Panel | Identity in the Asia-Pacific - Untangling the Web

Hello and welcome. And Graham, it is over to you. Super. Thanks so much. Good to see you, Linda. Good to see you, Alan.

Let's, let's jump right into it. If I can make this technology work, I'm gonna share a screen and we are going to go through a couple of slides before we later open it up to, to the audience for questions. So as we go through these slides, please comment at any point, both in terms of interject I'll, I'll start them off, but then interject as we go along. Okay.

So what we, we basically want to do is to talk about what are the key issues that we are aware of in the Asia Pacific region, and how does that work into organizations that might want to be looking at the region as for, you know, going forward in terms of this is a business, good business for us. So we're talking about top tips for success in, in the Asia specific region. Now I've gone a little bit too far ahead because I want to go back to this slide here. This slide here is a map of the, the region. For those of you who are not familiar with Asia Pacific, it is huge.

Now this particular map has India in it. So it's arguable whether we are going to be including India and Asia Pacific, but for this purpose, it's, it's there. Now I do have then some comments on the, the regions, because the, obviously we have China up there in the north huge or country with some definite issues. If you want to, to, to move into that in terms of the, the, just below that we've got our, what I would call the, the, the smaller countries that are just starting their development. This is the Vietnam.

The, my, my mark of course, has some political issues that we need to be concerned about at the moment. But Cambodia is another one there that, that, that we might want to work in. If it's a developing nation that we want to move into. But south of that, we've got Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines. These are all significant economies that we, that you might want to, to, to target in terms of your, your activity.

The, those, those countries typically are SMEs. A lot of SMEs. You're not going to find the multinationals that we have in Europe and north America headquartered in those countries, but you'll have lots. And I mean, lots of SMEs that we, we, we can, that might be our target audience. Then we've got Singapore, Singapore, we sort of single out, it's a very large economy. It's single English speaking and is used by many Western companies to, as an entry point into the Asia Pacific south of that. We've got Oceana. Oceana is Australian, New Zealand, and then some south Pacific islands.

So that, again might be, they're relatively easy to target because English speaking, in terms of the population in these countries, it's I find this slide absolutely fascinating. You, China is a factor of 10 larger than any other in terms of population, but the other countries there, I mean, it's very significant, and these are just the larger ones that are on this, in this particular table. So you can target your potential customers in terms of how big that that country is now, the, the size of the population must also be combined with the difficulty of working with it.

So Indonesia, for instance, a very large population, but spread over quite a difficult region to work through. So you'd need to calculate how, what, what, what regions within Indonesia you are going to, to, to focus on Alan, you've worked a great deal in Asia Pacific. Did you want to add some insight to the, the countries that we see listed Absolutely morning Graham, I think it's morning, maybe it's evening for you. I'm I'm not sure, a very global, a very global folk this morning or this evening.

However, the, the point that I would like to make is that list of countries that you've got up there in the Americas and in a, in Amir, we tend to look at those 20 what's it 22 countries that we have up there as being a nice, simple group of 22 countries to deal with. And I think if anybody walks away from here with the one realization that those are 22 different unique countries and each and every one of them have their own challenges.

As, as you mentioned, Myanmar, every single one of them has their own challenges, their own politics, their own way of doing business, just because you are successful in Japan, it's not mean in any way that you're gonna be successful in say Cambodia, right? They, they, they are different. They are unique. And in fact, they are separate, even from the perspective that the, the individuals in those countries don't even have, you know, free border access to cross from one to the other.

And so, you know, the, they are very different countries and you have to think of these as being whatever it is, 22, 25 different countries to go into not a region, right? Yes that's. So you bring up a good point. In many cases, we, we think through like in, in Europe, the, the European union has seated sovereignty to the union. Yeah. In this circumstance, each of these countries is our own sovereign country. Lindon. Did you have any insight there? Yes.

I wanted to agree with you if there's one thing that with Alan, if there's one thing that you can take away, folks who don't live in the Asia Pacific region, if you can take away from this session is the Asia Pacific is not one homogenous blob. It is very nuanced at a number of different countries and not only geographically, but also in terms of their maturity, in terms of their it maturity in terms of any kind of varying degrees of speed, if you like in terms of cloud adoption and identity priorities.

Okay, thank you. You know, Graham, I'd add one piece onto that, which is just, it, it's a, it's a silly way to think about it, but we often in Amir and in the us, we tend to define our software releases based on the season.

You know, we have our full release or our summer release. Nice. And this is, as we look at this region, we've spread across the entire span of north to south, you know, Tasmania and New Zealand way down on the bottom of your map.

Or I, I love the map that put those at the top, but So do I, But we look at those, their summer release is very, very different than a Japan summer release. You, you know, and, and that, I think really just goes to highlight. It is not one region.

And, and if you think about it, you're gonna run into trouble. If you think of it as one region. Yes. Can you just comment on four trucks experience there, if you, you are doing a release, do you, do you modify it by region? Do you modify it by country? We didn't modify the release by country, but we did change the naming. Right?

We, we actually changed the naming to be things like the July release or the, you know, first half 20, 21 or, or something like that rather than, than looking at it at, at, at seasons because it, it, it's not only difficult to identify with it's alienating. Right.

And, and, you know, I love the folks you guys down in Australia, but if, if I come down to Australia with a summer release, the response that I get is almost hostile. Never, Never, never hostile. We just think you have a, you know, you don't have the cultural aptitude, Which is, Which is really, really important. Yeah. Okay. That sounds great. Okay. Let's move on to our, our, this, this cultural and identity cha differences.

What the, in terms of the cultural variations, we've got communication styles that, that differ. We've got obviously language differences. Maybe this is a question for Lindon.

How, how do you recommend for your clients? So P PW, I'm sorry. We should have introduced Lindon as you're now with PW PWC. I am now with PWCs director at PWC Australia. I will preface this by saying we all comments are, are my own and my own opinion, but yes, I've had a really different perspective. Having joined a global PWC of consulting on that side previously, I've spent the last four years in representing vendors. So us based software, SAS vendors. So I've I've. And then prior to that, I was on the client side, as you know, Graham met Australia post.

So I've looked at identity from, from many different perspectives, but I, I will say that I feel that COVID is the one universal, it's the one global, global universal, but it's certainly the, the one universal impact on, you know, largest macro impact on, on all of these countries.

And it'll be very interesting to see how each of these countries respond to the COVID challenge and then recover from that and what that means for each of these individual, you know, nations and societies as, as they move forward and, and emerge out of, hopefully out of this, out of the COVID challenge for me, I've what I've observed particularly in Australia is that COVID is, has been, the pandemic has been the bell that has woken up kind of on mass, a lot of conversation around identity in particular, and the importance of protecting data.

As every, as we know, folks have moved away from the protection of the firewall and the network in the office. And now we're all, you know, working from home, we're working from Starbucks and wherever we like. And so what I'm really observing is that conversation, particularly in Australia, that conversation that was probably previously held somewhere between the chief marketing officer about the importance of data and the chief information officer as the importance of it. This is now a board level conversation finally.

So we have a lot of work to do now, but I think it's, it's definitely a good, a good sign if you like. And do you see differences between the countries in, in APAC, in terms of their response to these requirements? What's the cultural issues that we have to deal with or language issues?

How, how do we deal with that come into approaching somebody in say Cambodia or Indonesia, how important is it to get that approach and relationship, right. Yeah. It's incredibly important. I don't know, Alan, if you, if you wanna speak to this first. Sure.

I'll, I'll dive on in, you know, me, I'm, I'm, I'm so shy earth, but, you know, I, I think that the, the idea that people respond in the same way is, is broken throughout APAC. Right? If we are talking to somebody in Sydney, Australia, we are talking to a very, very different culture than if we're talking to somebody in say, Japan, even though these two countries are sort of blown together into one big bucket.

And, and not only that, the entire relationship that we build up with each of these customers is a different relationship, for example. And, and I know it's a little stereotypical, but when you look at Japan, when somebody expresses displeasure about something, about the way your software works, it should be taken with considerably more weight behind it. Then when somebody in Australia, you know, expresses some form of displeasure because, you know, honestly, Australia, you know, I, I, I love coming down to Australia because it's, it's a lot like California.

We, we share a lot of values and, and throughout the rest of APAC, if, if somebody in Japan tells you that there is something wrong with your software, they're actually be they way outside of their comfort zone in terms of giving you feedback. And you need to be aware that that is strong feedback rather than, you know, just somebody saying, oh, I don't like the color of the box and being aware how, how that is.

And, and, you know, as Lindon said, we, we have a lot of different countries facing a very similar challenge, but they're all being handled in different ways. Right.

And, and it, it's, it's kind of eyeopening to see how those, how the challenge is being responded to from each country. Yeah. Yeah.

I, I would, I would concur that with that, having run many webinars and seminars and sessions in Hong Kong, for instance, just to get participants to respond is difficult, let alone get meaningful, constructive criticism to, to what you're trying to do. Yeah. Whereas I think like Indonesia, my experience there is people are far more willing to give you feedback and, and open to, to, to making sure that there is a discussion happening there to improve the, the, the overall solution that's being deployed. There is another way, an additional way.

I can recommend that you get information, particularly from my personal experience in Indonesia is that you have to be prepared to, and I'm not suggesting anyone takes up smoking, but you have to be prepared to go downstairs into the downstairs area, sit around with the smokers and find out what's, what's really going on. And, and that's not because people are not necessarily, you know, sharing information or being transparent with you, but there will be different perspectives. And sometimes there is a hierarchy that you are not going to be aware of because it's a kind of different culture.

And so you may come in from outside and think that you have let's call it. It's a watermelon project. It's beautiful and green on the outside. And you're being told it's green on the outside, but you know, there's some, something else is going wrong. And in fact, it's watermelon red and going off the rails on the inside. So be prepared to speak to folks at all.

That's, that's really, my tip is to speak at, to folks at all levels of the organization, and then triangulate the information that, that you're getting to make sure that you are able to give the best or, or most efficient response, the most helpful response. How about, sorry, go ahead. I was gonna say, I have to support London totally on that picture. When you deal in APAC, it's not who you are, it's where you are. Right. And the social aspect of where you are interacting.

And, and so, you know, we, we, we sort of don't think about this, especially in the Americas, but even in AMEA, you don't think about the fact that going to Starbucks is different than going into a conference room. However, in APAC, that decision can give you honest feedback versus corporate feedback, right? Yeah.

And, and where you are and the social interaction is extremely important. Yeah.

And, and again, depending upon the, the customer as well, if you're dealing with a government organization is very different than dealing with a commercial organization. It's my experience. Governments will typically have lots of roadblocks in the way of the communication that you would like to have. So if you want to determine how red the watermelon really is, you getting to the right person that can tell you that can be, can be very difficult. Cause they've got these structures in place that hinder you, you doing that.

So it's fascinating, it's it really is a fascinating region to be operating him because it's so diverse. Yeah. That's very true. I was speaking at a webinar a few weeks ago and I had to submit my speaker notes in advance because they were to be translated into the, into Thai language. And it occurred to me that some of my Australian slang or colloquialisms may not translate very well. So be prepared to be very deliberate in your communication and very professional in your language and watch out for yeah. Colloquialisms. Right. Okay. What about, sorry.

I was just, I was just gonna add one thing onto that, about how important that is. Is that looking back on four drugs experience of it? When we moved into the agent Asia, the whole region, I physically moved to Singapore.

And, and the reason for that was not only because we wanted to open up the region, but because we wanted to physically be there. And, and that is, I think really, really important. I would concur with that. People want that, that what we say, display of solidarity with, with what they're trying to do, how, how this brings up the whole question of regional support. If you are coming from north America or Europe, how do you achieve the support that you need to provide on your, your product or services within the Asia Pacific region?

What can you do to, to make that regional support match the requirement, the customers I'm gonna dive in on this one. And, and again, it really just am amplifies what I've just said. You have to be there.

And so, you know, from four drugs perspective, one of our very, very early hires was a support engineer in the region. We hired somebody down in New Zealand and, and this was, you know, 10 years ago, you have to be local.

You, you, you cannot think of Asia Pacific as being something that a European person takes care of or an American person takes care of. It has to be an equal footing. The third pillar in, in effect of, of what you're dealing with, you have to have a support center. It doesn't really matter where it is as long as it's in the region, you know, so you can run that out of Singapore. You can run it out of Australia, you can run it out of Hong Kong, but as long as the time zone allows you to answer queries today, then your part of the region. Right?

And so I think probably more than anything else, physically being there is, is really, really important. Okay. In terms of other differences, I've, I've my view is that smartphones are ubiquitous. Whereas in north America and Europe, that people will generally have a laptop as well. Emails are and work reports and things like that on, on a, a laptop of fine.

But in, in AsiaPac, I find most people are doing most of their work on a smartphone. Do you would have you found that or have you, and, and if so, how do you deal with that? How do you make it easy to work with people that are the only device they have is a smart plan.

Linda, you wanna jump in? I was gonna say, I'm not. Yeah. I'm not sure that I see, well, let me just take a step back. I'm not sure that post COVID that's necessarily the case. And only because I think with everyone having to work from home, I've seen some amazing home office setups. So I think there's, I feel there's been an investment in the home office that certainly certainly in Australia, but if looking further afield, certainly mobile phones are very widespread.

There are in some countries, like for example, in Bangladesh, there was a history many years ago where women, for example, were typically not granted birth certificates, cuz they were expensive and hard to get hold of. So there was some sharing of mobile phones amongst a group. So a family may have one phone that they all shared between them, but that's not necessa, that's not the majority I would suggest now.

And there's, there's been a lot of effort by that government, by the Bangladesh government for, to, to get, you know, birth certificates and, and identity documents a shorter way for their population. Certainly there's there are examples. So in Indonesia there was a mobile or digital first bank. We're seeing a lot of, a lot of core banks startup almost like innovation hubs off to the side and kick off digital first or, or mobile only banking platforms.

And I'm seeing that, that work particularly well in, in countries, say for example, like Indonesia, which is made up of a whole lot of islands instead of building a hundred more stores, retail outlets and shop fronts, they're just going straight to digital. Right? So in some ways they're leapfrogging over, over Australia in terms of maturity. Okay.

The, I, I would add, I would add two things to, to that picture. And, and one of them is a, a change in the way that we think about mobile phones in, in the Americas. And in Europe, we, we tend to look at our smartphone as, as an extension of us. That's not that true in, in Asia, Pacific people go through phone numbers, they go through smartphones, it's a tool, but it's not them. Right. And so if you are looking at things where you want to try and embed into the smart device, some form of identity, it breaks down, right.

Because next month they're using a different phone that it's just a tool to get into it. And a little bit from my own experience was that when I moved to Singapore was the moment that I discovered the magic of WhatsApp because no one calls you, no one texts you, they WhatsApp you. Right? Yeah. And you there's, there's an entire culture that sort of comes around that where, you know, the, the mobile phone is simply mobile phone smartphone. However you wanna look at it. It's simply part of the infrastructure with different levels of value sort of from the way that we look at things.

And so sort of go into that with your eyes open. Yeah. Yeah.

Can I, I will add to that, that you know, that you're in with a client when they, you go in and in and out of a formal boardroom situation and then they send you the real update on the WhatsApp and then, you know, you're in. Yeah.

And, and then you're part of the communication group. Good. Okay. In terms of the level of commerce, I made a comment earlier that in many cases we're dealing with SMEs is in terms of the regional difference, the intra regional differences there, can you comment on where we are going to, in terms of targeting the Asia Pacific region, where are we going to target to reach the, the larger SMEs that we might want to target with our particular product or service? Can you comment on that Lindon? Sorry.

Can you, can you clarify SMA? Yeah. So we're talking. Yeah. Cuz you make a good point. What really is a small to medium enterprise.

Oh, okay. I was thinking you were talking about subject matter experts there for a second. Just clarify.

Oh, I'm, I'm sorry. I'm talking about no, that's right.

The, the, you know, so in some countries in SME is, is 20 people up other countries, there's a hundred people and up, but in terms of helping define our target markets, what, what, where do you see, how, how can we do that? What would, how would, how would PWC for instance, advise that you segment the region into the various areas that might, you might then target with your product? Sure. Yeah. So I'm not speaking of just to be clear, I'm not actually speaking on behalf of PWC here.

Oh, got it. Yeah, no, that's okay.

But if I, but if I was to look at identity solutions, for example, if I was to be looking at those, the size of the enterprise and the complexity of the challenge will dictate which vendor we would recommend. Because if it's, if it's a small number of, let's say workforce or staff, then it may not be viable for a really large or complex solution.

But if it's, if there's a very high risk, even if it's a small number of employees, but it's really high risk or it's critical infrastructure, then you may want the next level up, you might want a more complex or a more flexible solution if you like, rather than something that's a little cheaper and off the shelf. So you wouldn't, you don't see a differentiation between countries then based on the, the company's size that you might be selling into. Not necessarily.

I think it's really, for me, my view on it is that you, you almost always start with the number, the numbers that you either workforce or science. So workforce, are we talking about employees, which is a whole cohort or are we talking about citizen and customer identity and management, which could potentially be unlimited, so understood. Yeah.

You know, get your numbers first, figure out your numbers, who was the, who were the user groups, if you like, and then you need to kind of run a matrix across that, to look at the complexity of the challenge and the risk. So, you know, I always think that the risk of losing any personal information is, is high. But if we are talking about merit, we're talking about balancing that risk against the risk of, I don't know, an energy company being shut down for two weeks with ransomware, then you know, that kind of identity solution has to be really robust enterprise level.

Maybe this is one for, for, for Alan in terms of working with local personnel, how would you recommend sourcing or deciding who you might work with? So obviously a for rock has lots of resources that can, as you've indicated, engage people locally. What if you, you are a small organization and can't engage people locally. How do you, how do you determine who your partners are going to be within a particular region?

I, I think that's a really important decision as you start looking and moving into a region, right. Sort of going on from what Linden was saying, the customer that you're dealing with, it's, it's not actually important how big you think they are. It's much more important how big they think they are. Right. And so even though they may be a small company, the, you know, maybe only say a couple of hundred employees, they may be the, you know, the Titan of industry in, within their country.

And, and, you know, it's, it's how big they see themselves. That it's a really important piece. And when they see themselves as big, they want to be able to work with people that they know. And so tying in with, you know, PWC is a great example of that as, as our, you know, for that matter, any of the global integrators, you deal with the people on the ground locally, who are there, who know who they're dealing with and, and can work.

You know, they, they, the companies you're dealing with do not like being on the other end of a global phone line. Gotcha.

You know, they, they, they want to be local and, and, you know, the, the old, the old adage of all politics are local, all software areas local. Right.

And, and it's having somebody, even if it's not the biggest partner locally, having a partner locally is really important to be able to, to make that a success. Okay. Very good. What about infrastructure in terms of the different countries within the region? What differences can we expect in, for instance, the cloud infrastructure that might be available for us, It's, it's different. Right.

And, and that's about the only way I can put it, because the, the, the reality about it is that many of the best practices that we might have in, you know, somewhere in Europe, like it's Germany, that I'll, I'll just pick a random country that I'm not in right now, but you take somewhere like Germany. And the idea of having multiple data centers with, with backup and failover, et cetera, is, is almost what you have to do to get out of the gate.

You go into Asia and, you know, you're, in some cases you're dealing with a lot of, you know, the, the infamous single points of failure, but, but that's what they need to do in order to get the infrastructure running for them right now, and being flexible in terms of adopting the norms for the local. Right.

And, and what they do locally is again, tantamount in, in terms of trying to be successful in that space. It, it was sort of interesting because many, many years ago, and, you know, I'm flouting the, the gray hair that I have, but I actually did some work in, in Europe where I worked for a telco company. I did some consulting for, at telco and their model they had, and I kid you not, they had a server, a physical server that was running their entire infrastructure.

And, you know, I was sort of talking about, oh, well, what about a load balancer? What about multiple servers? And their comment was, well, that would be nice, but that's the server.

And, you know, when, when you look at many cases in, in APAC, that's also true, right? That's the server. And so changing our expectations to be able to fit in with the, the norms locally, you know, it's not what you do at home. It's what you do on the ground and where you are. Okay. Yeah.

And I, to add to that, I think it is, it's really important to, you know, read the local reports, read the Analyst reports, get an understanding of how, how the market is. We certainly seeing a huge appetite around data sovereignty and concepts of, of national resilience.

So, you know, there, I heard of an, there was an example where we were, there was some MFA where the mobile phone had to go offshore briefly for a split second, to be able to be processed and come back again. So someone could receive, you know, a multi-factor a education aspect of, you know, via SMS and the government. It was a government client. And all of a sudden they realized that they didn't have all of their data strictly speaking contained on, you know, within our shores. And that beca that certainly became a problem.

So you need to understand not only the local law, but also the local appetite for, for those things, which I've, I've certainly seen increasing since also since the pandemic, Sorry, in terms of increasing, is that the concern on privacy of data sovereignty? Yes.

And, and just some of the it's turning up in requests for proposals, some of the, how you, how do you maintain data sovereignty of this solution? How are you going to keep all of the information onshore? Even if it's, as we move in, what I call the, the Gallup to the cloud that we've seen down here over the last few years, it was all on Preem on Preem on Preem. And then flip, there was a, a flick the flick of the switch, and now it's, everyone's scrambling to, to access SAS.

But as, as part of that, the complication of that is then how do we, how do government in particular, but other private companies are now really doubling down on data where their data's going and what the flow of information looks like. Yeah.

I, I add another perspective to that. I've also observed that there's basically a two tier approach to the cloud. You've got the large suppliers, the AWS's, the Azures the Googles. They might not have an availability zone in the country you're actually working in. So there's also next level down, which is a local cloud pro providers. And some cases companies will want you to deal with that small organization because it's cheaper.

And I, it comes back to Alan's point of being, being flexible, being able to roll with the bunches and decide how you support each in each individual, each individual case. You mentioned SAS.

Again, I, I see that as very important, a lot of the organizations in their region can't afford to the big infrastructure that we can in north America and Europe. And so they are very keen on IDAs. They're very keen on even security operations centers as a service. And I there's, there's, I, I see a very good market there for anybody that's providing that sort of solution AsiaPac, I, I think is, would be very welcoming of that type of solution. Is that your, do you agree with that? Or do you think that no, there's still companies there that want to sort of do their own thing.

I, I would wholeheartedly agree with it. Right. And I think the important part about it is that the, the acceptance within the region, going back to that slide that you put up of the 22 or 24 different countries that are there, the, the acknowledgement that each one of those countries is a country. They see themselves as being, you know, the center of the universe.

And, and I mean that in the nicest possible way, they are doing their business. And, and Linda's point about data sovereignty and things like that. It's really important to see these as being separate countries.

And, you know, they are trying to come up with a solution. There may be slightly different norms, but when you look at the sizes of those populations, right, the first, the first 10 of those countries on your list is at least as large in terms of the number of people as Europe.

You, you, you know what I mean? The you've got some really, really big countries there and they, they, the markets are big. The markets are, are vast in terms of what we are looking at. And you have to go in and address those when you start dealing with countries that have not only tens of millions, but hundreds of millions of potential identities, potential other ends of the business. Absolutely.

But, but you have to go in and address it as being a first class market that you're going to address. It's not something that you can hang on to something else. Okay. Very good. Yeah.

Sorry, certainly to that, there's a, there's a lot of identities to your point. I think Indonesia's population is two thirds the size of, of the us alone. So there's a lot of identities, but to that point, then there's also challenges around resilience and how quickly you can scale and how fast you can get things down and back up again.

And, and that if, if you are providing assess, you know, a service you have to be prepared for, for, you know, you have to be able to manage that resilience. Okay. Think so. I was gonna add one of the things that's really interesting on that is the, the perceived value to the individual identities of your service, right? The willingness for those societies, they are not in, in many cases, there are parts of that society that is not part of the globally connected world. They're never going to travel outside of their borders.

And so their willingness to, to exchange personal information for a few dollars is very different than, than the way that we look at things either in Australia or in Europe or in the us. Right.

The, the, you know, it, it comes down to a very different sort of value proposition in terms of, you know, what, what you're offering, Right? Yeah.

Okay, go ahead. Sorry. One more thing, just in terms of regulations too, and the local law, local regulations, local policy. So I was speaking with the CIO fairly recently, who has sites in various locations around the Asia Pacific region. And he shared that, you know, they, they want to comply with the regulations and the laws in each of those countries, but they're not, they don't have full visibility on all of those. And there's a huge amount of work that they have to do, even just to understand what those regulations look like. Yeah.

So I know APAC, the APEC economic organization has done quite a bit of working for privacy rules. Yeah. And I that'd be good if we see that, that work proceeding. Okay. Top tips.

What, is there two or three top tips for success in the AsiaPac region then in your first? Well, I have one, but it's fairly obvious and because I'm biased, but find a local partner, it doesn't have to be a big four.

You know, it, it can be a local partner of some sort, but also I think to Alan's point as, as brave as Alan was to go to, to Singapore and, and kick off a whole region. But I himself, I wouldn't recommend it. I think if you're going to send folks into a region, I'd recommend a pod. So go in with someone from sales, someone with the technical, someone that can can code and, and put together the demos, if you like, and engineer, and then potentially somebody who could do that executive stakeholder engagement at, in terms of networking around the industry. That would be my first tip.

Alan, have you got one? Okay.

I, I think just building on what you said, right. I, I, I would absolutely say you have to be there.

I, it doesn't matter how you are there, but you have to be there. You, you have to be in the region and, you know, you, you wouldn't really consider opening up an office in Europe without hiring somebody in Europe, having somebody local. And the same is true with Asia Pacific. You have to have somebody on the ground you've gotta be local. And that actually, I was very impressed with what you did, Alan, in Singapore with the tech talks and encouraging those groups to come together and share common ideas about technology.

So developing that again, builds a little ecosystem that you can then work with within, within the region. You know, it's interest. It's interesting. You bring that up because it highlights a lot of what we've been talking about throughout this entire panel, right?

It, it highlights the being local. It also highlights Lyndon's point about being social and the conversations that you have in an evening. Tech talk over a beer is you cannot have those conversations in a conference room or in the boardroom or in, you know, at, at someone's desk.

They, they are just physically impossible to happen in those locations. And so it really highlights that not only be local, but where you are matters. Right? Yeah. Okay. And I think that whole selection of partnerships you need to be, you need to do that carefully. You need to think it through, you need to talk to potential clients about who they deal with and understand that. Ecosystem's a good word. I'll leave it at that. I'd like to add one.

I, I think it's important that software is internationalized. I think it's important that you are dealing with users in their language.

So if, if, if you're, if you're selling software, I think it's important that, that some steps taken to, to do that internationalization experience. I, I, I love with when you say that Graham, because I, I wholeheartedly agree. And as a us software vendor, you know, there, there is this sort of joke that we have that, oh, of course we are international.

We, we do, you know, we do both east coast and west coast. And, and You know, That statement about not only can your software work in the local language, but is your documentation in the local language, are your, are your marketing plans locally?

You know, all of the things. And, and I think it all comes down to, you have to be present, right? You have to be local, but you're absolutely right. Being able to support different languages and, and support them natively is, is really, really important. OK.

Another, sorry, go ahead. No, to add to that, there's a lot of homework to be done. So if you choose to not use a partner, which is, would not be my recommendation, but if you choose to not use a partner, there are, I believe cultural advisory companies that can help you navigate. So if you're going into a country like Japan, or there are certain countries that you would want to consult with a cultural advisor before you go in, because you can inadvertently offend folks very quickly. There are concepts that, for example, you know, you've probably all heard about this concept of losing faith.

It's very real, it's quite nuanced, and it can impact the health of, and the success of your project or your efforts or your investment in the region. Okay, good.

I'd like, Can I throw one more in there? Graham gonna have time? One of the points we put in is Asia or Asia Pacific is really, really big. Right.

And, and I, I don't think that sort of those of us in Europe or in the America actually are fully aware of how big it is. Right.

And, and so the thing that I would put at is if you are running a software company in Europe, your average flight, when you're in Asia, Pacific is going to be to Turkey or to Greece or to, to, you know, Abu Dhabi. It's not to Berlin. You know what I mean?

It, it's not a one hour flight. There is no way I, I don't think you can get a one hour flight maybe forward to Singapore with a one hour flight. But I would routinely do flights in the region where I was traveling for one or two days that were longer than the flights that I took from Portland, Oregon to Europe. Right.

It's, it's big. It's really, really big.

I would, you know, Singapore to Japan is a seven hour flight, you know, that that's, that's more than the flight from New York to London. Yeah.

And, and, you know, being aware of that. Yeah. I think it's really, really important. Yeah. Not wrong. Okay. I'd like to add one more too. And that is taking a long term view. I think it's, it's pretty important that this is the multi-year activity to build up the relationships that are necessary and to build the, the, the, the business activity that you need. It's not gonna happen, you know, next quarter AB absolutely.

And, and, you know, Graham making that sort of, even more important, right. Is that Asia has been burned before and they, they want to show, they want to see that you are going to be there for the long haul. Yeah. They don't like measuring their, their, their activity is not done by the quarter.

And, you know, the, the, they want the relationship to be something that they can rely on year after year. And so the, the, the decision that we make in Europe or in the Americas about, you know, do we open an office in Paris or do we open an office in Switzerland, right. Is something that we may change six months from now or a year from now, if you make the decision to go into, and I'm gonna choose Singapore because it's near and dear to my heart. If you make the decision to open an office in Singapore, if you close that office, there is no going back. Right.

That, that is a, you know, that is a divorce. You don't go back from that.

And so, you know, to many of the, the Asian countries, they want to see that you are going to be here and you are committed to the region. You, you are committed.

Luckily, in fact, it's not a problem if you are headquartered in Singapore and you're doing business in Indonesia, but if you open an office in Indonesia, you better be prepared to take that for the long haul. Yes. I understand. Yeah. I agree. Okay. That brings us to Q and a.

Now, do we have question.