Ekonomi :: Om Liem Teladan Bagi Para Pengusaha Indonesia

Pendiri PT Indofood CBP Sukses Makmur Tbk (Indofood) dan PT Bank Central Asia Tbk (BCA) Sudono Salim atau yang akrab disapa Om Liem meninggal dunia. Di mata para pengusaha Indonesia, Om Liem dikenal sebagai sosok teladan.

"Jelas beliau teladan bagi kami para pengusaha dan tentu saja menjadi contoh," ujar Ketua Asosiasi Pengusaha Indonesia (Apindo) Sofyan Wanandi kepada detikcom, Minggu (10/6/2012).

Om Liem, lanjut Sofyan, selalu memberikan pandangan-pandangannya mengenai kondisi perekonomian nasional kepada sesama kawan pengusaha. Dia tidak pelit dalam memberikan masukan.

"Beliau cukup banyak memberikan pandangan-pandangannya. Banyak sekali kami belajar dari dia," ujar Sofyan.

Sudono meninggal di Raffles Hospital Singapura pada Minggu (10/6) sekitar 15.00 WIB. Pria bernama lahir Liem Sioe Liong ini lahir di Tiongkok, 10 September 1915. Anthony Salim yang merupakan anak dari Sudono beserta menantunya Franciscus Welirang kini meneruskan seluruh usaha yang dirintisnya.

Techno :: (1) The Top 10 tech trends for 2012

From the continuing rise of tablet devices to the daily-deals craze and the return of the Internet IPO, 2011 has been a transformative year for technology.

The pace of change has become blisteringly fast, with traditional industries -- bookstores, video-rental chains, newspapers -- crumbling more quickly than we could have imagined.

Predicting what will happen in 2012, therefore, is a shot in the dark: A year is virtually a lifetime in the digital era. And yet we can at least make a guess at what will happen in the early part of next year simply by looking at the trends that are shaping the latter half of this year.

Here's my best estimate of some of the innovation we'll see in 2012:

1. Touch computing

New input methods will be the dominant trend of 2012. Tablet computers such as the iPad might seem like a nice alternative to desktop and laptop computers, but I believe they're more than that: They're replacements. Just as the command line (remember that?) gave way to graphical user interfaces, so the mouse will be superseded by touchscreens.

The signs are obvious: Windows 8 and Mac OS X Lion, the latest desktop operating systems, borrow heavy from their mobile counterparts. These new interfaces essentially impose a touchscreen-inspired interface over the traditional desktop environment.

Over time, this half-step will become a whole one, and mobile operating systems will dominate. The transition won't be complete by the end of 2012, but we'll be much further down the path, and using computer mice much less often.

2. Social gestures

In the social media realm, social gestures appear to be the leading trend of 2012. Launched by Facebook in September, this so-called "frictionless sharing" functionality removes the need to click a button to share media with your friends. Instead, everything you listen to, read or watch is automatically posted to your profile once you approve the relevant app.

If you've seen apps such as Spotify or Social Reader in your Facebook news feed, you're already aware of these features.

The trend makes sense for social networks: With 800 million people already on Facebook, its growth is bound to slow. But if sharing becomes automatic, the volume of content on Facebook will grow at an accelerated pace. There's a big problem, however: Users may be "creeped out" by all this automated sharing of their Web activity and grow suspicious of the apps using it.

General :: ‘Creationism’ Comes to WEF? Innovation Dominates the Discussion in Tianjin

At last week’s “Summer Davos,” the annual World Economic Forum meeting in China, talk about innovation was everywhere. 

Not surprisingly, the sense of the meeting was that waiting for governments to set consistent rules and incentives for a low-carbon economy is a fool’s game. At last year’s event, talk was thick and furious about COP15 in Copenhagen, where Yvo de Boer, then the UN’s chief climate negotiator, was the star of the show at the Summer Davos. Now, there is slim hope that a deal will emerge this year, next year, or anytime soon.  

This means companies have to get on with it, and at this “Annual Meeting of the New Champions,” featuring companies from emerging economies and high-tech start-ups, innovation is the name of the game. 

This was on display in the session I moderated about cities and sustainability, “Rethinking Urbanization.” In fact, Hindustan Construction Company CEO Ajit Gulabchand is starting from scratch by building a completely new town in the hills three hours from Mumbai. His aim with the town, Lavasa, is to create a livable, sustainable city for about 300,000 residents (a small town by comparison to the mega-cities). The website for Lavasa Future Cities outlines an ambitious vision, stating that “Lavasa is a replicable model of the future Asian cities by bringing world-class standards to Indian urban life.” 

What’s interesting is that this involves not only the built environment, but also a public-private governance model, with Cisco and Indian IT powerhouse Wipro also joining the project.

On its face, this smacks of privatized justice and administration, which raises all sorts of questions. But if it enables progress and makes wise use of natural resources, then there is some value in the model.

 So while we often think about innovation in terms of products, business process, or business models, here is a case of business innovation that is reshaping human habitats and governance, and it’s a great example of the experimentation that was on display at the Summer Davos. And as Hindustan makes clear, unless we find a way to create sustainable, healthy, and prosperous lives for the hundreds of millions of people moving to cities in the fast-growing economies of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, our collective progress will hit a major speed bump—or wall.

Techno :: Dealing with the classic Catalyst 6500 end-of-life

Network managers who have relied on the classic Cisco Catalyst 6500 platform in their data center and campus networks are approaching a crossroads: the Catalyst 6503, 6506 and 6509 platforms will reach end-of-life in November, which means Cisco will cease offering hardware support. Cisco will also stop selling the classic Catalyst 6513 in November, ending hardware support in August 2017.

Cisco offers a couple of migration options for customers facing classic Catalyst 6500 end-of-life. In the campus LAN, users can invest in the newer Catalyst 6500-E platform, which got a new lease on life with the release of the Supervisor Engine 2T. Meanwhile Cisco recommends that customers with the classic chassis in their data centers migrate to the Nexus line.

Catalyst 6500 end-of-life: Core migration is a headache

Catalyst customers are more concerned with a rip-and-replace at the core than in the wiring closet. Migration is somewhat simple in the wiring closet, while at the core it's much more radical.

“Replacing a core is not a trivial event. The hardware is cheap, but swapping out that hardware is an expensive proposition from an outage perspective, from a time perspective, and [in terms of] configuration validation,” said Forrest Schroth, network manager with staffing firm Randstad. “I would rather an upgrade at the core layer be a [result] of me needing functions that [the classic Catalyst 6500] doesn’t support rather than a vendor trying to push me new products.”

For many customers, the classic Catalyst is still sufficiently meeting their needs in the core.

“If you still have Catalyst 6500s around, they’ve been running in a fairly stable state for a while and most folks out there are going to continue running them as they stand. They understand that [the Catalyst 6500s] have limited functionality, but they are put in places in the network where [users] are not worried about a lot of forward evolution in terms of functionality,” said Eric Hanselman, research director with the 451 Group.

Even those that want to make change in the data center don't love the fact that Cisco is pushing them toward the Nexus line. In a newer data center, Schroth installed Catalyst 6500-Es in his core rather than migrating to the Nexus line.

“We were going back and forth because there are features we don’t need [in Nexus] and features we would lose going to Nexus,” Schroth said.

Can you avoid a Catalyst 6500 end-of-life?

As Cisco winds down the classic Catalyst 6500, network engineers can turn to after-market equipment specialists like Network Hardware Resale (NHR) that offer third-party support for the equipment. In fact, these companies see the Catalyst end-of-life as an opportunity.

Mike Lodato, senior vice president of sales and marketing at NHR, gives the example of one   healthcare organization with 385 classic Catalyst 6500s that was facing a $65 million migration bid from Cisco to the Catalyst 6500-E. The upgrade was driven by an upcoming rollout of voice over IP (VoIP) that would need the more robust Power-over-Ethernet capabilities of the Catalyst 6500-E. However, the VoIP rollout was a phased project with 85 sites in the first year, 120 in the second year and 92 in the third year. Rather than upgrade them all at once, the healthcare provider wanted a phased installation of the new switches, saving money by staggering the purchase, installation and support costs in time with the VoIP rollout. NHR was able to support that slow transition.

More on the Catalyst 6500
FastPacket: Catalyst 6500 Supervisor 2T may not be the answer
Catalyst 6500 versus Nexus 7000: Backplane capacity
Cisco adds 40 GbE and 100 GbE to Catalyst and Nexus lines

“We came in and said, 'instead of converting them all before you need them, how much does it save you to put those on third-party support?'” Lodato said. “'How much can you save in capital and depreciation expense by deploying them at the time of business need rather than the time of vendor mandate?'”

NHR is also working with Matrix Telecom Inc. to maintain 18 classic Catalyst 6500s in its service provider network, according to the company’s manager of IP network services, who asked not to be identified. He  plans to keep the switches for as long as NHR can keep getting him replacement parts.

“As technology grows and evolves, we will need to upgrade them. Right now, my network is really stable. We’re not looking to do any major upgrades,” he said.

Other companies have been reluctant to use third-party support for network infrastructure because it is difficult to change course and get back on a Cisco support contract, Hanselman said. But with the classic Catalyst 6500, this worry is irrelevant. “Something bordering on antique becomes less of a concern,” he added.

Will Cisco stick to the Catalyst 6500 end-of-life dates?

Cisco has tried to retire elements of the Catalyst 6500 line in the past but has encountered pushback from customers. Some wonder if customer protest will stop this upcoming end-of-life.

“There are so many backbone nodes out there,” Schroth said. “[Customers] did not allow them to outdate CatOS, and they have not allowed them to remove the 6500 series. I believe this is more of a threat than an end-of-life. There is going to be a customer revolt and that date is going to slide.”