WRAP social compliance seminar receives good response

Fibre2fashion
Original Source
November 21, 2009 (Vietnam)


More than 250 people from across the apparel, footwear and furniture sectors attended the WRAP Awareness Seminar in Ho Chi Minh City on November 17th indicating the continuing importance given to social and environmental accountability by Vietnamese manufacturers.

Mr. Pham Gia Hung, Director of External Affairs for the Vietnam Textile & Apparel Association (VITAS) and Mr. Dang Quoc Hung, Vice Chairman of the Handicraft and Wood Industry Association of Ho Chi Minh City (HAWA) opened the half-day event. With a focus on raising awareness of social and environmental compliance in the industry, this seminar covered an overview of local labor laws and regulations, background and 12 principles of WRAP, the process of WRAP certification, and best practices of corporate social responsibility.

“The tremendous growth of the manufacturing sector in Vietnam has not come without its challenges, particularly in the areas of social and environmental management.” said Mr. Michael Lavergne, WRAP's Director for Asia, addressing the factory and association representatives. “We extend our congratulations to industry and labor organizations and to the Vietnamese people for your strong show of support when it comes to addressing and understanding these key issues.”

With dozens of facilities in Vietnam certified under WRAP’s robust program of certification in labor, environmental and customs security compliance over the past year, the hard work that numerous organizations have undertaken continues to be rewarded with concrete results. As with elsewhere in Asia, WRAP continues to engage all players in its mission to certify lawful, ethical and humane manufacturing.


Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production

WRAP to host social compliance auditor training course in China & Hong Kong

August 11, 2009 (Hong Kong)
Source: Fibre2Fashion

Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production (WRAP), the world’s largest social and environmental compliance certification program, is hosting two Auditor/Lead Auditor Social System Training courses in Hong Kong on October 13-17 and in Dongguan, China on October 27-31, 2009.

Co-organized with Hong Kong Productivity Council (HKPC), this five-day training course is designed for social and environmental compliance practitioners, internal social compliance auditors and people who want to gain knowledge and skills in social compliance auditing.

The course includes introduction to social auditing, elements of ILO conventions, 12 WRAP Principles, the process of auditing, and so on.

The course is accredited by International Register of Certified Auditors (IRCA), the world’s original and largest international certification body for auditors of management systems.

Delegates successfully completing the course and examination will be awarded an IRCA registered certificate titled “Social System Auditor/Lead Auditor”.

Click here to know more about the training course.

For enquiries, contact Ms. Yeung at 852.2788.5833 or 852.2788.5802. Email: mcy@hkpc.org.


Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production

Cambodia: Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production to host seminar on Social and Environment Compliance

WRAP to host seminar on social & environmental compliance
March 03, 2009 (Cambodia)


Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production (WRAP), in concert with Intertek, is hosting a half-day seminar focused on how manufacturers can improve their market position with buyers by focusing on the critical issues of social and environmental compliance. This important event will be held at Intercontinental Hotel in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on March 30, 2009.

Increasing attention from customers, the general public, activist groups and governments has been focused on companies asking them to demonstrate their commitment to ethical manufacturing. In response, many businesses have adopted the WRAP principles to demonstrate the fair and safe conditions with which their products are made.

Increasingly, international trade agreements include language on labor and environmental conditions which are critical to countries that want to obtain or maintain favorable trade status. A rapidly growing list of premiere brands and retailers in the US and Europe rely upon WRAP to meet their social and compliance needs. This course is a “must attend” for any business owner or manager who is involved in the export sector.

The compact course will provide all attendees with a broad knowledge on social and ethical issues, the requirements of WRAP principles, how to establish, maintain and implement proper management systems, the business benefits a facility can receive, and an understanding of the good manufacturing practices built into the WRAP program.

Stuart Webster, WRAP’s global head of training based in England, and a senior CSR auditor of Intertek Cambodia will conduct this value-added seminar. To register, please contact Ms. Dany Seng at dany.seng@intertek.com.

About WRAP:
Founded in 2000, WRAP is the global standard for factory-based, social and environmental compliance certification and training operating in 65 countries around the world.


Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production

Where Sweatshops Are a Dream

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: January 14, 2009

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Nicholas D. Kristof

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia

Before Barack Obama and his team act on their talk about “labor standards,” I’d like to offer them a tour of the vast garbage dump here in Phnom Penh.

This is a Dante-like vision of hell. It’s a mountain of festering refuse, a half-hour hike across, emitting clouds of smoke from subterranean fires.

The miasma of toxic stink leaves you gasping, breezes batter you with filth, and even the rats look forlorn. Then the smoke parts and you come across a child ambling barefoot, searching for old plastic cups that recyclers will buy for five cents a pound. Many families actually live in shacks on this smoking garbage.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats who favor labor standards in trade agreements mean well, for they intend to fight back at oppressive sweatshops abroad. But while it shocks Americans to hear it, the central challenge in the poorest countries is not that sweatshops exploit too many people, but that they don’t exploit enough.

Talk to these families in the dump, and a job in a sweatshop is a cherished dream, an escalator out of poverty, the kind of gauzy if probably unrealistic ambition that parents everywhere often have for their children.

“I’d love to get a job in a factory,” said Pim Srey Rath, a 19-year-old woman scavenging for plastic. “At least that work is in the shade. Here is where it’s hot.”

Another woman, Vath Sam Oeun, hopes her 10-year-old boy, scavenging beside her, grows up to get a factory job, partly because she has seen other children run over by garbage trucks. Her boy has never been to a doctor or a dentist, and last bathed when he was 2, so a sweatshop job by comparison would be far more pleasant and less dangerous.

I’m glad that many Americans are repulsed by the idea of importing products made by barely paid, barely legal workers in dangerous factories. Yet sweatshops are only a symptom of poverty, not a cause, and banning them closes off one route out of poverty. At a time of tremendous economic distress and protectionist pressures, there’s a special danger that tighter labor standards will be used as an excuse to curb trade.

When I defend sweatshops, people always ask me: But would you want to work in a sweatshop? No, of course not. But I would want even less to pull a rickshaw. In the hierarchy of jobs in poor countries, sweltering at a sewing machine isn’t the bottom.

My views on sweatshops are shaped by years living in East Asia, watching as living standards soared — including those in my wife’s ancestral village in southern China — because of sweatshop jobs.

Manufacturing is one sector that can provide millions of jobs. Yet sweatshops usually go not to the poorest nations but to better-off countries with more reliable electricity and ports.

I often hear the argument: Labor standards can improve wages and working conditions, without greatly affecting the eventual retail cost of goods. That’s true. But labor standards and “living wages” have a larger impact on production costs that companies are always trying to pare. The result is to push companies to operate more capital-intensive factories in better-off nations like Malaysia, rather than labor-intensive factories in poorer countries like Ghana or Cambodia.

Cambodia has, in fact, pursued an interesting experiment by working with factories to establish decent labor standards and wages. It’s a worthwhile idea, but one result of paying above-market wages is that those in charge of hiring often demand bribes — sometimes a month’s salary — in exchange for a job. In addition, these standards add to production costs, so some factories have closed because of the global economic crisis and the difficulty of competing internationally.

The best way to help people in the poorest countries isn’t to campaign against sweatshops but to promote manufacturing there. One of the best things America could do for Africa would be to strengthen our program to encourage African imports, called AGOA, and nudge Europe to match it.

Among people who work in development, many strongly believe (but few dare say very loudly) that one of the best hopes for the poorest countries would be to build their manufacturing industries. But global campaigns against sweatshops make that less likely.

Look, I know that Americans have a hard time accepting that sweatshops can help people. But take it from 13-year-old Neuo Chanthou, who earns a bit less than $1 a day scavenging in the dump. She’s wearing a “Playboy” shirt and hat that she found amid the filth, and she worries about her sister, who lost part of her hand when a garbage truck ran over her.

“It’s dirty, hot and smelly here,” she said wistfully. “A factory is better.”

CSR: So what did we learn in 2008 that we can use in 2009?

CSR: So what did we learn in 2008 that we can use in 2009?

Source: Ethical Corporation
Mallen Baker , 7 Jan 09

Let's lose the sloppy thinking about CSR and bottom line benefits to start with, argues Mallen Baker

I don't know about you, but I have had my fill of articles and blog entries which aim to review the year 2008, or make predictions for the year 2009.All the reviews start the same - what a year it was, and whoever would have thought it - and all the predictions are statements of the obvious - it's going to be a tough old year to come.

So I thought instead it would be interesting to reflect on what we actually learned from the events of last year - and particularly on whether those learnings would be of any use as we face the next year and ponder where next for corporate social responsibility.

First - most people, including the declared supporters of CSR, have not really bought the business case arguments that have been put out there by a range of organisations, research groups and others.

Early in the year the IBM study said that it proved that CSR helped companies to be more competitive. It was the latest in a long line.

But as recession bites, we see lots of people on the defensive. It's not that companies have come out to declare they no longer believe in CSR, but CSR budgets are being cut, plenty of CEOs are talking about focusing on core business, and other things are on hold.

This is not unique. The marketing budgets have been cut. The HR development programme is on hold. Hatches are battened down all over the place.

But if decision makers had really bought the argument that CSR made them more competitive, they would be talking about that as part of their way out of the crisis. If CSR budgets were being cut, they would be demonstrating how they aimed to do more with less - like they are with the marketing budget.

The fact is that the research reports didn't prove anything, and many of the key decision makers didn't believe for a moment that they did. No-one was going to call this except for the critics - because actually there are plenty of good reasons to do this stuff. The benefits may be unproven - like every marketing campaign is before it's actually been run - but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

There has been a whole industry based on this line in recent years. Trying to prove cause and effect - successful business = responsible business. It's time to move the argument on, because all of those attempts bought into one central assumption - that it is the primary role of business to maximise shareholder returns and therefore any CSR commitment needs to show that it delivers cash to the bottom line in a direct and predictable way. That is the biggest assumption whose future is questioned by recent events.

Second thing we learned (or re-learned) - the basics still matter. Even in this crazy faster-than-the-speed-of-thought internet universe. The banks got very innovative in creating financial instruments that buried the visibility of risk. The shining edifices of the investment banks' headquarters attested to the permanence and solidity of those institutions. But when some of them fell, they fell so rapidly it gave the lie to those perceptions.

If the rock-solid institutions of yesterday could blow away into the dust because they had no solid foundations - which other apparently rock solid pillars of our society do we suspect may have similar problems? What about the global food chain? What about the entire tourism industry? Or the insurance sector? Or the entire natural ecosystem? If we think any of those are 'too big to fail' then what is our strategy other than the blind faith that didn't work too well last year?

Third - the other side of the maximising shareholder value is that CEOs are attracted and retained by large financial rewards. And if those rewards can be aligned with the interests of shareholders, then businesses do well. If they become disconnected, then the CEOs may 'go native' and do things against the shareholders interests.

This way of thinking has led to the view that huge pay for CEOs is necessary to attract and retain great talent. There is some truth to this, in that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. But likewise, if you make vast financial reward the key motivator for CEO success, then you attract the kind of people who value above all else vast financial reward.

What is wrong with aiming to motivate people to want to do a great job because it creates value, it provides a service, it gives people fulfilling and meaningful jobs, and it can help to solve some of society's problems. What sort of leaders would we attract if we could do that? We need Mandela-like leadership, not Attila the Hun style leadership for this next bit.

Because last year we saw again how important is leadership. Barack Obama captured the imagination of the world - all because people saw the possibilities now that they felt real leadership was in evidence again in one of the most powerful nations in the world. Forget the politics of the parties - this is just about vision and focus.

Did we see any leadership in the financial sector? Some, not much. Some companies refused to take part in the parlour games of the sector overall and kept their feet on the ground. They did not criticise their peers, and they have enjoyed not being part of the story of crisis.

Most, however, embraced the logic and did what they were asked to do. Some of the people that asked this of them are now the ones condemning them. But that's stakeholder expectations for you.

Finally - at the start of the year, everybody was talking about the rise of private equity. A number of the CEOs and other business leaders I dealt with at the time talked about their ambition to get into private equity, where the rewards were seen as huge and the irksome barriers seen as few. A brutal world, where stellar performance was expected, but stellar rewards were duly delivered as a result.

But it was all based on the leverage provided by cheap credit. A private equity firm could buy a poorly managed company having borrowed eighty percent of the cost, and putting in only twenty percent of the stake from its own funds. If it could then turn the company around and float it back onto the markets - say at 120 percent of the price paid, then the debt is repaid, and the company has doubled its money. The mathematics of this simple process made a number of individuals super-rich.

But what happens to the ethics of the portfolio companies that are in the process of being turned around? It's not that they are always thrown overboard - they aren't - but where was the hard-edged business case that would have played with the hardball players who just wanted a turnaround and a big return?

Now, of course, it has all changed. The credit flow has dried up. Don't expect to see any cheap credit again any time soon. And the stock values of companies have plummeted. Maybe it'll be awhile before the stellar returns are realised as well. Oh, and since companies are doing badly then some of the struggling badly managed companies are ... at best, struggling well managed companies.

Maybe that is all to the good. Suddenly, the owners of companies are going to have to behave like they might just own them for a bit longer than they expected, and wonder what they have to do to build long term value.

So - learnings at the end of all that?

1. We need a more robust discussion about the benefits to society and business of a different way of doing business. This needs to be quite radical - none of yesterday's assumptions are exempt from scrutiny. Why? Because the rules just changed. Even if you don't think that changes anything major, it would be as well to check.

2. Let's lose the sloppy thinking about CSR and bottom line benefits. Nobody believes that the equation is this simplistic. Any more than they would someone who 'proved' that companies that sell the most are the ones that spend the most on marketing.

3. The basics matter. But we, as a society, are prone to wishful thinking. The dot-com bubble. The credit crunch. How can we avoid this effect in the future - particularly over things that are genuinely too big to fail, and are now subject to a government bail-out if they do?

4. Is there a concept of a 'fair return' for shareholders to replace the 'maximum return' concept? Can we get more people to buy in to a sustainable future if it means that the smart or lucky ways to get unfeasibly large returns are no longer possible? Guess what - you have to work hard to get rich, not just get lucky?

5. Since pay for CEOs is one of the easiest targets for discontent when poor CEO performance is one of the big issues, we should expect to see this reined in. There's an opportunity there for some visionary CEOs to show leadership. And an opportunity for society to build a vision of what the job of a CEO is, and how they should be motivated. Pay peanuts, get monkeys. Pay obscene salaries, get obscenely greedy monkeys.

Learn from the best of the voluntary sector, and blend it with the best of the private sector.

6. Take the challenge to the private equity guys. The party's over. What are the real strengths of the private equity model we could learn from? What are the real downsides?

That's quite an agenda for the next twelve months!


Taken from Mallen's Business Respect e-newsletter with kind permission. For more, go to www.mallenbaker.net

12 Technology Predictions for 2009

12 Technology Predictions for 2009 Analysts weigh in on content management trends for the New Year. By Lauren McKay Posted Jan 7, 2009

In the cyclical Chinese calendar, 2009 is the Year of the Ox. Chinese horoscopes characterize those born within the year as determined, hard-working, stable, and persevering -- traits that happen to be in demand as we enter the second year of a recession. With the economy weighing heavily on the minds of decision-makers, fighting through the tide has never been more important for businesses, according to CMS Watch, a research firm focused on Web content management, enterprise portals, and enterprise search technology.

Tony Byrne, founder of CMS Watch, says the firm prides itself on keeping a finger on the pulse of the customer, so, when putting together a set of technology forecasts for 2009, CMS Watch looked to customers -- who else? -- for a sense of their purchasing plans and strategies for the upcoming year. Not surprisingly, one recurring theme among the predictions is an effort to prioritize cost savings and to get better mileage out of existing software purchases.

The 12 CMS Watch predictions for 2009 are as follows:

1. Open-source enterprise content management will see more love from buyers. Byrne says that he has seen the industry increasingly pay attention to both open-source technology and software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions over the last five years. The current economic conditions, however, will drive even more interest and adoption in open-source solutions. Byrne predicts a "significant uptake" in SaaS and open-source solutions due to the perception that the two technologies are cheaper than traditional software options -- a perception that may not be wholly accurate, he adds. "The reality is, once [buyers] get into it, they may discover that [SaaS and open-source solutions don't] have less [total cost of ownership] in the long run." In other words, something that appears "too good to be true" might really be just that. Byrne warns potential buyers to take a strong look at the software they already have before choosing something new to take on.
2. The next release of Microsoft SharePoint will cause customers to reassess. Byrne says that he expects Microsoft to release a Beta version of Office 14 in 2009, which may include some updated SharePoint tools. Even though the 2007 edition of SharePoint is still very new to a lot of users, many have complained that they've been unable to fully comprehend certain functions -- and the new release is expected to address those concerns, Byrne says. This fervent hope, he adds, may lead to a re-evaluation of the product among current and prospective users.
3. Metadata will send taxonomists into a frenzy. "The whole issue of metadata and tagging will continue to be one that's hotly debated," Byrne says. For those devoted to categorizing content, third-party data brings a whole new set of challenges. Metadata, categorized by social-tagging methods, does not fit the typical standards of enterprise data sets. For this reason, vendors are pushing data-cleansing and data-integration tools to unite on-premises data with social data in the cloud. Byrne recommends that organizations stringently evaluate the way they use -- or don't use -- metadata within their existing information systems before jumping into a new solution. Only after that assessment is complete can a company accurately see how sophisticated social insight could add value to the information systems.
4. Vendors will spotlight regulatory compliance offerings. A tough economy often leads to an increase in litigation, which pushes regulatory compliance to the top of the agenda. Byrne says he wouldn't be surprised to see compliance regain some industry buzz, given the recent economic headlines.
5. Proactive e-discovery will move to the forefront. With litigation comes e-discovery, so organizations are advised to prepare for "what if" scenarios as a precaution. "You can't just suddenly search within this massive content on your Web site and expect to give back to legal counsel simple and accurate results," says CMS Watch analyst Alan Pelz-Sharpe in a video presentation of the firm's predictions. "You have to be proactive to get your house in order."
6. SaaS continues to appeal to users -- but now they will want more from providers in the cloud. As with the aforementioned view of open-source computing (see #1, above), buyers increasingly see SaaS as a viable, low-cost option. However, Byrne cautions organizations to closely examine their processes before adding another Web application. CMS Watch findings indicate that customers are now asking for more than just technical services from providers in the cloud. "Expect [SaaS] vendors to make more strategic partnerships with firms that can supplement their services," the report says.
   
7. Oracle will fall behind with front-office productivity applications. Oracle had a huge year in 2008 -- the culmination of a three-year acquisition spree comprising about 50 companies. Acquisitions often lead to complications, Byrne says, citing reports of confusion caused by perceived overlaps between the toolsets offered by Oracle's multiple front-office applications, including Oracle WebCenter Suite and its new collaboration product, Beehive. "Beehive is fundamentally a development platform and it's oriented toward developing custom applications at a time [when] the market wants things out-of-the-box," Byrne says. "The bigger issue is, if you're an Oracle customer and interested in social computing, it's unclear what Oracle toolset to use." Byrne says he expects these issues to become more critical over the next year.
8. Enterprise search now involves personalization, stickiness, and analytics. Pelz-Sharpe expands upon this notion: "At the end of 2008, buyers were starting to understand the limitations of search engines. Search is a complex area, and buying needs to reflect that." There will be new emphasis placed on application search -- and the idea that "you are what you search for" will become central to enterprise search.
9. Social computing will continue to make inroads, while smaller niche players will sneak in with new offerings. "So much hype is cleared away and the reality is starting to come through," Pelz-Sharpe says. The report predicts that standardization is still a ways off -- probably 2010 at the earliest. Movement toward social computing will build, but it remains a young market.
10. Web content management vendors will partner off, leading to consolidation in the marketplace. The analysts write, "We hope for your sake that any [merger and acquisition] activity falls more on the acquisitions side." The report states that when smaller companies merge, existing customers are often left in a tough place, as one tool or the other often falls by the wayside.
11. Users will demand mobile and multimedia Web analytics. Who will step up? "We are again seeing Web analytics really…coming to the fore," Pelz-Sharpe says. "People are realizing they need to know what's going on at a granular level." Still unclear, though, is a sense of which vendors will take charge in providing analytics for mobile and multimedia activity -- a void that needs filling.
12. Buyers will remain in the driver's seat: Prices will fluctuate based on pushy purchasers. "Buyers will not accept vendors' first offers," the report states. "Rather they will demand better pricing, more licenses, and better support levels." In other words: Don't be afraid to haggle.

News relevant to the customer relationship management industry is posted several times a day on destinationCRM.com, in addition to the news section Insight that appears every month in the pages of CRM magazine. You may leave a public comment regarding this article by clicking on "Comments" at the top; to contact the editors, please email editor@destinationCRM.com.

Social Compliance: Storage in 2009: Data protection

Search Storage

Jan 6, 2009,By: Lauren Whitehouse

Storage in 2009: Data protection

Looking back on 2008, data protection/data backup saw several noteworthy trends. The factors that elevated some technologies over others were driven by a tenuous business climate and initiatives that focused on efficiency, cost savings and environmental sustainability. Some of the issues IT organisations faced, not surprisingly, included:

• Data growth. Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) estimates annual data growth at 50% to 60% per year for many organisations. Collaboration, the use of messaging systems and copies made for data protection all contributed to organisations' capacity glut. The inability to keep pace with data growth added pressure on already-strained backup windows and/or recovery objectives.

• Volatility in global capital markets. ESG surveyed North American medium-sized businesses regarding the factors perceived as having the greatest influence on spending over the next 24 months and "internal pressure to reduce overall costs of doing business" ranked second in factors impacting IT infrastructure decisions. IT organisations, accordingly, were faced with reprioritizing and postponing projects, reducing capital and operational budgets, and oftentimes working with less staff to get it all done.

• Green data storage initiatives. Social responsibility has been less of a driver than the power, cooling and space efficiency challenges forcing "green" initiatives in companies of all sizes. These initiatives aim to reduce costs, improve the environment and create new business opportunities by eliminating waste, conserving energy, reducing carbon footprints, and taking new approaches to the development and marketing of products and services -- often relying heavily on IT to help meet goals.

• Compliance and litigation support. Compliance has become a business imperative for most organisations because failure to meet regulatory or governance requirements can lead to severe penalties, legal sanctions or damage to a company's reputation. Organisations have been challenged to develop standard operating procedures that include comprehensive electronic records management programs and information privacy practices, in addition to preparing for audits to prove compliance.

• Risk mitigation. ESG research found that IT spending will be closely aligned with initiatives that support or protect the business. In addition to improving backup and recovery, survey respondents indicated that their top three IT spending priorities will focus on improving business processes, decreasing costs and bolstering security controls in an effort to reduce risk.

• Dynamic and complex IT environments. Organisations have been undergoing dramatic changes and nowhere is that more evident than in IT. In an effort to expand globally, maintain competitiveness and increase revenues, organisations have adopted new technologies to improve IT infrastructure. Therefore, IT is challenged to not only maintain the status quo, but to continually refresh and improve technology infrastructure investments.

About the author: Lauren Whitehouse is an analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group covering data protection technologies. Lauren is a 20-plus-year veteran in the software industry, formerly serving in marketing and software development roles.

7 Experts Paint Enterprise IT Landscape for 2009

By Dana Gardner
CRM Buyer
Part of the ECT News Network
01/04/09 4:00 AM PT

Enterprise IT specialist Dana Gardner pulls together a panel of experts to give their thoughts on the developments they see taking place in 2009. Some have grim predictions, others hopeful -- but all see enterprise IT making great progress in the coming year.

Here are some excerpts ...

Gardner's Top Five Predictions for 2009:

1. Shadow IT. Spending from shadow IT activities will actually grow, and that the amount of money devoted to shadow IT activities will come from outside traditional IT budgets, from a variety of different sources, maybe even petty cash, and we'll see a bit of growth in these rogue activities. Moving into these areas for business development purposes is going to be an overwhelming temptation. We will see a flattening, and in many cases a reduction, in officially sanctioned IT activities.
2. Cut Costs. Inside of traditional IT we're going to find a lot of new ways to quickly cut costs. This is going to be a drill for organizations to not spend money or spend less money. Virtualization will be a big part of that. Hypervisors will perhaps go commodity, and the value-add in the virtualized environment is going to be at the stacks -- virtualized stacks or containers at the applications level. There will be a blurring between which WOA activities happen inside IT and outside. We're going to see a lot more dumping of Unix and mainframes. We are going to sunset a lot of applications that aren't essential and save on the underlying costs of supporting them.
3. High-Scale Business Intelligence (BI). Extreme BI will require a move up scale to larger sets of data, larger sets of content, and more mingling or joining of disparate types of data and content in order to draw inferences about what the customers are willing to do and pay across both B2B and B2C activities. We'll start to see an increased use of multi-core and parallelism to support these BI activities.
4. No Stomach for Upgrades. Upgrades will suffer. Were not going to see a lot of swapping out of one system for another, unless there's a very compelling return-on-investment (ROI) scenario with verifiable short-term metrics. This is going to hurt companies like SAP (NYSE: SAP) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) , and Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) to a lesser extent, given their diversification. I think Windows 7 is in trouble. People are not going to just run to Windows 7. They're going to continue to stay with XP. This makes the timing around the Vista debacle all the more injurious to Microsoft. This provides an opening for Linux and non-Microsoft virtualization. It also means Microsoft needs to move to its cloud offerings all the more quickly, which then could actually spell earnings troubles for the company.
5. Social Data-CRM Mashups. The role of social media and networks will continue to grow and be impactful for enterprises, as marketers and salespeople begin to look to these organizations from the metadata and inference about what customers are willing to buy, particularly under tight economic conditions. There's going to be a need to tie traditional customer relationship management (CRM) and sales applications with some sort of a process overlay into the metadata that's available from these Web-based cloud environments, where users have shared so much inference and data about themselves. I look for some mashups between social data and the sales and business development applications and data.

Kobielus's Top Five Predictions for 2009:

1. Obama. The new administration will most likely appoint a national chief technology officer or a national tech policy coordinator. Obama is going to choose a heavy hitter who has huge credibility and stature in the IT space. It's going to be someone who's going to focus on SOA at a national level, in terms of how we, as a country, can take advantage of reusing agility, transformation, optimization, and all the other benefits that come from SOA properly implemented across different agencies.
2. Cloud Computing. Clouds are going to become less of a work in progress, in terms of public clouds and private clouds, and become more of a mature reality, in terms of how enterprises acquire functionality, how they acquire applications and platforms. Clouds will stratify, which means that the vendors, like Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) , Microsoft, and Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) and others with their cloud offerings, will build full stacks, strata, in their cloud services that include all the appropriate layers, application components, integration services, and platforms. So, the industry will converge on a more of a reference model for cloud in 2009.
3. Recession. We are in a deep funk, and it might get a lot worse before it gets better. That's clearly hammering all IT budgets everywhere. They're going to put a freeze on projects. They're going to delay or cancel upgrades. Users are going to dip into petty cash and go around IT to get what they need. They're going to go to cloud offerings.
4. Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC). Government is cracking down. If it has to bail out the financial-services industry, bail out the auto industry, and bail out other industries, the government is not going to do it with no strings attached. Compliance, regulations, reporting requirements, the whole apparatus of GRC will be brought to bear on the industries that the government is saving and bailing out.
5. Social Networking. Social networking will pervade everything in terms of applications and services. We'll see more BI become social networking, in the sense of mashup as a style of BI application, reporting, dashboards, and development. Mashups for user self-service BI development will come to the fore. It will be a huge theme in the BI space in 2009 and beyond of that.

Baer's Top Five Predictions for 2009:

1. Cost Savings. It's going to put a lot more emphasis on using the resources and infrastructure that you already have. It's going to damp down entering into new long-term contracts for anything. You'll actually see little less emphasis on outsourcing , because that does imply a long-term contract. I don't think anyone is really doing any meaningful projecting beyond Q1.
2. Low Cost or No Cost IT. It's going to be a lot of low cost, no cost. There will be a lot more use of open source , a lot more. This is definitely the year that the cloud and Software as a Service (SaaS) come into their own.
3. Managed Clouds. I think it's going to be managed clouds. Essentially, to take advantage of raw clouds, like Amazon EC2 you have to put in more of your own management infrastructure. I don't see the use of what I would call "clouds in the wild." I see more managed clouds from that standpoint.
4. IT Service Management. For IT organizations, it's going to dictate more attention to IT service management to show that we're not just keeping systems going and keeping the lights on, but more along the lines of, "Here are the services that we're delivering to the business," as they try to justify the systems. On the back-end, it will be "Use more of what you have," and huge renewed investments in BI.
5. GRC. It's going to take a while for this to unfold -- you just don't regulate overnight -- but there will be much greater attention to GRC.

Shimmin's Top Five Predictions for 2009:

1. Collaborative Social Networks. Vendors will tackle enterprise-plus-consumer based social networks, a blended view of those. Enterprise-focused vendors are going to do more than simply sink info from public sites like Facebook . They're going to take that information and build into or out from the enterprise into those social networks and drive information from those. It's going to become a two-way street.
2. Cloud Software. I see the vendors within the collaboration space settling beyond the small and medium business (SMB) market and looking more toward the larger enterprises that are looking to squeeze more out of their existing IT infrastructure or cut costs. Folks like IBM and Microsoft have already shown us that they can hit the long tail with stuff like Bluehouse and Microsoft Online Services (MOS) for collaboration. But, you're going to see vendors like Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) and Oracle take up this challenge with more of a focus on managed hosting services that look more like SaaS, but they are really managed.
3. Enterprise Oligarchy Models. Enterprises are going to move away from a steep hierarchy, or the word might be "oligarchy," of an organizational model internally. To become not just more efficient and agile, companies are going to want to self organize to create these internal ecosystems where organizations are built around employee experience, associations, interests, and energy levels -- what they want to focus on. This allows companies to more efficiently harness the users. People are going to be tasked with setting up their own BI queries and mashing up their own applications.
4. Blended Internal and External Communities. In terms of communities, both internally and externally -- I am seeing silos breakdown between those. Gone are the days of consumer-faced social networking and enterprise-faced social networking existing as independent entities. Thanks to user profile standards like OpenID and expansion of APIs, community providers and third-party aggregation and integration tool vendors are going to allow applications and users to flow between what were heretofore closed communities.
5. Virtual Worlds Gain Foothold. I think we're going to see that change how virtual networks can be utilized inside the enterprise. I'm looking for virtual worlds to gain a foothold in the enterprise. It's not just for marketing and sales, but also to support B2B and B2C communities, where effective communication between your supply channel members is really paramount. We'll see virtual worlds actually make an impact in terms of allowing these global, loosely coupled entities communicate more effectively in 2009.

McKendrick's Top Five Predictions for 2009:

1. It's the Economy. Recession planning is so 2008, because SOA, which I focus on as well as IT, is a long-term process. You need to look three years down the road. The economy is going to turn around. I see it turning around at some point in 2009.
2. IT Can't Cut Too Much More. IT has already been tight. IT has been tight since the dot-bomb era of 2001-2002. There probably is not going to be a huge diminishment in IT departments, because of the fact that the budgets have been lean, things have already been tight, companies already know, or have been running very efficiently, and IT departments have been overworked as it is.
3. Enterprise 2.0. The recession and downturn isn't going to be like it's been in the past. People are more empowered with social networking tools, as employees and as people looking for jobs. They're looking to start new businesses. We have a lot of tools available to us now that we didn't have back in 2000. People don't have to be victims of an economic downturn, as they have been in the past.
We have the capability to network across the globe. We have the capability to start new businesses.
4. Cloud Economics. I just heard about another company that spent about US$200 for its first two months of IT. They don't have to go out and buy servers. They don't have to go out and buy disk arrays, and worry about the maintenance, hiring people, and know how to maintain those things. We are going to see folks -- maybe IT people, or people who work for vendors and have been laid off -- have the ability to start their own business at a very low cost of entry.
5. Low-Cost Methods to Reach Markets. With the social-networking and cloud-computing phenomena, companies have these tools to employ low-cost methods to reach their markets and to interact with their customers. A marketing campaign doesn't have to cost $200,000 to reach your customers. You can use the social network, the Web 2.0 tools, to interact and collaborate and find out what's going on in your markets at a very relatively low cost.

Linthicum's Top Five Predictions for 2009:

1. Cloud Computing Matures. The interest in cloud computing, which I have been focusing on in my career, at least for the last eight years, is finally going to come into its own. What we're going to see in 2009 is a lot of startups, specifically some cloud-computing startups. You're going to see even more around what I call "cloud mediation." That is guys like RightScale, and a few other folks in the space that sit between you and the major cloud providers. They basically mediate issues around data semantics, performance management, load balancing, and those sorts of things.
2. Open Cloud Services. A big hole in the cloud computing movement so far is that most of the solutions out there, even the database solutions, are proprietary. They use different APIs, different interfaces, and different sets of standards. It's going to be a play for a lot of companies to get in there and provide more reliable infrastructure in and between these various guys out there.
3. Some Cloud Social Connections. The links to social networking will be there. They're not going to be quite as pervasive as everybody thinks. Social networking is going to have its place, but once we figure it out, it will be, "Okay, yeah." It's going to have its value, but we're just going to move on as far as this revolution goes. I don't think that's going to happen in 2009. People are going to use it as a marketing opportunity, just like they used e-mail, Web sites and those sorts of things, and now blogging opportunities, but eventually it's just going to fall into place.
4. Rogue Clouds and PaaS. There will be a huge explosion in the rogue cloud movement, and also the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) space. The architects and CIOs out there are going to be scrambling around trying to figure out how to place governance around that. Everybody is going to be building applications, typically using free platforms like Google App Engine. They're going to start launching these things into production, and there is going to be no rhyme or reason around how they fit into the existing infrastructure.
5. SOA Gets Cloudy. There's going to be a larger focus on inter-domain SOA technology. The focus will still be on the short-term tactical and the ability to provide quick value in the SOA space to justify it, so you can get additional funding. As we start building these things, people are going to look at the departments that are implementing their SOA projects and try to figure out how to bind these things at an enterprise level. I call this the micro domain versus the macro domain. On the downside, the jig will be up for poor SOA technology vendors out there. Guys who haven't been able to get acquired or haven't been able to hit that inflection point ... are going to eventually just going to have the plug pulled. And, 2009 is going to be when it's going to happen. They're just going to run out of steam. SOA predates when the buzzword was created, and it's going to postdate when the word "SOA" was created. It's going to morph into different things, and the cloud computing movement is going to get into it and define it in different directions. The whole SOA movement is going to be more defined by the cloud.

Meehan's Top Five Predictions for 2009:

1. Take My Hardware, Please. Back in 2001, when that recession hit, all of a sudden you could buy wonderful amounts of IT gear on eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) for next to nothing. I remember talking to one guy who was smiling like a Cheshire Cat, because he had replaced $45,000 worth of Unix with $500 worth of Linux. I think you are going to see a lot of that. Expect a glut of servers and storage gear and network gear, and you are going to be able to get it cheap and affordable. That's going to hit the storage and network and server companies.
2. Tough License Negotiations. CIOs are ... going to be asked to cut budget, and there is only so much flesh you can cut out before you have to deal with that maintenance license. I think every company in the world is aware of the fact that they pay more in licenses than they want to. They have always theoretically wanted to lower those costs. The pressure now is going to be too great for them to not consider options. This is going to be great for open source companies, which are going to be able to come in and say, alright, you don't have to pay me a rolling license, here is my support cost, see how much its going to lower your license. It is going to be bad for Microsoft, because again, to a degree they are becoming commoditized across their portfolio, and that's going to hit them right in the breadbasket. This should hit some enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors too. Anybody who can sell SaaS in the ERP market is going to be doing better. I think you are going to see some erosion on the SAP and Oracle side, as far as enterprise apps go.
3. Easier Integration. "Make my life easier or go away." That basically means, users are going to need productivity and ease-of-use integration. You're going to see those in requests for proposals (RFPs). If they're not stated explicitly, they will be there implicitly. Don't come in and tell me how much work I'm going to have to do to make all of this come together. Come in and tell me how this is going to make my life easier on day one. The companies that can deliver that will be the ones making the sales. The ones who are telling you that you're going to need to do eight months of work to get this up and running are going to be pushed to the back burner.
4. Smooth SOA. What you're going to see in a lot of the SOA projects out there in particular is, "All right. Make it easy for me to assemble an application. Make it easy for me to reuse my assets. Make it easy for me to modify my existing applications. Make it easy for me to integrate different applications and even information between different divisions of my company." You almost want it to be governable on the fly. What you really want is that you don't have to dedicate too much time and resources to undertake these functions. Users aren't going to have that much time or that many resources. So, how quickly can I do things now, as opposed to how thoroughly can I do things? You're going to want to be thorough to an extent, but really it's going to be speed to market and speed to end of project that's going to be a determinant in there.
5. Telecom Realignment. The U.S. government is going to start treating telecom like it's our national road system, and you are going to see some serious investment in that area. That's going to become one of the key points in the economic stimulus package that you're going to see. I also think you are going to see European telcos begin to encroach, either through acquisition or just through offering services into the U.S. market. ... The last one, HP (NYSE: HPQ) buys Sun. Somebody is going to get bought this year, somebody fairly big. I'm saying HP is buying Sun.

Morgenthal's Top Five Predictions for 2009:

1. Business Process Focus. We're going to see a greater focus on the business process. Not business process management (BPM) per se, although initially people will target that. I think SOA is dead, and I believe companies have no stomach for IT initiatives that cannot immediately be attributed to a value. They're going to do some small-scale business process re-engineering, they're going to get tremendous value from it. They're going to see that simplification is the way to go. Why are we doing all these complex things -- this hooking to that, hooking to this, hooking to that? I can just go into this one box and get everything done there. The age of disposable computing is here.
2. Social Networking Backlash. Everyone is getting into it, having a little fun. Certain ones of us are on the leading edge. We're already getting bombarded and tired. We're already fried and overloaded from these social networks. The new people think it's a great new toy. Give it a couple of years and you are going to see a tremendous backlash. You're going to see a rise of firms that will get paid to get people off the grid.
3. Era of Anti-IT. The pain from the economy is going to impact the open-systems market. We're seeing the rise of what I call the "anti-IT." You read about people reaching into petty cash, doing things on the cheap, finding other ways to get things done. The one that's going to be the biggest impact is that people are treating open source like free software. That will destroy the open source market for sure. It's the death knell. I remind every one of my customers of that ... open source is not free software. You're either contributing dollars to the team that's doing it, or you are contributing your time and effort. It's not free software. You just don't take it and use it. That will be the death knell for open source for sure.
4. Millennial Workforce Shifts. The millennial workforce is starting. This is going to change everything, and it's starting to already. These people have attitude that I haven't seen in a workforce since marketing people came out in the dot-com era. They definitely feel like, "I want my toys. I want to be able to use my phone at work. I want to use my computer at work. I want to be able to access my sites at work." I see companies dealing with this issue in a unique way. Their first inclination isn't to push back with the old adage and the old way of talking about it, saying, "Hey, it's our way or the highway. We've got the money." It's "OK, what do you want?" This is going to really change things. How? It's yet to be seen, but clearly the introduction of a much more mobile force, more telecommuters.
5. Digital Rights Management Changes. There's a big change coming in Digital Rights Management (DRM) and patent and copyright. It's being lead by this initiative out of Harvard with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). RIAA may have just started a war for everybody in the industry who has any copyright or any patent infringement suit. A Harvard law class, I believe, represented by a Harvard law professor [Charles Nesson], is backing it. They're representing it as unconstitutional. So this case could be landmark for DRM, copyright infringement, and patent infringement. It would have a tremendous impact going into the potential for a startup economy. Landmark cases like this will do a lot to further the opportunities of these firms to go out there and build something without worrying, "Am I going to get taken out by Microsoft? Am I going to get taken out by Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) ? I can't afford that." It's really interesting what could happen, given the cases like this are now falling on the side of the small guy, and not on the side of big companies.

Losses may shrink CSR appropriations

Vol. XXII, No. 109Monday, January 5, 2009 MANILA, PHILIPPINES
BY DON GIL K. CARREON, Reporter


Losses may shrink CSR appropriations

CORPORATE SOCIAL responsibility (CSR) advocates are hopeful that companies will not cut budgets for programs that seek to improve the quality of life of employees and their families, as well as local communities and society at large, even as the slowing global economy shrinks profits.


Rene M. Fortunato, assistant director of the corporate citizenship advocacy group Philippine Business for Social Progress, expressed optimism that the giving would continue. "If you look at the context of how firms have given during disasters, you can see that they are very generous, so I am hopeful that most likely, the giving will continue," he said in a telephone interview.
League of Corporate Foundations (LFC) Chairman Marilou G. Erni said the slowing economy was a perfect opportunity for companies to step up their practice of corporate responsibility. "The challenge for firms is to be able to create wealth at the bottom of the pyramid since the poor will be the one most affected by an economic slowdown," she said in a separate interview.
Companies normally allot 1% of profits to responsible business programs.


Mr. Fortunato noted that for the fiscal year ending in October 2009, the foundation was looking at raising P450 million — the same amount it had raised in the previous year — from member corporations and other multilateral organizations for projects promoting environment protection and greater access to health, education and livelihood programs for the poor.


Ms. Erni said LFC members were moving towards the same direction, in which their economic interests are in harmony with their social and environmental agenda.


She added that it is important for companies to identify programs where they can establish partnerships with other sectors to maximize the effectiveness of these projects.


But Mr. Fortunato admitted that some companies might not be able to meet their commitments. "There are some companies whose CSR budgets are a percentage of their profits. If they suffer losses next year, you can’t expect them to give," he said.


LFC member firms would likely retain their corporate responsibility budgets, Ms. Erni said. "If there ever will be cutbacks, these will be offset by some firms increasing their CSR spending," she said, adding that both big and small companies must do their part.


One company that intends to proceed with its corporate citizenship program is Mister Donut. The pastry chain plans to make half of the 110 company-owned stores environmentally friendly in the next five years.


Aside from using energy-efficient lighting and cooling systems for their new stores, the donut chain will also use environmentally sustainable materials in its containers, table counters and kitchen surfaces.


Alden M. Castañeda, Mister Donut vice-president for corporate marketing, noted that while the new materials and technology would be more expensive, the firm would eventually realize savings from these investments.


"Since we are targeting families and their children, we also thought it appropriate that our business helps in preserving a better future for the next generation," he said.

Sy-led SM Investment Corp. (SMIC) is likewise committed to funding its responsible business programs. SMIC Vice-President for Investor Relations Corazon P. Guidote said they would maintain their budget since operations were unlikely to be affected this year.


Ms. Guidote could not immediately recall SMIC’s budget for CSR, but said it would likely increase by a little from last year. "It’s a symbiotic relationship. If we give back to the community, then they can grow with us and eventually become our customers," she said.

Moving toward Social Justice in the Supply Chain

Moving toward Social Justice in the Supply Chain

Global Social Compliance Programme issues Reference Code to help companies work in partnership with NGOs to address the challenges of fair labor standards in the supply chain

By Editorial Staff

Hong Kong — December 26, 2008 — The Global Social Compliance Programme (GSCP) has released a new Reference Code aimed at helping companies work in partnership with nongovernmental organizations to address the challenges of social justice in the supply chain.

GSCP is a program of CIES - The Food Business Forum, a global food business network that unites the CEOs and senior management of around 400 retailer and manufacturer members of all sizes, across 150 countries. CIES provides a platform for thought leadership, debate and networking between retailers and their partners.

The compliance program is intended to build consensus and best practices in labor standards in supply chains and to develop a consistent message for suppliers globally. GSCP was formed in December 2006 by Carrefour, Metro, Migros, Tesco and Wal-Mart. Since then, Hasbro, Hewlett Packard and Ikea have joined the executive board, and the program has over 23 company members at present.

The program's position is that the proliferation of various supplier codes, audit duplication and divergence of approach is causing inefficiency and slowing improvement in labor conditions in the supply chain. For retailers, brands and suppliers there is confusion over requirements and a lack of clarity on best practice and accountability, and there is a need for cross-industry collaboration to bring about consistency and efficiency.

In response, GSCP is building a set of reference tools (the Reference Code, audit system and methodology, auditor competence) that describe best practices and provide a common interpretation of fair labor requirements and their implementation. It is aimed at helping retailers and brand manufacturers around the world, in whatever industry, to work towards mutual recognition of audit results.

The objective is to provide a clear and common set of requirements for all suppliers of consumer goods in terms of fair labor conditions in the global supply chain.

Speaking from a GSCP board meeting in Hong Kong, the program's chairman, Terry Babbs, from Tesco, said: "We are aware of the challenges around human rights, social standards and compliance in our supplier companies. In response we have joined together in an attempt to deliver a shared, global and sustainable approach for the improvement of working conditions in the global supply chain."

Speaking about the program, Rajan Kamalanathan, vice president for ethical standards at Wal-Mart, said: "We are committed, at Wal-Mart, to building an environmentally and socially responsible supply chain. Responsible sourcing is a priority for Wal-Mart, and we are building strong partnerships toward this aim. The Global Social Compliance Programme (GSCP) will provide us with a single framework from which to base collaborative efforts, leading to strengthened collaboration and measurable improvement for people and the environment."

A Supplier's Viewpoint

Arshad Jamal, chairman of Tusuka Fashions, a 9,000-employee apparel supplier based in Gazipur, near Dhaka in Bangladesh, and a supplier for some of the world's leading retailers and brand manufacturers, including Carrefour and Tesco, said that he strongly supports the idea of harmonization but believes that it remains a significant challenge.

"Multiple audits and variable customer policies can make it very difficult for us," said Jamal. "We find that our customers are different in their approach. Some are interested in social issues, others in security, technical or quality issues. We would very much like to be able to take control ourselves of social rights. I call it the internalization of rights. We should do this in partnership with our own workers. The current approach means there are many versions of what we should do — and none of them are ours."

Jamal said that the program has helped his company as customers have introduced Tusuka to local partners to help implement change. "Also, we would like our customers to improve their understanding of our local laws that we believe are quite appropriate, for example, on water usage, factory lighting and floor space. Talking about these kinds of issues means we sometimes do not concentrate on more important ones; such as safety, overtime or wages. That's a message we would like to take to all our customers."

The Global Social Compliance Programme issued its statement on the Reference Code earlier in December to market the sixtieth anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.