I-POWER and Microsoft? A better couple than with IBM?

LOCAL PARTNERSHIPS KEY TO SUCCESS IN BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE (BI) SPACE, SAYS MICROSOFT





Fostering local partnerships key to success in Business Intelligence space Representing the two companies are (L-R) Chin Jun Fwu – Product Marketing Manager, Application Platform, Microsoft Malaysia, Ng Wai Mun, Director of Server and Tools, Business Marketing Organisation, Microsoft Malaysia, Gorman Siah - Director of Software Solutions, I-Power Berhad and Peter Tam, Senior ISV Manager, Microsoft Malaysia.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007 – The decision-making process is critical to organisations seeking to improve competitiveness and profitability. But with recurring types of problems, this process can often lead to automation, which can be detrimental when it involves processes that touch on suspicious transactions, setting prices, recommending products and services, extending credit or monitoring product quality.

Business intelligence (BI) is no longer a luxury for a few large companies, and is an essential part of the IT portfolio used across the world to help understand the health of the organization, said Chin Jun Fwu, Product Marketing Manager for Application Platform, Microsoft Malaysia Sdn Bhd. “At its core, BI is all about collaborating on a shared view of business drivers and to reduce the time spent on decision-making.”

“Business intelligence is not a new technology - it has been around for over 10 years - and remains a top spending priority for foresighted organisations. IDC reports that the market for business intelligence is worth over US$13 billion worldwide, and forecasts an 8% year-on-year growth over the next three to five years.

“However, given these points of optimism and recent customer surveys which have shown the tremendous returns on investment for business intelligence, industry reports tell us that business intelligence has only reached close to 20-30% of its potential in organizations,” Chin added.

Toward this end, Microsoft SQL Server Business Intelligence provides end users with software support that matches their natural decision-making processes rather than simply receiving reports without any context – enabling greater consistency in the way business decisions are made.

Some of its key benefits to organisations include:
§ Capturing the decision-making processes of the best performers, thus improving the overall quality and consistency of your decision-making process.
§ Providing support for collaboration, since decision-making is most often a collaborative process.
§ Providing forward-looking insights by integrating planned and forecasted information with actual historical facts and allowing changes to future plans and forecasts to facilitate what-if solutions for future events.
§ Providing rule management capabilities or integrate with a rules engine in order to make decisions actionable. Translate a policy or rule into the specific form required by each relevant operational system.
§ Capable of capturing what decisions were made and why. The resulting repository of decisions (the decision base or knowledge base) anchors a learning environment and provides a persistent record to address compliance demands.

“We believe that Microsoft SQL Server provides an ideal solution to this situation, and makes the barrier to entry to the business intelligence club so low that there is no reason not to make business intelligence systems a core part of the corporate infrastructure of even the smallest companies,” Chin added.

Business Intelligence unearths the inside story
Microsoft Malaysia had earlier hosted an event with their independent software vendor (ISV) partners to help customers understand how they can put the effects of business intelligence into their organizations.

The event saw six key ISVs showcase their respective business intelligence solutions. Among them was I-Power Berhad who spoke about the value of business intelligence, and the strength of Microsoft’s SQL Server as the platform of choice.

“We believe that Microsoft’s next generation of data management and analysis solutions will deliver increased security, scalability and availability to enterprise data and analytical applications while making them easier to create, deploy and manage. This is the heart of the business intelligence challenge, and we believe Microsoft – through SQL Server – has the best platform to help ISVs meet them,” said Gorman Siah, Director of Software Solutions, I-Power Berhad.

“Microsoft provides the best platforms for local ISVs to innovate and create new IP – as testified by I-Powers commitment to choosing Microsoft as the platform of choice for the development of their business intelligence suit of services. We have a larger partner ecosystem comprising some 5,000 partners and 800 ISVs such as I-Power, and we believe that it is the strength of such partnerships that will prove crucial in driving the success of business intelligence in Malaysia and around the world,” said Peter Tam, Senior ISV Manager, Microsoft Malaysia.

House Renovation Hassle Part 3

In this part, it involves more hacking and patching ;-)



Black-lined box A (The left one) previously was a sliding window, then teared it out and close up the hole. Black-lined box B, the door will be removed.

One of the future wanna-do thing is to change the staircase hand holder to curvy stainless steel kind and may be put up a wall to separate the staircase from being seen from the living area.



Before this, under the stair case is just empty open area, so I decided to build a store room here. This wall is newly put up and will serves as a "firewall" between front area (living room and upstair) and back area (dining, kitchen, etc). This shall be the second barrier just in case intruder entered from the back (touch wood!). The door haven't install yet, waiting for plaster ceiling and the rest.




The wall between the bedroom downstair and the toilet knocked down to enlarge the room area. Toilet is shifted to the area beside wet kitchen, near to the back door.



More ugly scenes after the knocking.




Previous toilet location and the new wall beside. I still thinking what to put to cover that huge pipe. Plaster ceiling will cover the top part, but the vertical part is tricky one. The wall at the back of the house is teared down to enlarge the dining area and dry kitchen.




One more column is removed. See the remaining steel bar there? The extension at the back is comprehensive one with cements, steel bars, L bars... and underground wood foundation (The wood put in vertically into the ground, I don't know the tech term for that). I seen before back extension (my neighbour) without all these strength enhancements, but I can't bear the risk of house collapsing, well maybe due to earth quake.






Overall look at the back. Wet kitchen at the end, toilet beside the wet kitchen. Emm... maybe dry kitchen at the right and dining area at the left (or vice versa?). Plan to install a sliding door separating dry and wet kitchen, not sure though. Maybe another "firewall" between back and middle part? LOL, then the middle area (dining and dry kitchen) is like the DMZ zone. Woo hoo.

House Renovation Hassle Part 2

Speaking of car porch, wonder why I need to put on those nice tiles for car to drive through. Emmm, not especially convincing to spend on this just for asthetic reason. Well, decided to put money in again, thinking that my the other half will like it.

Materials bought:

For Car Porch
13in x 13in Cotto Naples Gold (374 pieces) - Center Area




13in x 13in Cotto Naples Rust (187 pieces) - Skirting and Side lining.




For newly built balcony
1ft x 1ft Rough Surface tile (Unknown brand, 300 pieces)



13in is slightly larger than normal 1ft tile, so you will need to buy less quantity, but the price is significantly higher compared to 1ft tile.

Renovation Hassle Part 1

If house is your biggest lifetime investment, then house renovation shall be your lifetime greatest expenses. The money you put into this category of expense does not contribute to your house worthiness in a linear way. Usually it would represents more like a sigmoid function graph which combines the behavour of linearity, exponentiality and near constant. In other word, there is a best optimized point that you should really consider stopping anymore money being putting in.

That's of course, IF AND ONLY IF we are as rational as the foreseen statistical model. Historically tell us that we will exceed our initial budget at least by adouble digit percentage or to the extreme of few order of magnitude. As the old wise man told us, buying a luxury car is the stupiest thing an investor will do. What about doing house renovation? IMHO, it is the second stupiest thing next to the luxury car thingy, if it is not the first. Well, anyway since we are trained to do stupid thing, let us be ignorant about the "stupid" aspect and focus more on the "smart" perspective... at least to make life easier :p

I don't really keep track of the start time for my house renovation project, I think it is like roughly started one(2?) month ago.



Ok, my house front view after the rebuild of balcony and tile up of side walls. See the black-lined box in the middle, that's the location of previous column. Teared down, throw away the old balcony, put in some steel bars, cements and thingy and reconstruct it back. Purpose is to remove that column so can park more cars (As if I need that kind of space :p). For the side walls, it is precisely measured so that the build up doesn't exceed to neighbour area. Reason? LOL, well, they can't leverage on my walls next time. Build your own, man.



Ok, as for the main electricity cable at the main entrance, it gotta be lowered down because later on the plaster ceiling will occupy the upper area, indicated by the top black-lined box. As for the right hand side black-lined box, previously the door is located at the inner area as shown below:



Ok, later on, this door will be teared off and wall will be knocked out.



Pipes stuffs for the bathroom upstair, located near the main door. This area will be covered up by plaster ceiling, so some removable ceiling thingy needed for future maintenance tasks.




Bamboo deco at the side walls, forgot the price. Should be around RM150 per piece?



Wiring above the car porch for downlights. I like wires in pipes, feel safer.



Main wiring cables near the "power" box. Again, use more pipes.




Oh, shoot. What you done with my wall??!! Ok, patch it up later.




Pipes around staircase, transmitting electricity, not water though.



"Spider web" above the living hall.


Part 2 coming soon, stay tune.

CNBC interviews Tan Sri (Dr.) Francis Yeoh on its “Squawk Box” programme

He's a more crazy shopper than I am. ;-). RM7BIL shopping vochers to be used.

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CNBC interviews Tan Sri (Dr.) Francis Yeoh on its “Squawk Box” programme

Singapore, September 12, 2007

CNBC - CNBC presenter
TSFY - YTL Corp Managing Director, Tan Sri (Dr.) Francis Yeoh Sock Ping

CNBC: The mortgage meltdown and housing troubles that have been seen in the United States have been raising concerns that a possible recession in the world’s number one economy which also happens to be the number one destination of Asian exports. So how are Asian companies preparing themselves for a possible slowdown? Let’s get the perspective of Francis Yeoh, group managing director at Malaysia’s YTL Corporation which has its fingers in many, many pies. He’s also in town for the Forbes CEO Conference joining us here in Singapore. Francis, it’s a real pleasure to have you once again on our show.

TSFY: It’s a pleasure.

CNBC: We’ve seen a lot of market volatility haven’t we over the last 6 weeks or so. How has that impacted your business at YTL?

TSFY: None at all. In the volatility of things, but we are in the long-term concession business. But this provides a rare opportunity. I’ve been thinking how on earth can there have been prosperity for the last eleven years. And it’s still looks like its going North and the liquidity seems endless and then came this innocuous sub-prime. Seems liquidity has shrunk. And this provides opportunities. Suddenly the private equity people can’t overpay anymore. It’s getting expensive, the gearing. So, I’ve always thought that the interest rates in the US were quite high. But the private equity guys have been snapping up infrastructure, etc. All the while at exorbitant, at what I call exorbitant prices. But now I think I have more opportunities.

CNBC: You are looking at infrastructure assets, I believe in and outside at Malaysia?

TSFY: Yes. 70% of our revenue from YTL Group comes from outside Malaysia so we are pretty much a global player. So we are watching all infrastructure around the globe.

CNBC: So you want to buy some big infrastructure assets within the next 6 months or so?

TSFY: Well if big is efficient, yes.

CNBC: In which particular markets here in Asia?

TSFY: There will be a lot of opportunities. Singapore is trying to sell some of their power assets. Regionally, there are people wanting to sell. India is trying to privatise some of their infrastructure assets, China is thinking about that. We are thinking about it in Malaysia, we are doing for example some water treatment of rivers. It’s the first economy in Asia to take this seriously. We use our Wessex Waters technology and we clean the water from the grade 4 to grade 2. All of Asia’s rivers have not been cleaned at all. So I think that provides a lot of opportunities.

CNBC (2nd presenter): Francis, good morning, good to see you.

TSFY: Good morning.

CNBC: One of the big flagship projects that you have been proposing is a high-speed railway between Kuala Lumpur and here, Singapore. Give us an update on the status of that project. How far away are you from developing it etc. Have you secured all the necessary financing? Just give us a status report on that.

TSFY: Well, I think that as far as this project goes, feasibility is no longer in doubt. As far as the way it’s going to go as a private sector-led project, as the prime minister reiterated last night, it should be so. It’s not going to be a government kind of project. So it is totally private sector-run. We are going through all the motions to make sure we explain, articulate very very well the economic benefits for both economies, Singapore and Malaysia. And the impact, I think, it’s positive for both now. I think most of the decision makers are aware of the fact that it is a good project but it is up to the private sector to lead it.

CNBC: Talking about the private sector, are you in any talks with any companies to get on board as joint venture partners to help you develop this project?

TSFY: At this point of time, there is no necessity except for technological partners who build this train. We are talking about a one and a half hour train ride between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, which is incredibly exciting. And the dynamics will change, look how the London-Paris train has impacted businesses and properties over there. Properties actually converged from Paris to London, from 23% to 40% in 4 months.

CNBC: Francis, can we squeeze a little bit more information out of you with regards to these infrastructure assets that you are looking to by here in the region. How close are you to announcing one of these acquisitions to the market?

TSFY: I’ve been very patient for a while so I have been raising some money of late, slowly in anticipation.

CNBC: And you’ve got no problem at all raising money because obviously lenders are becoming a bit choosier about who they are lending to. Doesn’t that affect you?

TSFY: In YTL’s case, absolutely none. We’ve recently just raised some money in case we’ve prospective acquisitions. It was well, well over subscribed, the debt that we raised.

CNBC: So what is your budget? What is your arsenal right now?

TSFY: We’ve got about 7 billion ringgit cash reserves in the company, and that gives us the firepower to acquire up to 70 billion ringgit of assets. So I think we have enough, but are just adding a bit more into the war chest just in case opportunities come quicker than anticipated.

CNBC: Thank you very much.

Rest In Peace, My Fellow Small Time Investors

If you asking me my comments on the announced Malaysia Budget 2008, then you are asking the right guy. I tell no bullshit and give no damn about the cover they try to put up.

Just one statement would summarize the entire Budget Plan:

The rich become richer and poor become even poorer.

1. Monthly withdrawal of EPF deduction to pay off housing loan

A nothing-seem-to-be-wrong budget item at first, but the effects are deep and further in the future that you might overlooked. Although the withdrawal only allowable from Account 2, the action is totally against the very idea of setting up the retirement/pension funds. The issue of insufficient savings for old day retirement will (and definitely) surface after maybe 20 years, and our government will then come out with another brilliant temporary workaround to divert the real cause. Again, why I say "Rich will get richer" is the truth that rich people rarely care about going through all the hassles to take out money from their EPF thingy.

The true fact about this budget item is to take more money out from the very private piggy bank of the general middle class people.


2. Single Tier Taxation System

The only real reason that I can think of why the Budget 08 introduce this nasty thing is for improvement over taxation efficiency. (Beside another real reason of "Rich become Richer"). Single tier taxation or whatever they want to name it, will have NO direct benefit to retail investors. When I mentioned retail investors, I really meant those people who take their monthly spare cash to buy in maybe 100 unit of PBBANK for the sake of hoping to get some dividends in return for a year end vacation (Nah, dreaming, my friends).

Drawing an example of country (territory) that adopted something like the Single Tier Taxation System, Hong Kong. Let us examine HK 07/08 taxation structure.

17.5% rate compared to Malaysia's 27%.

16.5% fixed rate or progressive rate until 17% compared to Malaysia's 28%.

Charitable donations entitled to up to 25% deduction of assessable income. Woo hoo, do more charity. This really helps poor people.

I totally understand that a taxation system such as these in Hong Kong really makes it admirable, but whether suitable to be applied to a specific country, really NEED to be assessed thoroughly and locally before adopting it (Too late to say i think).

Ok, since the deal already settled, we have no call in agreeing or denying the implementation. Let's assess what're the implication of putting this Single Tier System into legistration and how the gap of tax rates play a role in making the rich richer.

Technically speaking our current corporate dividend system taking a variant of what they called an imputation system. Under such system, investors receiving dividend are entitled to tax rebate or enjoying excessive tax credit depending on their marginal tax rate bracket. Franking credit referring to the paid tax amount by the company that you can use to cover your payable tax amount, if your marginal tax rate is higher than the corporate tax rate.

I know i know, all these starts to sound too technical. An example would do the trick :p

Let say YTLPOWR (KLSE:6742) declared a final dividend of 5 cent for the 4th Quarter of financial year ending 30/06/2007.

So Eddy who hold 1000 unit of YTLPOWR shares will entitled to 5 cent LESS 28% dividend dividend under the imputatin dividend taxation system of 06/07.

At the dividend payment, Eddy will be credited RM36 for the 1000 unit he hold.

In the year 2008, when Eddy filed his income tax assessment, let say his taxable income amount is fall under the 7% category. Then he can request for a rebate of (28% - 7%) = 21% of the RM50 he's originally entitled. In other word, he can get back 50 * 21/100 = RM10.5.

At the end of day, total dividend in pocket is RM46.5.

Now, assuming the Single Tier thing is in place for this year. So using the same scenario, however YTLPOWR now WOULDN'T declare a 5 cent dividend. Instead they will declare a 3.6 cent dividend and recipients don't need to pay the tax.

Eddy don't need to file this income for the year 2008, however he receives RM36 ONLY. Eddy lost RM10.5 due to the fact that he now don't have the luxury to file for a rebate even his tax bracket is far below that 28%.

So, let's shout together: DARN!!!!

But hey, let assume Eddy is a high paid C level personnel where his income tax bracket is 28% instead of 7%. Given the actual corporate tax rate of 27% for year 07 and

under imputation dividend system, he need to top up 1% of the dividend amount because 28% - 27% = 1%, meaning he gotta pay RM0.5 for the RM50 dividend. Total dividend tax is RM14.5 and dividend received is RM35.5


under the Single Tier system, he can save 1% because all dividends will be taxable according to the corporate rate, 27%. He saves RM0.5 by not paying according to his personal income tax rate. So, by the year of 2009, where the corporate tax rate is 25%, he will saves RM1.5 because of the 3% difference in rates.

See. Rich become richer.

Note: 6 years briging period between imputation and Single Tier System.

3.) Reduction in Clearing Fee Rate and Increment of Minimum Brokerage Fee

Clearing Fee Rate cut down from 0.04% to 0.03% (-25%). What !! That is only a RM0.1 difference per RM1,000. Somemore, the maximum clearing fee increased from RM500 to RM1000 (+50%). Ok, no much complaint about this, since it couldn't affect me or other retail investors any worst than setting the minimum brokerage fee at RM40 from RM12 (+333%).
This move is indeed really discouraging. Direct intepretation from retail investors' point of views are "Get Lost, if you don't have even money", "Go to next door and buy mutual fund, losers", "Better prepared to keep it for long long term", "Sorry we have taken your money and you gotta wait" and etc. To regulate investors behavior is one thing, but to demolish the remaining little desire to invest definitely are senseless and ungrounded. Booooo!

And what about the goodies like more research fundings and free schooling in Malaysia. Well, let take a perspective that if "minum kopi" culture is quantifiable and taking 5% out of it I think it is more than enough to cover all these relatively small carrot for the general public.


Again, the idea of the Budget 08 is just to make sure Rich become Richer, Poor become Poorer. Ok fine, maybe hardcore poverty will then become not so hardcore, but definitely not rich afterall.