ACT president: Azerbaijan has good IT development prospects
By Nigar Orujova
Jonathan Zuck, a widely known and respected leader in the technology industry, visited Azerbaijan as part of the seventh global Internet Governance Forum (IGF), which started on Tuesday.
Zuck, with more than 15 years of experience as a professional software developer and IT executive, brings an insider's prospective to his role as president of the Association for Competitive Technology.
Since assuming leadership of ACT, Zuck provided analysis, commentary and background information on a wide range of technology issues to the media and public.
A prolific writer whose work has appeared in trade publications including PC Magazine, PC Week, Windows Tech Journal and in several books, Zuck is in high demand as a speaker at trade conferences around the world.
Q.: Mr. Zuck, could you please tell us when and why an idea of creating the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) appeared? What are the main objectives and tasks of the association?
A.:The ACT started in 1998. It began by a number of small businesses -- SMEs -- but they did not believe that it was a good association for them. About 7 years ago in the US, we reinvented ourselves as an international group based in Brussels, which is where we are now. It is about creating and environing conditions to entrepreneurship around the world, economic policies, intellectual property, enforcement, cross border, data flows, cloud computing. Basically entrepreneurs SMEs try on experimentation and so we try to encourage an environment that encourage these experimentations.
Q.: Which companies are the frequent ACT residents?
A.: It is about 4,000 companies in ACT but they are all small, they are not big names. But we have some sponsors that help to fund the organizations like Microsoft, Oracle, eBay, Apple. The companies like that are the platform companies which are generally interested in the health of the software development ecosystem.
Q.: Does the association act as a self-control organization?
A.: Yes, it is a self-controlled organization. It is an international nonprofit organization, like the Red Cross, with a board made of small businesses CEO'S and the sponsors don't have the vote in the organization.
Q.: Which important and crucial IT questions are of utmost interest to the ACT?
A.: We work a lot on better regulation so to make less red tape, which slows down the business. Too much bureaucracy hurts small businesses more than big businesses. We work on strong protection of intellectual property like copyrights, because this is one of the few things that is kind of an equalizer for the small businesses with its larger competitors. So, we work on issues like that. Currently our biggest issue is the privacy and the kind of regulations we put in place to protect privacy. Because the right regulation will be helpful, while the wrong one will be harmful for enterprise.
Q.: Piracy is a pressing problem on the Internet. Which attempts could ACT make to tackle the problem?
A.: Piracy in China, for example. Our members are people that write the apps for phones and things like that and piracy is becoming increasingly serious issue. We are small, there is much bigger organization that is working on this issue and we try to tab to government officials to help them understand that this issue is affecting small businesses and not just big ones. The big companies come over and over again to the thought that this issue is important only for the big companies, but it is not, it affects small companies too.
Q.: Does the ACT operate any expert board on IT competitiveness development? What functions does it have and what are the results of its work?
A.: In our organization we do have different policy committees that work on a number of different issues and one of them is "the ACT for development" and again we think that the best way for development is a streamlined environment for small businesses to arise.
Q.: What is the situation worldwide with upholding antimonopoly legislation in IT sector in different countries?
A.: It would be great if there were some harmonization between those enforcements because right now people that are interested in that enforcement tend to sharp around for enforcement officials, but I think it very important part of business. I think it is challenging in the industry, that moves so quickly, but I think some of the investigations that are going right now with Google are probably justified, because they are starting to exert a lot of influence in a number of markets and pushing competitors out. I think it is worth looking into.
Q.: What are your views about Azerbaijani software market, in particular its perspectives?
A.: Azerbaijani market is expanding rapidly. Incredible processes have been happening here in the last twenty years. There was a very high take up in the internet in Azerbaijan as well. Therefore, there is a lot of web-based development and solution building.
Still a fair regulatory environment can be difficult for very small business starts up to do well, but I think that infrastructure is very good foundation for software development.
There is a good prospect for development and we will continue to work with other organizations to look for how becoming a new business will be easier.
Q.: Are the Azerbaijani IT companies sufficiently competitive with foreign ones?
A.: Well, one of the barriers is the language sometimes. When you have a unique solution, companies from all over the world can compete on international stage. But again, different types of regulations, different types of intellectual property protection. Privacy regulations and can hold back small competitors from becoming a large one around the world.
But I think the potential exits for the internet to be competitive in the world and in the markets.
Q.: You may be aware of internationally oriented high-tech parks in Azerbaijan. What role could the ACT play in this large-scale Azerbaijani project?
A.: I think that Parks like these have had a mixed success around the world because real key is access to a broader market. So ease of hiring people, ease to fire people, protection of intellectual property, good trade relations, strong IP, those things matter more than, whether or not you can rent or not a desk.
I think that is helpful but the bottom line is cleaning up the clutter of the regulatory bureaucracy that has formed here.