Articles, essays, and talks of Rey Lugtu

By Mary Ann Ll. Reyes (The Philippine Star) MANILA, Philippines - IBM has opened the ASEAN Telecom Center of Excellence (CoE) to accelerate telecommunications solution development and streamline product delivery in the region. In a statement, the global technology giant said this will help ASEAN telecommunication service providers compete more effectively in the fast-changing market. The center will bring together cutting-edge technical skills, specialized offerings and industry best practices to meet the rising challenges in ASEAN’s telecommunications industry. Located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the ASEAN Telecom CoE leverages IBM’s globally-integrated network of capabilities and partnerships. The CoE offers a range of new telecommunications software solutions based on IBM’s Service Provider Delivery Environment (SPDE) 3.0 framework, as well as hardware, services and business partner applications. Clients will include telco operators, network equipment suppliers, independent software ...

The Green Valley College Foundation, Inc., is one the fastest growing educational and training institution based in the City of Koronadal, South Cotabato. One of our major milestones for this year is to bring to our region the 1st Mindanao Technology Summit 2009. The summit will be a gathering of students, instructors/professors, IT professionals and businessmen with interests in the field of IT and IT enabled services. It will be held at the South Cotabato Gymnasium and Cultural Center, City of Koronadal, South Cotabato on November 21, 2009. Organized by our institution in partnership with a multinational company, International Business Machine (IBM), it shall center on the theme “ICT and Beyond.” The radical developments in the field of ICT opened up emerging business and career opportunities for Filipinos. Awareness of these opportunities will make us more responsive to the challenging times. Keynote speaker is Mr. Reynaldo Lugtu Jr, who will speak on the future of IT and II career...

(Published in Manila Standard Today under the Greenlight column, November 2, 2009) As I write this, I am in a classroom in INSEAD Singapore, attending a two-week executive education on business and management. Coincidentally, it’s also my birthday today, October 29, and I’m away from my family. My teenage daughters, Frances and Renee, had asked why I would sacrifice a birthday celebration with them, and instead go back to school. In an apologetic way, my cursory answer was that the schedule was fixed beforehand; but what I told them with great pride was that it’s an invaluable opportunity to learn from the fourth-ranking business school in the world. I went on in saying that the most important personal asset in your life is your education; that you should never stop learning. As a Chinese proverb goes, “learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.” Indeed, as an adult learner, I am one of those business executives who are sent by their companies to business school and...

(Published in Business Mirror under the Mirror Image column, October 20, 2009) All of us, in one way or another, have been affected by the super-typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng. But in the televised news reports that I’ve watched, it never failed to amaze me that Filipinos could still laugh and smile while being interviewed by news reporters in front of their wrecked homes. Even American soldiers on a rescue mission seemed to be wondering why affected Filipinos were all smiling, giving them “high-fives,” amid the catastrophe. If you think about it, there is a truism in the proverbial mababaw ang kaligayahan (literally translated “shallow happiness” or “easy to please”). To many of us Filipinos, happiness is watching Wowowee and reveling in the antics of Willie Revillame and his bevy of curvaceous dancers. Happiness is patiently lining up in a lotto outlet, waiting for one’s turn to get hold of a ticket to one’s dreams. Happiness is treating one’s family to a weekend lunch, spending a hard-ea...

(Published in Manila Standard Today under the Greenlight column, Spetember 7, 2009) Major business and market trends are spurring the growth of cloud computing among companies and governments, even as this newly emerging IT concept is still being refined. Cloud computing is an approach to a shared IT infrastructure in which large pools of computer systems are linked together to provide IT services. Cloud computing accesses "virtual" resources, and therefore, is not limited by the power and capabilities of local or remote computers. It is the next generation of enterprise data centers, which operate like the Internet, providing extreme scale and fast access to networked users. Cloud computing offers a simplified, centralized platform for use when needed, lowering costs and energy use. Unlike grid computing, which distributes IT for a specific task, cloud computing is used across an entire range of activities. The platforms can be externally hosted services, but are also used i...

(Published in Business Mirror under the Mirror Image column, Aug 18, 2009) NOTHING, you’d think, would be more dynamic or up-to-the-minute than how we buy and sell. From the early Greek agoras to the modern superstore, markets have always been the most sensitive barometers of economic and societal change. However, today’s retail model is struggling. It’s still largely a system built for the realities of an earlier era—a linear, push-based process where products are manufactured in isolation and put into market en masse from factory to truck to store, for customers who do the majority of their shopping in suburban malls. This served very well the needs of manufacturers, retailers and consumers half a century ago. But today, this system is straining to adapt to global supply chains, new ways and venues for selling—both physical and virtual—and a very different kind of consumer. Global retail today sees lead times as long as six to 10 months, forcing vendors to make significant bets on in...

De LaSalle University and the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPA/P) recently launched two leadreship and management programs for BPO employees to address the management skills gap among BPO supervisors and managers. The programs are starting in September 2009. The programs are: Enhancing Your Supervisory Skills (Supervisory Skills Program) Recommended for: Supervisors / Team Leads in BPO companies Course description This five-day course will give you an overview of the competencies that a supervisor in a BPO company must possess to succeed in his / her task of helping the people working under him / her to achieve their full potentials. Through various participative learning approaches, you will be able to enhance your ability to inspire others, to communicate well, to assess performance, and to effectively handle work-related problems, among others. Course content 1. The Role of the Supervisor in the Organization 2. Key Supervisory Skills 3. The Adapt-able Super...