APEC SME Gold Sponsors
By Ivan Teo


From left: Mr Ron Willis, Vice President of Marketing for Cisco's Small and Medium Business, Dato Paduka Hj Hamdillah and Mr Warner Manning, CEO of HSBC, Brunei.

Six global companies make up the gold sponsors of the Business Forum. They are Brunei Shell Petroleum Sdn Bhd, Brunei LNG Sdn Bhd, Royal Brunei Airlines, HSBC, Cisco Systems and Standard Chartered Bank.

As the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, Cisco Systems Inc. will present its strategy for integrating Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) into the Internet Economy at the APEC 2000 E-Commerce Workshop launched yesterday at the International Convention Centre, Berakas.

The E-Commerce Workshop runs from June 20 to 22. The presentation will be part of a working policy document to promote e-commerce among SMEs that will eventually be given to the APEC Electronic Commerce Steering Group and to be implemented in the 22 member countries.

Mr Ron Willis, Vice-President of Marketing for Cisco's Small and Medium Business was present at and moderated the panel on "Access to Infrastructure: Expanding pervasiveness - Maximising SMEs migration into the e-economy".

Mr Willis said, "The economies in the Asia Pacific region are all growing rapidly after the challenges of the past few years and there is no doubt that the Internet will play a major role in that growth. What companies need to compete effectively in the Internet Economy are fast, reliable and secure network access and cost-effective and future-proof applications."

Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin