Helter-skelter into the e-business world

The taxi driver gives a blast on the horn and veers left into a stream of fast-moving traffic. I gasp because there is no gap. At the last minute a slit magically opens and the manoeuvre is completed with a few millimetres to spare.

"That was quite alarming," my host, IBM New Zealand country manager Nick Lambert, calmly observes from the front seat. As the nervous laughs subside, I notice the taxi rules: "Psychos and drunkards without guardians are not permitted in taxis." I wonder if the driver has escaped his minder.

Things move fast and in mysterious ways in Shanghai. We're in China for IBM's Asia Pacific region e-business University conference. It's riveting stuff about how IBM has adapted its software to a common architecture for "winning in the on-demand world".

I'm even more impressed with Shanghai's actual architecture. Clustered like a 3D bar chart around the tallest Jin Mao and Pearl towers, thousands of shiny elegant buildings punch into a smoggy, often cloudy, sky. Height is accentuated by the flatness of the river delta landscape where construction cranes almost outnumber the towers topped with spires, pyramids, or crowns - or adorned with neon or sparkling materials - as they clamour for skyline recognition. This is a ka-booming town.

Back at the conference, integration is the word of the day. After the hype of the late 90s the reality of e-business is beginning to dawn. A website - even if it does carry out rudimentary e-commerce - is not enough. Businesses are learning transactions are the key, but to work properly the sales system needs to be connected to the order entry system which needs, in turn, to be connected to the inventory system which needs to be connected to suppliers' systems.

Not to mention the customer relationship managements system, financial system and many more "islands of information".

Luckily IBM has the middleware tools for all the integration you could ever want.

Shanghai is working on integration too - the old with the new. The elevated expressway from Pudong Airport to the city has cut travel time from several hours to 40 minutes. When the magnetic-levitation train is operational later this year that will be down to 14 minutes. It all happened in 18 months but houses had to be bulldozed and millions of people relocated.

For IBM general manger of software for Greater China Charles Wu the development was a turning point in realising just how serious the Chinese Government is about transforming the Shanghai economy: "That made a believer out of me."

After a period of rapid reconstruction, he characterises the present phase in Shanghai's history as one of rejuvenation and is encouraged by the modernisation of all large businesses in China with young, often recently-returned-home, computer-savvy managers.

But the accelerated computer automation also exists alongside the organised chaos and barter of the Chinese markets.

The clash of 90s and 50s commerce is unnerving. I'm nearly overcome with the stench of the wet markets where live fish, toads and freshly butchered meat mingle.

The Yuyuan bird market is a din of song birds, crickets and squawking chickens. But the real eye openers are off Nanjing Rd or the Xiang Yang markets where I'm assailed by merchants and their envoys - "Ullo, ullo, DVD, Montblanc, shoes, you want sir" - hawking knock-off DVDs (including many that haven't been released in New Zealand), Prada and Louis Vuitton bags, North Face jackets, consumer software, games and more. The DVDs sell for 8 to 10 yuan ($2 to $3).

Charles Wu tells press at the conference that software piracy is not really a problem for IBM in China because it mainly sells to the business rather than the consumer market.

But if you know where to look business software is available too. Later Wu tells me it's a situation IBM is monitoring but not focusing on, and while government officials were not too keen on discussions about the "p" word, now they're much more receptive and ready to act.

Earlier, at the Eastsoft technology park in the Nahui district - one of 28 run by the privately owned Chinese company Top Group - I ask the same question of chief information officer Brian Xiang. One of his friends heads Adobe Systems China so he knows the problem well. Through a translator there is a philosophical but pragmatic answer: "At the first stage it is disorder, but later we will reach a balance."

The $220 million park is 150 hectares with buildings around lakes shaped as the continents of the world. Australia is recognisable but New Zealand seems to have been missed. Bridges over the lakes are named after famous computer people - Lou Gerstner bridge, Andy Grove bridge, and so on. With an IT college, joint ventures with foreign IT companies, swimming pool and tennis courts it's all meant to provide "a place where nature and humanity meet".

At the conference IT press and IBMers meet to learn pervasive is a more popular word than piracy.

Apparently there were 325 million pervasive devices out there in 2002 including computers, mobile phone handsets, handheld computers and embedded devices such as GPS-enabled car navigation systems that have the ability to transact business.

Unfortunately not many are transacting at present, much to the mobile phone manufacturers' dismay. But when they do IBM is ready not just with integration tools but also with "autonomic" software to self-configure, correct and heal your pervasive network 24x7.

Much of IBM's confidence in being able to win in this pervasive, on-demand, e-business world stems from its support of "open", as opposed to proprietary, "standards" - probably the most overused phrase you'll find at a computer conference.

Ask, and you'll find all computer vendors support open standards in one form or another. But they all get a bit vague when you inquire: "How open is the open you support?"

Here, it tends to mean "not just Microsoft Windows". Which is because IBM software operates across a range of operating systems including Windows, Linux and Unix. In tech speak it means J2EE as opposed to . Net and a host of other programming standards for developers to make multi-platform software.

In other words "not just Microsoft".

To be fair IBM's on-demand suite - WebSphere, Tivoli, Lotus and DB2 - does mean more choice when your computer system runs like a dog and you have to throw out the old system and start anew. In theory, with open systems, you would only have to throw out part of the old.

Which sounds very like what's happening in Shanghai. Its 16.7 million people are rapidly embracing the new: 4.2 million net users, home computer penetration 51.2 per cent, 9.12 million mobile phone users and 347,900 broadband users. I ask Charles Wu if the open air markets will still be there in a few years - perhaps with mobile eftpos terminals? He says it's already happening - and a lot of supermarket chains are moving in: "They will both coexist for a period of time." I hope it's a long period.

* Chris Barton attended e-business University Asia Pacific as a guest of IBM.

* Email Chris Barton

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