Prof. C.J. Tan
Director of E-Business Technology Institute (ETI)
The University of Hong Kong (HKU), China

E-business Technology Trends and Research Challenges

Abstract: The world of computing has witnessed continued improvement in information technology and expansion in its use. In 1997, the IBM Deep Blue computer first demonstrated that computers can be used effectively to solve non-trivial human tasks. Seven years has passed since that epochal event and the world has evolved into a connected society through the use of internet, ever faster servers and sophisticated applications of e-business technologies and solutions.

In the meantime, China is developing into an important world economic player. Under this environment, business process automation, integration, and supply chain management, through the use of e-business technologies, become critically important. This requirement entails tight alignment of strategy and technology, setting up of the necessary infrastructure, streamlining front-end and back-end management and business processes, managing new relationships and partnerships, and resolution of emerging global integration and collaboration issues.

In this talk we will look at some of the emerging technologies such as Grid Computing, Web Services, etc. that are essential for the continued advancement of this important trend. We will introduce some of the advanced developments being carried out in research institutions in Hong Kong and Mainland China.

About the speaker:
Source: http://www.eti.hku.hk/eti/web/about_eti_team.html#tan

Prof Tan is the Founding Director of the E-Business Technology Institute (ETI) of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the Managing Director of ETI Consulting Limited (ETIC). Prof Tan's current professional interests lie in the development of practical e-business technologies and solutions most relevant to the Greater China region. He is very active in promoting the adoption of e-business technologies and practices in the business and academic communities. Under his leadership, ETI has conducted many e-business related consulting services for public and financial institutions, as well as numerous small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta region.

Before taking up the helm at ETI in September 1999, Prof Tan served as Senior Manager at IBM Research for Application Systems, responsible for managing e-business application-related research activities. In 1997, he led the IBM Deep Blue team in a historical match against the world chess champion Garry Kasparov. Prof Tan's main research dealt with the architecture and machine design for high performance systems and later in the application of these systems for e-business solutions. Activities in such research resulted in the highly successful launch of the IBM parallel computer, the RS/6000 SP. Prof Tan began his career at IBM TJ Watson Research Center as a Research Staff Member in 1969.

Prof Tan currently serves as the Visiting IBM Chair Professor at HKU; as Adjunct Professor at the Chongqing University, the China Central University of Science and Technology, and the Harbin Institute of Science and Technology; and as Guest Professor at Zhejiang University, in Chongqing, Wuhan, Harbin and Hangzhou. He is actively sought after as an advisor by many international technical and academic institutions. He currently serves on the management boards of the E-technology Research Center of the Shanghai Jiaotong University; the Science Advisory Boards of the Global Information Networking Institute (GINI) at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada; and the CEPBA-IBM Research Institute (CIRI) at the Politechnic University of Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain.

Prof Tan is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM); a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE); a member of the Management Board of the e-Generation Technology Research Center at Shanghai Jiaotong University; and a Council member of the IBM Deep Computing Institute. Prof Tan received a BSEE degree from Seattle University in 1963 and the Doctor of Engineering Science degree from Columbia University, New York, New York, in 1969.


David L. Cohn
Director, Business Informatics
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York, USA

Business as a Service: The Compoenent Business Model

Abstract: To be successful in todays hyper-competitive marketplace business need to transform themselves from monolithic, vertically integrated organizations into "on demand" business whose business process -- integrated end-to-end across the company and key partners suppliers and customers -- can respond with flexibility and speed to changing customer demands, market opportunities and external threats. The service-oriented architecture and Webservices are a very promising technology to build the necessary IT infrastructure supporting on-demand businesses and bridging the gap from the technology side. Still, the challenge of bridging the business-IT gap remains. In this talk we will present how "Component Business Modelling" as used by IBM Business Consulting Services (BCS) is helping to bridge this gap from the business side. In the talk we will also point to additional technical work that is needed to facilitate the rapid creation of customized on-demand business infrastrure.

About the speaker:

Dr. David Cohn was named Director, Business Informatics in September 2002, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, after completing a successful assignment. He was Director of the IBM Austin Research Laboratory in July 1999. Before joining IBM Research, Dr. Cohn was Director, Strategic Projects at IBM Corporate Headquarters. Prior to formally joining IBM in September of 1997, Dr. Cohn served on the Computer Science and Engineering and Electrical Engineering faculties of the University of Notre Dame for twenty-five years. He was the founding Director of Notre Dame’s Distributed Computing Research Laboratory during which directed 12 Ph.D. Dissertations and 31 Masters Theses. He has also held positions on the faculty of Technion, Haifa, Israel and Southern Methodist University. Along with his academic contributions, Dr. Cohn holds two US patents, has authored or co-authored three books and over 100 technical articles.


Jeane Chen
Ph.D., Executive Vice President of Engineering, Kintera Inc.
San Diego, California, USA

Software as a Service: A Best Practices Perspective

Abstract: Software as a Service is an emerging business model based on the service-computing paradigm. This model promises to lower the total cost of software ownership by removing the burden of setup and support of an IT infrastructure from the users and providing the access and utilization of the software application as a 24x7 service to them. Service providers offer this value proposition based on the principle of economies of scale. The success of their business therefore relies largely on the capability to effectively execute economies of scale.

There are many components that can affect this execution. These components encompass such system aspects as network infrastructure, hardware configuration, software architecture, and people aspects such as account management and customer support. All these components, however, do possess common factors for evaluation and optimization. The key factors include availability, scalability, and responsiveness. In this talk, we’ll discuss challenges associated with the implementation and optimization of these key factors, and share some of the best practices principles based on our experience as an early adaptor of the Software as a Service business model, who has successfully taken a startup company public.

About the speaker:

Dr. Jeane Chen is currently Executive VP of Engineering at Kintera, Inc, a leading Software-as-a-Service provider. A member of Kintera’s founding team, she has been responsible for building the technology organization and a comprehensive web-based software suite, which led to the company's successful IPO in Dec. 2003.

Prior to joining Kintera in 2000, Dr. Chen was with IBM since 1982, where she held various technology and management positions in the areas of research, technical marketing, and software development. She last held the position of Program Director of Interactive Media in the IBM Software Group and where she was responsible for software development for the Internet and for digital television applications. Dr, Chen was stationed in Beijing, China from 1995 to 1997, where she first served as the Program Manager for IBM’s Broadband Networking initiative, and then served as the Assistant Director for the then newly established IBM China Research Lab.

Dr. Chen has published 30 technical articles and has over 30 issued and pending patents. She received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University.

Simon J Cox
Professor of Computational Methods
Computational Engineering Design Research Group (CED)
School of Engineering Sciences (SES), UK
http://www.soton.ac.uk/~sjc/

About the speaker:

Prof. Cox is the Technical Director of the Southampton Regional e-Science Centre. He has a doctorate in Electronics and Computer Science, degrees in Maths and Physics and currently holds over £5mn in research grants and industrial sponsorship. He has published over 50 papers and regularly speaks at prestigious national and international conferences.

He currently heads a team of 25 PGs and RAs in the Computational Engineering and Design Group that is applying and developing high performance computing in a variety of collaborative interdisciplinary computational science and engineering projects.

These include computational electromagnetics (photonic devices – which has led to the formation of a successful spin-off company, liquid crystals, superconductors, and electrical impedance tomography), applied computational algorithms (spectral eigenvalue solvers, modelling Antarctica and other ice sheets / ice caps, coastal behaviour, and evolutionary biology), and commercial distributed computing, Engineering Informatics and the Grid. In each of these projects new algorithms are being developed and large-scale computation is being exploited to solve problems in interdisciplinary collaborations.

He recently led the technical procurement for the University of Southampton’s new 324 node supercomputer, which, following his research in this area, will be based on a commodity cluster of PCs. He is involved in industrial collaborations with Microsoft, DERA, Intel, BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce, holds research funding from EPSRC and NERC and sits on the EPSRC HSC Trends and Opportunities panel.

He also has international research collaborations with the National Science Foundation Supercomputer Centre in San Diego, which is the lead site for the US NPACI (National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure) organisation.