management, and business continuity management o The preferred criterion for evaluation of government IT projects o Supported by IDA and accredited under National Infocomm Competency Framework o Accreditation by reputable universities o Recognised by regionally and backed by more than 600 organisations * Above programmes are supported under CITREP Expanded (Up to 50% of certification fee can be claimed).

For more details, visit www.ida.gov.sg/citrep

Are you a Certified

Software Tester?

SCS, in collaboration with Nanyang Polytechnic, introduces the first-ever Software Testing Certification that involves 80% practical assessment!

The Certified Software Testing Professional (CSTP), which was launched in collaboration with Nanyang Polytechnic on 28 March 2013, is managed by SCS and supported by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA). The programme is mapped onto the National Infocomm Competency Framework (NICF) and supported under IDA’s Critical Infocomm Technology Resource Programme (CITREP).

Candidates who are successfully certified in CSTP will be able to:

With the increasing importance of Software Testing as a profession across the globe, SCS has introduced CSTP with the aim of validating skilled professionals in the testing of ever-increasing complex IT systems. To appreciate the impact and liabilities of quality and security exposures in the information systems and software in today’s business, CSTP is designed to meet the industry’s demand.

• Set up and configure essential build-and-test environment,

The CSTP programme caters to the industry’s needs for practical knowledge and a sound understanding of methods, processes, tools and technologies in software testing, with a focus on the software quality control and security assurance.

Stand out from the rest with CSTP The CSTP is the first certification in the industry to have an exam structure that is 80% based on practical and 20% on theory.

CSTP is for software testers, quality engineers, developers and ICT project managers who are looking for a certification that allows them to acquire sound understanding of methods, processes, tools, and technologies in software testing with a focus on the software quality control and security assurance perspective. This certification also further enhances their career advancement.

Web: www.scs.org.sg

• Understand the importance of software quality and security, • Understand and apply V model software testing method for software development life cycle (SDLC), • Understand and apply effective software testing processes,

• Perform test planning and test case design, • Generate and analyse software metrics for quality measurement, and • Understand and apply white box testing techniques including static code analysis, dynamic code analysis, code coverage, and unit testing.

Says Chak Kong Soon, President, Singapore Computer Society, “SCS, as the premier body for ICT professionals in Singapore, saw a critical need to raise the level of Software Testing professionals by ensuring that they are competent not only in theory but also in the practical aspect of their work. The CSTP certification is the first in the industry to have a certification exam based on 80% Practical and 20% Theory. With CSTP as the 3rd QA certification, SCS aims to be the leading body to raise the professionalism and certify professionals in the area of software testing.”

With the addition of CSTP, the Society now has six certifications covering IT Project Management, IT Outsourcing Management, Business Continuity Management, Software Quality (Software Quality Analyst and Manager of Software Quality), and Software Testing.

Inaugural CSTP Course and Exam The first CSTP training course and exam is scheduled to take place on: Date: 20-22, 27-28 August 2013 Venue: Nanyang Polytechnic For more information on the course calendar and curriculum, please visit www.scs.org.sg/cstp or call Ms SzeYing Yeo at 6226 2567 x 15 or email her at szeying.yeo@scs.org.sg

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REGULAR Look Ma, No Driver!

FINAL SAY Here are some emerging inventions that may just better our lives.

Paper to Touchscreen

Imagine a simple piece of paper imbued with the power of touchscreen technology. Fujitsu is working to bring this new flash of stationery brilliance to market as early as 2014.

The sleek and innovative device uses a combination of a low-resolution camera, sensor, light, and projector to turn any flat surface you touch into a touchscreen platform. It could be a magazine, a document, or a page of a book. With simple, intuitive hand gestures, you could crop, copy, scan, and digitise images or chunks of texts easily and quickly. No computers, scanners, or copiers required. Now, that’s technology that doesn’t just look good on paper.

You might have heard or even be the owner of a car that can self-park with you in the driver’s seat. But have you heard of a car that can drive itself around? Yes, a driverless car.

Google’s driverless car has a sensor installed on the roof of the car that constantly emits lasers to ‘feel’ its way around, even those areas that fall within the blind spots of the human driver. The smart wheels also measure the moving speed of other cars on the road, and will keep pace with the flow of the traffic.

Soon, working professionals like you and I who need an extra minute to catch up on work (or on sleep) will be able to easily do so in our cars, knowing that we’re still on the move.

In fact, some states in the U.S. have already begun road-testing driverless cars from last year. But experts say it could be a while before we see them on the road. Apparently the technology is advancing so quickly, driving laws can’t keep up. Looks like we’re back in the driver’s seat, for now.

Clean Handling

We all know how important it is to wash our hands frequently to maintain our personal hygiene. Truth is, we sometimes forget (or are too lazy) to do so. Whatever the reasons, now, you can let a revolutionary self-sterilising door handle handle the problem.

Utilising Ultraviolet (UV) light technology, the built-in UV lamp constantly sterilises the door handle to kill most bacteria that may have been transmitted to it from a previous hand contact. With UV light in the equation, you might question the safety of this gadget. After all, we all know too much UV light is no good for the skin. Thankfully, pulling down the door handle temporarily switches off the UV lamp to minimise direct contact with UV light. That’s what we call a problem well-handled!

SCS Quiz 1. Which of the following language is used in Datamining/Statistical computing?

A) Fortran B) Go C) R D) COBOL

4. Name the open source methodology for Enterprise Information Management.

A) Business Intelligence 2.0 B) MIKE 2.0 C) Open Enterprise 2.0 D) None of the above

2. Walmart handles more than 1 million customer transactions every hour, which is imported into databases estimated to contain A) More than 10 petabytes of data B) More than 7 petabytes of data C) More than 1 petabytes of data D) More than 2.5 petabytes of data

5. What is Sailfish OS ?

A) Name of Mozilla’s mobile OS beta B) New Cloud OS for desktops C) Popular enterprise data analytics app D) New Linux-based mobile OS

3. As of 2012, how much digital data is created everyday?

A) 1 quintillion bytes of data B) 5 quintillion bytes of data C) 2.5 quintillion bytes of data D) None of the above

8. Name the company recently acquired

by Amazon for $775 million to bolster its robotic workforce?

A) Kiva Systems B) Giva Systems C) Robo Arm D) None of the above 9. Which personality recently became the first person to exceed 20 million followers on Twitter?

A) Larry Page B) Marissa Mayer C) Lady Gaga D) Warren Buffett

6. The largest data center in Asia is located in which country?

A) Singapore B) Taiwan C) India D) Thailand 7. Which of the following is the first-stop portal to search and access publiclyavailable data published by the Singapore Government?

A) onedata.gov.sg B) metadata.gov.sg C) datamall.gov.sg D) data.gov.sg

10. Googol is a large number value, at the same time, a common misspelling for the internet company Google. Its value is….

A) The digit 1 followed by 100 zeroes B) The digit 1 followed by 999 zeroes C) The digit 1 followed by 1000 zeroes D) The digit 1 followed by 99 zeroes

1) C 2) D

3) C 4) B

5) D 6) C

7) D 8) A

9) C 10) A

Answers 28

THE IT SOCIETY — ISSUE TWO 2013

Facebook: www.facebook.com/SingaporeComputerSociety