THE inaugural SME Solutions Expo 2009 at the Mid Valley Exhibition Centre from 9 to 11 July was a both a showcase of information technology (IT) solutions for small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) and at the same time a showcase IT and non-IT related products and services by SMEs and for SMEs. It was held in conjunction with the fourth Entrepreneurship Expo 2009 which offered a wide range of ideas, opportunities, products and services for entrepreneurs, and the MIRC e-SME Week 2009.

Amongst the over 100 exhibitors of high-technology products, Asia Biofueltech based in the SIRIM Incubator in Shah Alam, showcased its biodiesel reactors used to produce biodiesel from raw oil from the jatropha plant which are one time was regarded as a weed. The choice of oil from the jatropha plant as raw the raw material is favoured by environmentalists because it's non-edible and is believed to not  impact upon the food chain.

Based on British and American technologies, the crude jatropha oil is mixed with chemicals, then moved to a settling tank where methyl ester (the biodiesel) floats to the top, whilst glycerine sinks to the bottom and is removed.

Glycerine, also known as glycerol is an organic chemical compound which has many uses as a raw material in the medical, pharmaceutical, plastics, food explosives and munitions industry. For example, nitroglycerin or glycerol-trinitrate is an explosive which forms the basis of smokeless gunpowder, dynamite, gelignite and cordite. Nitroglycerine is also used as a medicine to relieve heart conditions such as angina.

The crude methyl ester (biodiesel) is then heated to remove the methanol (methyl alcohol), after which it's passed through Eco2Pur dry wash system which uses the Magnesol branded artificial magnesium silicate to remove impurities such as soaps, catalyst traces, residual methanol, moisture and other production residues from the biodiesel to assist them to attain EN14214 & ASTM-D6751 quality standards.

Magnesol is the trademark of the Dallas Group of America, Inc., whilst Eco2Pur is a brand name of Biodiesel Experts International LLC.

“The biodiesel can now be used in any diesel engine without modification and we've tested it in a four-wheel drive,” said K. Prabakaran Nair, Asia Biofueltech general manager. “SIRIM has purchased a unit, we've sold two systems in Malaysia, two to the United Kingdom and have received an order from a scientific research organisation in Apia, the capital of the Independent State of Samoa (formerly Western Samoa).”

Any vegetable-based oil can be used as the raw material for biodiesel and it will perform the same. Several airlines, including Virgin, Continental and Air New Zealand have conducted test flights of their aircraft using a blend of biodiesel and aviation kerosene. On 30th December last year, Air New Zealand successfully used a 50:50 blend of jatropha biodiesel and standard Jet A-1 kerosene in one engine of its four-engined Boeing 747-400 airliner in a two hour flight from Auckland International Airport back to the same airport. The United States Air Force has also conducted tests of biodiesel in its planes.

Aviation Magazine reported a better aircraft engine performance with a biodiesel blend and whilst the engines emit carbon dioxide, it's believed to be more environmentally friendly since carbon dioxide is recycled by plants during the natural process of photosynthesis, where it's converted into organic compounds, mostly sugars by the leaves of plants in the presence of sunlight. The Kyoto Protocol requires 5.75% biodiesel use in Europe by 2010.

Asia Biofueltech (www.asiabiofueltech.com) typically charges around RM200,000 for a 50 litre biodiesel system, including the Eco2Pur dry wash system. However, the capacity and price of its systems are based on customer requirement.

Car navigation

Malaysian mapping company Navi & Map showcased a prototype of its Carnavi GPS car navigation system integrated with a Sanyo DVD/CD player cum AM/FM radio, an LCD display, a 30GB hard disk drive and a flash memory port. The LCD display in front of the player displays the maps and a three-dimensional (3D) display of the road scene and it slides down for access to the player. It uses Navi & Map's GPS maps, which at the time covered the Klang Valley as well as major roads and highways in other states.

“We expect to  launch Carnavi early next year at a price or RM4,900,” said Ahmad Farhan Aziz, Navi & Map (www.naviandmap.com) project coordinator. “It will fit all cars with a suitable dashboard, such as the Perodua Myvi, the new Proton Iswara, Toyota Wish, the Suzuki Swift and others,” Farhan added.

Natural aircond cleaner

Forget having to call the air conditioning serviceman, as local distributor Yangzheng Marketing showcased the Crystal Aircon Coil Washing fluid made from natural vegetable extracts, such as castor seen, natural pine, rice bran and citrus peel extracts.

Users simply spray the fluid into the cooling coils of their room or car air conditioner and let it run for three hours and the fluid will remove and bacteria and fungus from the coil and drain away with the condensation water.

A 500ml bottle of Crystal Aircon Coil Washing fluid costs RM71.90 in West Malaysia and RM81.90 in Sabah & Sarawak.

Shrad targets local institutes of higher learning

Malaysian company Shrad Computing received overwhelming interest from overseas in its ShradByte integrated web-based mobile content development and transcoding portal at www.shradbyte.com, which was launched at the recent CommunicAsia 2009 exhibition in Singapore and it's now trying to interest institutes of higher learning (IHL) back home.

“We received over 100 enquiries from Indonesia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Vietnam, China, India , the U.S. And Singapore at CommunicAsia and now want to interest Malaysian IHLs,” said Rajesh Kumar Mahalingam, its chief executive officer.

Due to this, Cyberview Sdn Bhd, the landowner of Cyberjaya, picked Shrad Computing to promote its product under its stand at the SME Solutions Expo and also plans to promote ShradByte at an ICT exhibition in Phuket, Thailand in October.

“The development of content and applications for mobile phones is different from that for PCs in terms of the graphics, the simulation and adaptation of applications and content to fit the different phone screen sizes, resolutions, operating systems and environments.

“However, students at Malaysian IHLs generally don't understand this, perhaps because it's not highlighted at tertiary level, whilst their counterparts in Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore generally do.

“Malaysian university lessons are very theoretical but ShradByte.com can help provide students with practical experience in mobile content development and make them more valuable assets to the ICT industry,” Rajesh added.

Backed by a grant from the Multimedia Development Corporation, Shrad Computing develop an integrated on-line portal to educate any developer in the methodologies of mobile content and applications development and in their commercialisation.

The ShradByte engine accessible on the portal through a PC Web browser lets content creators anywhere transcodes their music, pictures and videos on-line and to simulate how they will look and sound on any make and model of Symbian, Windows Mobile, iPhone and Palm OS phones for which they intend them for and they can also host it on ShradByte's mobile gateway.

SME Pack

Asia Media, the operator of Malaysia's largest Transit-TV network launched SME Pack, its spot TV advertising package, priced at a hugely discounted price of RM5,000 for the first 50 SMEs at the exhibition. This package normally costs RM15,000.

Its Transit-TV is shown on LCD screens installed on 1,500 city buses and inter-city coaches in Peninsular Malaysia to provide entertainment to passengers and advertising opportunities.

Transit-TV comprises three divisions – namely TransNet KL on the 1,050 RapidKL buses in the Klang Valley, TransNet JB on the 250 Handal Indah buses in Johor Baru and TransNet EX on the 200 Plusliner inter-city coaches and it shows programmes from Media Prima, TV3, NTV7, 8TV and TV9 and SME Pack offers SME advertisers a 15 second spot advertisement on Transit-TV every hour, or a total of 504 spots over a period of four weeks based on 18 spots per day.

Ridership in Klang Valley alone is 12 million rides per month based on the 400,000 tickets sold each day or 1.24 million unique riders which is 20% of the Klan Valley population, whilst Johor Baru's 500,000 unique riders make 4 million trips each month and Plusliner's 300,000 riders make 300,000 trips per month. Altogether, the 2.04 million unique riders on all three systems make a total of 16.3 trips per month and they are a captive audience for the advertisers. Asia Media (www.asiamedia.net.my) has other packages as well.

Server promo

Serverware showcased a range of servers for SME customers which are tailored to their needs.

It's running a special promotion of the ServerWare SG-T20 7002 1U rack-mount server based on an Intel micro-architecture code-named Nehalem between 15 June and 30 September, 2009, whereby it offers a trade in discount of RM1,880 off its RM4,998 price, plus three months server co-location with one of Server Ware's partners.

The SG-T20 7002 supports up to 2 x Intel Quad Xeon 5504 2.0GHz processors, 1 x 2GB of ECC DDR3 memory, 1 x 160GB SATA2 hard disk, 2 x Intel 10/100/1000 Mb/s Ethernet ports, iKVM remote management, 4 X SAS/SATA2 Hotswap modules and sliding rails.

Some key features of the Nehalem architecture are the Intel QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) which replaces the legacy front-side bus, simultaneous multi-threading or what Intel calls hyper-threading which enables two threads per core, native support for quad or octa (eight) core processors and others.
 
The first processor with the Nehalem architecture was the Core i7, released in Tokyo on 15 November, 2008, whilst the first computer with Nehalem-based Xeon processors was the Apple Mac Pro Workstation launched on 3 March,2009.

“The top 20 hosting companies have partnered with us,” said David Seah, Serverware senior account manager.

One of Server Ware's business partners is the regional mobile messaging solutions provider Trio Mobile which provides bulk SMS and premium SMS solutions, including interactive SMS used in contests, voting and so on. It's Mobile Connectivity Platform enables mobile reverse billing.

Trio Mobile provides the customer with the application, creates an account for the customer, hosts the applications for them and has premium and bulk SMS link-ups with Celcom, Maxis and DiGi, whilst the customer conducts their own campaign.

Its sister company Net Onboard provides web solutions using Server Ware servers.

Get your own on-line store

We ran into Neowave, which develops its WebShaper range of on-line e-commerce solutions for businesses ranging from one-man companies to large companies such as AirAsia for business-to-consumer sales of physical products.

“Our entry-level offering is miniStore which lets anyone start their own on-line store for RM1 per day and it lets them list up to 100 different products 24 x 7 and they can also have their own branded domain name,” said Adrian Oh, Neowave business development director.

The merchant also needs a payment gateway and miniStore currently only supports PayPal and Neowave recommends such businesses get a PayPal business account.

At checkout, miniStore automatically calculates the shipping costs based on the courier used and all the help they would need is provided on the WebShaper website at www.webshaper.com.my.

For small businesses, sohoStore which costs RM999 per annum works in a similar way. It lets business list up to 500 products and in addition to PayPal, also supports iPay88 and WorldPay payment gateways.

Its top-of-line bizStore lets businesses list up to 10,000 products and supports most payment gateways. It costs RM199 per month or RM2,388 per annum.

All three solutions are search engine optimised.

An instant office for as low as RM300 per month

To help small businesses cut costs, CRE8 Business Centre offers furnished office space for rent in Suite 1208, Amcorp Tower in Petaling Jaya for as low as RM300 per month.

The cost of fixed line registration and deposit, Internet access and registration, staffing and manpower costs, utility bills, staffing staff costs, security and alarm systems with card-access and closed circuit TV, stock and stationary expenses and other operational costs are included in the price.

“Tenants get a private cubicle with a table, door and a phone line exclusively, centralised WiFi, free coffee, tea and water,”: said Kahan Singh Gill, its business development director.

They also get to use shared facilities such as networked printers, fax, secretarial services, lamination, binding on a pay-per-use basis, as well as the six or eight-seater boardroom which can be booked at RM8 or RM10 per half-hour respectively, whilst they can book the lounge for RM10 per half hour.

The minimum start-up cost is RM900, including three months rental plus deposit and the minimum lease period is three months. Company registration services are also available.

For further details call 603-7948 5353 or visit its website at www.cre8.com.my.

Investment opportunities

Sovereign Wealth Management is a Malaysian-owned independent wealth management company offering a diverse range of financial products, including private placements, real estate, gold and other unique commodities investment instruments.
    
As a broker and dealer, Sovereign Wealth works with various principals from local and foreign financial services companies to provide its clients with investment opportunities.

SME Solutions Expo 2010 will be held at the same venue from 5 to 7 August, 2010.