Artists in the Klang Valley now have an additional venue to exhibit their works in the large, high, all glass fronted Kerinchi Foyer in Extol MSC’s new office on the ground floor of Wisma UOA Pantai.

“We originally designed the  Kerinchi Foyer to display our own security hardware and software products and solutions but when we realised that there are many people with artistic talent but nowhere to display it, we decided to share space in the Kerinchi Foyer with the community,” said Dr. Gopi Kurup, Extol chief technology officer.

Artists can exhibit their works in it for free on condition that if they make any money from exhibiting here, they contribute a small percentage of their takings towards Extol’s community-based open source software development projects.

The Society of Children's Book Writers and Ilustrators will hold a month-long charity art exhibition at the Kertichi Foyer beginning 18 December, with Extol as the main sponsor. The artwork, which will be in the Professional, Amateur and Children categories will be on sale and the nett proceeds will be donated to selected children's homes.

The objectives of this art exhibition are -- to promote local artists and illustrators, to promote the use of art in children's books, to encourage quality production of children's books locally and to be an avenue fo charity to selected children's homes.

Relevant workshops to be held in conjunction with the event are:- Open source design tools for designers and artists, Malaysian chidren's book publishing outlook, Reading aloud and story telling, Overview of popular children's books and Copyright for writers and ilustrators.

Unlike graphic designers who usually just cut and paste existing photos, graphics, logos and icons into their work, illustrators conceptualise and create their own drawings and graphics to illustrate parts of a story or an idea.

Hidden talent

Extol also believes that there are many Malaysians with good programming talent out there but it’s hidden because they have no chance to develop it, so it plans to launch and support an ongoing grassroots based development programme using open source software called Musim Kod in the Malay language or Code Season in English, hopefully in January 2009.

“We could very well have people in the rural villages writing good computer programs and we’ll find mentors to provide guidance for those who need it,” said Gopi, who believes that even school-children in Standard Three can write programs, provided they can appreciate the sense of logic required for the task, which usually begins in children of that age.

Musim Code was inspired by the Google Summer of Code, an annual event, the first of which was held between May and August 2005, whereby Google awarded a stipend to hundreds of students who successfully completed  a software/open source coding project over the summer and Extol will do the same.

“The entry level for open source software is very low, since students can easily afford to buy a second hand PC for about RM500 and install open source software on it for free, which provides an opening for talent to flourish,” said Extol MSC chief executive officer Justin Tan.

As for what applications they would create, well it could be anything from a simple phone book, something more complex such as an MP3 ripper to something elaborate like the GIMP photo editing software or anything else for that matter as the sky's the limit.

Providing the recipe with the cake

The beauty of open source software is that the source codes of the executable programs are made available for programmers to study and analyse how it works so they can improve or modify it to better suit their requirements and recompile a new executable code.

On the other hand, only the executable code is provided with proprietary software, which even the most qualified and experienced programmers find almost impossible to decipher.

It’s much like how even the most competent and experienced cake maker finds it almost impossible to determine the recipe used to make a cake just by breaking it apart and tasting it, while an “open source cake” would come with its recipe, so others can modify it to make a better cake or one more suited to their taste.

In many ways, open source software lets programmers study, analyse and modify program code in a similar way that the Basic programming language did in the early days of microcomputers such as the Apple II, Commodore PET, Atari and the IBM PC.

Basic users can easily list the program script, which though a little arcane, is easily understandable to someone reasonably familiar with it and it's otherwise not hard to learn, so one can easily test how their code works on the fly simply by running the script without compiling it to binary code of ones and zeros.

A Basic interpreter converts each line of code into a form executable by the computer on the fly, much like human interpreters do between two heads of state speaking to each other in their respective tongues.

However, programs which run through an interpreter are slow compared to executable binary code converted all at once from the lines of script by a compiler into a series of ones and zeroes native to computers.

It’s much like how a person conversant in two or more languages translates a whole book from one language into another, which makes it quicker for a native speaker of that language to read.

While computers can easily and quickly process binary code, people have difficulty understanding it but that’s not a problem if the source code is provided too, which proprietary application vendors don’t do to protect their intellectual property rights and for other commercial reasons.

Also, the prevalence of the graphical user interface, plug and play hardware, wizards which automatically install device drivers and software applications, as well as those which automatically create underlying code have distanced users further from the core workings and control of software and operating systems, making them more dependent on software vendors.

However, open source software lets users regain the knowledge, skills and understanding to let them get closer to the heart of their computers’ inner workings and lets them create their own applications.

For starters, Extol will identify suitable mentors and their areas of expertise and then promote Musim Kod widely.

“We’ll most probably begin with promotions of Musim Kod to university computer societies and neighbourhood groups and after about three to four years, word will spread around,” said Tan,

Extol proposes giving each child developer an RM500 grant and an equivalent amount to each mentor and four to five mentored projects would require between RM25,000 and RM30,000, which contributions from exhibitors in the Kerinchi Foyer will finance.

Extol goes open source

Malaysia Airlines pilot, Xavier Tan, Justin’s father, founded Extol Corporation in 1984 as a hobby, while he continued flying until he retired as captain of a Boeing 747 airliner.

In the mid-1990s, Extol made Malaysia proud as its Armour PC-based anti-virus software was selected for use the United States Department of Defense and Department of Energy. Extol also transferred the technology behind Armour to Norman anti-virus.

However, when it was time to refresh its security systems two years later, the Department of Defense decided to use only American products but Extol diversified beyond desktop PCs to provide security solutions to the financial services industry where security was most critical.

“We initially provided our solutions to banks which were computerising their paper-based operations and later implemented Internet banking,” said the younger Tan. “Our solutions are used to protected front-end user equipment such as automated teller machines and desktop client PCs running a popular proprietary operating system (OS), while the back-end servers run Unix,” he added.

However, Extol uses Linux and Unix platforms internally to development security solutions for the proprietary OS platforms used by most of its end-users.

Within the last six months it found that with it developing 20 to 30 products, it could not compete with open source software, where 100s of developers around the world worked on just one product.

There are many open source applications available out there and we could take the code of the most suitable product and adapt it to our purposes and are already porting our existing software to open source and for new products, we can take the code and contribute to its further development,” said Gopi.

There are hundreds of open source applications out there for each domain and with so many developers, its innovation cycle is very fast.

However, having so many developers working on projects in an informal, ad-hoc manners also has its drawbacks and most products of such efforts are not up to the mark, while a small minority are very good.

“About 80% of open source products may not be usable, about 19% are salvageable, while real breakthroughs will emerge from the remaining 1% said Justin Tan.

Cool, while being dead serious

Adjoining the Kerinchi Foyer and opening into it is a conference room which artists and other users of the foyer can also use.

It has a large conference table with a thick frosted glass top and frosted glass on all its surrounding walls and in line with Extol’s modern and progressive work environment being conducive to creativity, whiteboard marker pens of several colours are provided, for users to write or draw on the walls and on the top of the conference table.

“We want to allow users to readily illustrate to others, their concepts and ideas which pop into their head at the time,” said Gopi.

However, this conference room can instantly be transformed into a very important part of Extol’s operations.

Tan flicked a switch and one of the opaque panels on the wall which people can write on immediately turned clear, revealing the inside of the adjoining Kerinchi Security Operations Centre and staff inside who remotely monitor the security status of its customers’ information systems on large LCD panels on the wall of their room.

“If any of our customers’ information systems are under attack, thi conference room becomes the war room where their staff can monitor the status of our defense and consult on remedial work from this conference room,” said Tan.

During such emergencies, a large, thick sliding door would be drawn shut, closing it off from the foyer.

“The ceiling, floor, walls and sliding door contain several layers of metal screens which blocks the passage of radio signals to prevent electronic eavesdropping from outside,” said Tan.

Our mobile phone displayed no signal when the sliding door was shut, proving Tan’s claim.

Entry into Extol’s office is monitored and protected by its own security solutions. Leading in from the public Kerinchi Foyer is a man trap, with doors leading into the Kerinchi Operations Centre, as well as its main office area and its security system detected three persons but only two of whom, namely Gopi and Tan with security tags so it would not open the door.

Extol’s own StealthTouch security solution based on its in-house developed technology employs a camera to identify authorised persons using face-verification and a touchscreen for interaction. Parts of the office are colour coded with different colours, each with similar access control.
 
Once in, we found Extol MSC’s sprawling workplace to be a floating office with large work tables, PCs, LAN connections and LCD displays for any colleague to use as required, while they are provided with lockers to store their documents and other materials.

“We want to break the old idea of each person having their own allocated work space and promote the idea that it’s most important to get our work done and IT professionals want to be comfortable and will be more creative without having to dress up in formal office attire, wear a tie and abide by office protocol and strictures,” said Tan.

Both Tan, Gopi and all their colleagues were casually dressed in jeans, which was a huge change from the full suit and tie both wore while receiving letters of recognition for achieving global standards certification under the MSC Malaysia Capability Development Programme (CDP) from the Deputy Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Haji Fadillah bin Haji Yusof and Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) chief executive officer, Dato’ Badlisham Ghazali two days earlier.

Extol MSC was honoured that day for achieving CDP Software Testing and ISO 9001:2000 CDP Quality Management System. Extol also has ISO/IEC 27001:2005 Information Security Management System certification.

As a visitor to its office, I had to fill in my personal and company particulars in a form provided for documentation purposes as required by the standards.

Meanwhile, Extol’s accounts department was engaged in a meeting seated on bean bags in a corner by the huge class frontage with computers on low tables, while the position of pieces on a chessboard suggested a game was in progress.

“Two colleagues are currently playing against each other and each makes their move as they walk by,” said Gopi.
 
Starkly apparent were the air conditioning ducts, vents and electrical conduits attached to the grey cement floor above, which gave the whole place a rather raw and naked feel.

“It had a nice ceiling when we took over our office but we took it out to provide a sense of having more space, a grungy feel and an impression of unfinished business,” said Gopi.

The office also has facilities for colleagues to sleep overnight.

Extol chose the location of its new office well, having previously been based in Subang Jaya.

“We want to be closer to our customers, yet not in the heart of Kuala Lumpur where we would be stuck in the traffic jam every day, so we chose this location, which is close enough to the city, yet easily accessible by road and the LRT station which is a short walk away and which also has a frontage facing the Federal Highway,” said Tan.

Extol’s large signboard is hard to miss as you drive along the Federal Highway – a key artery running seamlessly through each municipality in the Klang Valley from the capital Kuala Lumpur to Port Klang on the coast.

Both Tan and Gopi met while studying Electronics engineering at University College London and Justin took over as Extol’s head after Xavier retired.