Colin Powell
Partner,
Asia Pacific Consulting Services and Financial Management Leader,
IBM Global Business Services

Colin Powell has a wealth of business experience working with clients across many industries in China, Japan, ASEAN, Australia/New Zealand, Europe and the United States for the last 16 years. He leads IBM’s Consulting Services and Financial Management Consulting practice in Asia Pacific. This practice is the largest Financial Management practice in Asia Pacific and specializes in all elements of the CFO agenda and finance function reforms - from finance strategy and operations, performance and risk management through to finance system solution design, implementation and enablement.

Mr. Powell’s core experience is in the management of finance transformation and business intelligence projects. One finance transformation project he undertook for a manufacturing/distribution multinational resulted in a 12% reduction in finance headcount, dramatically improved service to the business units and compression of period-end reporting to two days from period close. At one financial services firm he redesigned the chart of accounts, the planning and forecasting processes, activity-based reporting and the management framework to meet defined decision-support needs such as multi-dimensional cost and profit reporting, and prepared an integrated technical architecture systems map to deliver business intelligence and reporting.

He has also delivered projects involving shared services, finance organization design and process design, and has designed and implemented financial management information systems within large multi-faceted businesses. In one MRO commercial redesign and implementation project he lead the development of the conceptual design, detailed design and implementation of new operational and commercial processes for a maintenance and engineering organization with over 6,000 people, 4,000 of which were shop floor personnel. The design and implementation covered end-to-end processes for activity-based and job costing, budgeting and forecasting, variance analysis, strategy-aligned scorecard design, client profitability, warranty and insurance, inventory valuation and rotables depreciation, month-end processing and close, capital project management, commitment reporting, including establishing the links to the procurement process, and financial reporting. The project included implementing Oracle-based analytic tools and linking these tools to the client’s legacy systems. Mr. Powell also redesigned the profit and loss statement and formalized links between the operational processes and the FAR.

Chew Boon Hong
Software Architect,
Asia South,
Sun Microsystems

A veteran, Boon Hong has more than 10 years of experience in the IT industry. As Software Architect, Boon Hong is chartered to provide technical leadership, and to advocate and evangelize Sun Microsystems' open source technologies. These are the leading technologies that drive Web 2.0, namely OpenSolaris, Java, NetBeans, GlassFish and MySQL.

Prior to joining Sun Microsystems, Boon Hong worked as Applications Development and Enterprise Architect with major brand names in the financial and technology industries, including Barclays Capital, DBS Bank, Deutsche Bank and Kent Ridge Digital Labs. Through the course of his career, he has gained extensive experience in Internet/web technologies, middleware technologies, Java development, banking solutions and enterprise solutions.

Chong Yoke Sin
CEO,
IHiS,
Integrated Health Information Systems

Dr Chong is currently the CEO of IHiS, Integrated Health Information Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Ministry of Health Holdings Group. In this capacity, she oversees the IT Strategy, Business Process Re-engineering and Medical Informatics office of the public healthcare institutions and clusters. Dr Chong is also concurrently the Group CIO of the Singhealth group of public healthcare institutions.

Dr Chong was previously the CEO of the NCS, a company which was corporatized from the Singapore National Computer Board. The NCB was instrumental in the strategic use of IT in Singapore Government and a critical driving force in the development of the IT industry, IT capabilities in the workforce as well as the ground-breaking Civil Service Computerization program of the Singapore Government

Ee Ah Hock
General Manager,
Chief Architect Office (CAO),
NCS Group
 
Mr Ee Ah Hock has been heading the Chief Architect Office (CAO) of NCS since 2002.  Prior to this, he was involved in software development as architect in implementing many large-scale systems for NCS customers.
 
Graduating with a Bachelor of Science Degree from the National University of Singapore, Mr Ee’s professional experience prior to joining NCS includes heading a department in Systems & Computer Organization of Ministry of Defence (MINDEF) Singapore.  The unit’s function was similar to that of a CAO and his team was responsible for supporting the IT needs of MINDEF.
 
Mr Ee is intimately familiar with the challenges of IT implementation and technology management.  In NCS, he works closely with various business centres and service delivery centres to chart strategic directions for IT technologies and software development best practices for the organization.

George Wang
Global Head of Technical Standards and Group Head of Chief Architecture Office,
Asia,
Thomson Reuters

George Wang is currently the Global Head of Technology Strategy and Group Head of Chief Architecture Office Asia in Reuters, responsible for technical policies and standards globally and architecture maturity in Asia. Prior to his current position, George was Joint Chief Information Security Officer for Reuters globally, where he was responsible for information security strategy, policy, process, consulting, and risk management. In the early 1990s, he was with Information Technology Institute, managing R&D on multi-lingual search engine, information management and security while he was also an associate technical editor of IEEE Communications magazine. Outside work, he servers as member of NICF (National InfoComm Competency Framework) steering committee and chairs the security technical committee. He is also a Vice President of Association of Information Security Professional. George holds a MBA (High Honours, Beta Gamma Sigma) from University of Chicago.

Peter Jakobsen
Director of Unified Communications Marketing,
APAC,
Cisco

Peter heads the Collaboration Technology & Solutions Marketing team for Asia Pac within Cisco Systems, this comprises the areas of Unified Communications, Business Video and Collaboration Software. Having lived in Singapore for 13 years Peter was previously the Managing Director for GN Netcom(Jabra) in Asia for close to seven years.

Prior to coming to Asia in 1995 as the Export Counselor at the Danish Embassy, Peter worked within a subsidiary of the Danish Networking Gear Manufacturer Olicom.

Peter was also a founding member of the CCAS (Contact Centre Association of Singapore) where he was the Vice Chairman until earlier this year and spearheaded the creation of Telemarketing Guidelines for the Financial Industry in Singapore working with the Government and the Industry.

Yaj Malik
Area Vice President,
ASEAN,
Citrix Systems

Yaj Malik is the Area Vice President for Citrix Systems in the ASEAN region. Based in Singapore, he is responsible for the company’s sales, marketing and services operations in Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

In the six years that Malik has held the leadership position, Citrix’s ASEAN operation grew from a small team of three to the current 20 employees with over 50 channel partners and over 2,800 customers in the region. Malik brings with him invaluable experience in building and managing successful regional businesses. He has over 20 years of industry experience covering Asia and the United States. Prior to joining Citrix, he has held management positions in Vignette and IBM.

Sal Fernando
Chief Architect,
South Asia,
EMC

Sal Fernando joined EMC Australia in 2004 as a strategic software consultant, before being appointed to the position of national product marketing manager for Australia and New Zealand. Promoted to National Product Manager for Australia & NZ, Sal had responsibility for overseeing product development and product marketing activities in the region.

With more than 22 years experience in the IT industry, Sal has worked in senior and specialist roles including Veritas, where he was Chief Technical Architect for ANZ, TenFour Systems AF and Control Data. Sal has architected solutions for EDS, IBM, Telstra, Rio Tinto, Westpac, BHPB, Optus, The Department of Defence, Macquarie Bank and Coles Myers to help them manage their information.

Sharad Sinha
VP,
Asia Pacific & Japan,
Industry Strategy & Insight,
Oracle

Sharad brings over twenty years of diverse business experience spanning multiple industries and functions. His experience spans management consulting, business development and general management at high technology, industrial manufacturing, automotive, retail, software and consumer product companies. Sharad recently moved from California to Singapore to lead Oracle’s Industry Strategy & Insight Team in Asia-Pacific & Japan, which is focused on solving complex customer challenges relating to Information Technology investments and their associated impact on business performance. While at Oracle Sharad has worked with many large global companies across North America, Japan, EMEA and Asia-Pacific, to identify new technology based business opportunities that provided significant ROI and business value. Prior to Oracle, Sharad provided business strategy consulting with two firms – Booz Allen & Hamilton and Ernst & Young Strategic Advisory Services, advising clients on various strategic and operational issues across Asia, North America, EMEA and Australia. Sharad holds an MBA degree with Honors, specializing in Business Strategy, Finance and Marketing, from the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business, and a Bachelor of Engineering degree with Honors from India, with major in Mechanical Engineering and Minor in Electronics.

Sharon Ng
Director,
Technology Product Management,
Dell Singapore

She manages the IT global deployments in Dell, based in APJ regional office in Singapore. She has more 10 years of experience across business and IT roles managing large scale solution deployments across the region and globally, as well as led some of the IT simplification efforts in Dell and Microsoft. Sharon was the Global Senior Manager at Microsoft for more than half a decade , with the last role focusing on Global solutions management and deployments for Asia Pacific and Japan region, and was awarded the Microsoft Outstanding Deliver IT award in 2006.

Sunila Shivpuri
CIO,
Global Banking,
Duetsche Bank

Sunila Shivpuri joined Deutsche Bank in 1996 and was Head of Operations IT in GTO Personal and Corporate Banking IT/O Division prior to helming her current role as CIO Global Banking in the same division. Based in Singapore, Sunila is globally responsible for Global Banking IT and represents GTO as the Client Relationship Manager to Global Banking business. GB IT supports Payments and Cheque Processing Systems, Access Channels Systems, Trade Finance Systems and Core Banking Systems for Asia Pacific, Americas, Germany, UK and Continental Europe. GB IT also provides IT support for local banking applications in Europe and Asia.

Prior to joining DB, she had accumulated vast experience as consultant in technology solutions for the financial sector in the areas of treasury back office, retail banking, stock exchange, securities and trade finance.

Sunila holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. She further pursued post graduate diplomas in Marketing Management and Computer Management from Mumbai University, India.

Troy Syn
Managing Principal, Presales,
Technology Solutions Group, Asia Pacific and Japan Region,
Hewlett-Packard Company

Troy Syn is a Managing Principal in the Technology Solutions Group for HP, Asia Pacific Japan. As a Managing Principal, Troy specializes in the delivery of enterprise architecture and large-scale infrastructure projects and security services consulting as well as in evangelizing HP Adaptive Infrastructure and next-generation data centre.
Troy brings to this role IT industry experience in a variety of technical, pre-sales, consulting, and solution marketing roles which have included performance analysis and benchmarking, design of highly available Unix solutions, and consulting on Internet security and IT strategy. Most of these roles have involved the deployment of leading edge technologies.
Troy has been in the IT industry since 1987, and has been in Hewlett-Packard since 1990. In this time, he has worked extensively across the full range of Hewlett-Packard products, from Business Critical Servers to Industry Standard Servers to Enterprise Storage; to client-server systems; to security solutions, Core Processing Systems and Internet services.
Recent projects have ranged from Enterprise IT Architecture Planning and Design including Capital Markets experience, Systems Consolidation Expertise, Implementing Internet security solutions for a major stock exchange and various financial institutes and Architecting and implementing enterprise wide client-server information systems for a large educational institute.
Based in Singapore, Troy holds Bachelors Engineering in Computer and Control Systems (First Class Honors) from Coventry Polytechnic, UK and Master of Science in Data Communication Networks and Distributed Systems from University College London, University of London, UK.