Developer's View

March 6, 2001

Roland Lim is the founder of Cyberengines.com in Singapore.

The Work

Cyberengines.com is a Web solutions company. Our focus is mainly on helping companies achieve strategic advantage by leveraging state-of-the-art Internet technologies. We provide a turnkey services ranging from consultancy to implementation and maintenance.

Right now, I believe there's a trend towards Web-based thin client computing in Singapore. Companies are going into collocation of their IT infrastructure in newly built high tech data-centres. Having your IT systems online allows a company's various departments 'talk' to one another easily, even if they are geographically distant. The Web, it seems, is the perfect platform for such a strategy.

The high-speed connectivity of data-centres provides the scalability needed to handle large amounts of traffic when necessary, removing the bottleneck once imposed by expensive leased lines.

We use Active Server Pages. Rather than repeatedly write pages of code, we try to use components. Porting ASP codes into components is almost a no-brainer as we use Visual Basic to code those components. Components also have the added advantage of speed and scalability. We chose ASP mainly because it was one of the first systems available. Two years ago JSP wasn't there and, at that time, Amazon.com used ASP, which seemed like a good recommendation.

The Web and Singapore

There is more demand for big interactive sites in the US, but here in Singapore there's never been much money put into big Internet operations. There aren't many Internet-only companies. There was one big example, myepb.com. They tried a full virtual model but eventually they opened a physical shop as backup, following the traditional model. This helped local people place more trust in the virtual model.

In the long run, pure virtual sites will happen here, once we've seen some success stories. The government is encouraging Internet development. There are grants available for online operations, including 20,000 Singapore dollars to small businesses for database-backed web sites. So far, the online retail model isn't working, but for the business to business model I think there's a good future here.

Mostly Singaporeans shop on US sites rather than local sites. Our local e-retailers usually have a physical Singapore store around which they are based. Other countries, such as the US, may be more comfortable with pure e-retail because before they had mail-order before, which is similar in many ways. But there's very little history of mail-order here.

Software Gems

I like the Windows 2000 server. It's stable and very user-friendly. I can remotely check my server from anywhere, for example a cybercafe, using a regular browser. When I ask for access, a browser plug-in is automatically downloaded and I get a remote desktop. I was in London and I received a call to modify a Web site, so I logged in at a cybercafe and modified it on the spot. We can even remotely reboot the server if we need to.

For databases we use SQL Server 2000, because it is fast and has a good GUI.

Pet Hates

Bad links and 404s. I recall ordering a pizza online and when I'd finished making the order I got an ODBC error on the final page. That kind of thing is really annoying.

The Future

Broadband is becoming more widespread. That's encouraging for Flash because it works well with broadband. I expect the broadband model will be ADSL or cable. My guess is that wireless broadband will be too expensive.

Here in Singapore we have around 90% availability for ADSL or cable, but not many people take it up. Broadband cable costs 70 Singapore Dollars a month and most people regard that as too expensive. It needs to be more like 40 dollars.

I don't see Internet on TV as part of the short-term future. A PC is more accessible and you can buy one for a few hundred dollars. Screen resolution is an issue, and though HDTV is a solution to that, it's been available here for a while and hasn't taken off. TVs are usually for sharing. There could be problems if you were surfing the Net and somebody in your family wanted to watch a program. It might work for the hotel industry, but not in the home.

Advice for new developers

Here's a brave idea. Forget CSS and JavaScript incompatibilities in Netscape. The browser's market share is too low. Just ignore them.