Software industry for RI: What needs to be done?

Zatni Arbi, Columnist, Jakarta, zatni@cbn.net.id

"Have you heard of the bumblebee story?" Andrew McBean, president director of PT Microsoft Indonesia, asked me over lunch last week. No, I had not.

"Aerodynamically, bumblebees do not have the right shape to enable them to fly. But, since nobody tells the bumblebees that they cannot fly, they fly," Andrew said. What does it have to do with Indonesia? "Nobody tells the people of this country that they cannot build the next Silicon Valley, so they can be the next Silicon Valley."

Andrew was very excited. He had heard one of Indonesia's top officials mention that the software industry was one of the engines that would help propel the country faster into the recovery stage. As he was working for one of the largest software companies in the world, his enthusiasm was completely to be expected, of course.

Yet, a push in the software industry makes perfect sense. First, as opposed to the highly capital-intensive hardware industry, the software industry requires much, much less investment. Besides, it can be spread among university labs, for example. There have been initiatives in Bandung, Bali and other places in Indonesia to grow centers for software development.

This country has an abundance of talent, and it has always my belief we Indonesians are just as good as anybody else in the world when it comes to application software development.

And the world is a global place, so it does not matter where the software developers work as they can sell their products to the global market.

Of course, a couple of things have to be there before Indonesia can really turn its embryonic software industry into a more significant money-making sector.

"First, intellectual property needs to be protected. Second, education must be improved, third entrepreneurial endeavors need to get more support from the government," suggested Andrew. I agree with him.

IPR

Skeptics may say it is just natural for Andrew to call for more serious enforcement and protection for the intellectual property rights (IPR), as it is the foundation of his company's business. However, despite the growing challenges that IPR proponents are facing due to advances in copying and pirating technologies, nobody can say that there will still be incentive left to create when their property rights are not protected.

IPR is not only for people who develop software, it is also for anybody who makes a living from writing stories, music, books, etc. The fact that it was a Microsoft person who said that IPR should be protected is non-issue. It is perfectly clear that if Indonesia wants to join the global industry, which is now dominated by India and increasingly also by China, more concrete steps must be taken to protect IPR and fight piracy. Like anybody else, software developers need to earn a living.

Improvement and realignment of our national education is certainly a must. Along with so many writers and observers, I have been complaining about the appalling inaction in this area, which has resulted in our relatively low quality human resource.

As education is part of the overall system that keeps the society rolling, we know that not much can be done as long as our public sector is still plagued with corruption. Yet, some private initiatives have shown very encouraging results. Certainly, one of them is Bina Nusantara, which has now become a leading educational institution in this country.

Education is a long-term investment. However, in the short term, I also believe that there are short courses and training programs that need to be provided. My own experience shows that there has been an increasing demand for the ability to write in good English and prepare business communications materials in English, as the market should be global rather than local. I have also noticed local companies need a lot of help in focusing their product marketing campaigns. Some local companies have great products to offer, but they just do not have the human resources to create marketing materials that really put their great products in the spotlight and generate interest among consumers.

Entrepreneurship needs to be supported in various ways, there is no doubt about it. However, one of the most important things is to train our local entrepreneurs to find niche markets rather than become imitators or copiers. Competing with India and China, for example, should not be an objective.

Particularly in the software industry, there are a lot of opportunities that can be pursued. South Korea is known for their online games, and certainly our developers can create online gaming software for the Indonesian market. One of these days, we will look at one of a pioneering online gaming Web sites in Indonesia.

Self Auditing

Incidentally, Andrew also told to me that their recent civil case against several computer sellers who had sold computers bundled with pirated software seemed to have inspired a lot of unscrupulous people to take advantage of its reverberations. There have been cases that companies in Indonesia are visited by people who claim to be representatives of Microsoft Indonesia and make a wide range of offers, including special licenses that turn out to be fake. Andrew is asking the public to guard themselves against such crooks, who try to benefit from the fear of being caught using pirated Microsoft software.

Andrew also gave me a copy of software utility that companies can use to make sure that they do not have pirated software in their workplace. Called Software Asset Management (SAM) Tool, it helps a company's IT administrator check all the computers that are connected to their LAN and see whether the users have installed and used unlicensed software on their machines. It is a tool that allows self-auditing to avoid legal and other piracy- related problems.

At any rate, if we use a piece of software-regardless of whether it is Microsoft's or not to increase our productivity and enable us to make money, it is just fair that we pay for it. Once we adhere to this principle, our software industry will have a more fertile ground for growth.