Ricky’s Online Business Blog

I recently wrote a paper on whether globalization is good for Malaysia or not, as an assignment for the subject International Business Management & Policy in my MBA study.

To complete the 4000-word essay (I managed to write 2800 words only), I thought of 10 points and expanded from there. I published in Facebook before and have drawn many comments.  Here are the 10 points for sharing to all.

Welcome to comment and criticize. I’d like to discuss and learn from your viewpoints. Contact me if you would like to have the full paper.

Introduction

The question “Is globalization good or bad for Malaysia?” is not relevant any more. Globalization will happen and is happening to all countries including Malaysia, no matter it’s good or bad.

Quoting an unusual example – The late Qing dynasty in China in late 19th century and early 20th century. They locked the country out from the rest of the world. Unlike the Meiji Restoration that propelled their neighbour Japan into a world power in just a few decades, the Qing dynasty eventually fell in 1911.  Refuse to follow the world trend? It’s either downfall or extinction.

The 10 Points

#1 Malaysian businesses need the global market. The local market is just too small. It’s a matter of survival in the globalized 21st century. Don’t be content with just being a jaguh kampung (champion in home country).

#2 Malaysia needs to specialize. Want to get out of the middle income trap? Do something new, something different. Don’t insist on attracting FDI in labor-intensive businesses. Move up the value chain.

#3 We have been trying to “prepare” for globalization for too long time, even decades. It’s true some of us, some industries, some businesses are not ready. But when will we be ready? Perhaps when we are truly ready, we are irrelevant in the world economy any more.

#4 Globalization raises our competitiveness. Being a frog in a well (Malay proverb: katak dalam tempurung) does not improve our competitiveness. In business, it’s only when we face the real challenges that we grow. Just open up and the competition will hasten up our readiness.

#5 Globalization raises our human capital. Yes, brain drain is a real problem. But don’t dwell on it too long. How about using these “drained brain” in overseas for our advantage instead? How about getting foreign talents into our country instead? Who say Malaysia can’t attract talents? Learn from Mind Valley, the Google workplace of Malaysia.

#6 When we close ourselves out, people will not admire us. When we become an open book and have transparency, investors will come. A 81% drop in FDI is a wake-up call, much too late. Learn the lesson and open up.

#7 Communities in Malaysia have been sharing the same country, yet living segregated. But our diversity should be a great blessing to foray into the largest markets in world. Globalized Malaysian businesses with true partnership among different races and spirit of 1Malaysia can help national unity.

#8 We are living in an integrating, interdependent world economy. We need to keep up this reality. Want to close our market? Check the fate of Qing dynasty.

#9 We are good in many areas. We have leadership in many markets, such as Islamic finance and palm oil. Why can’t we excel in other areas as well? Malaysia Boleh (Malaysia can)? Don’t be defeatist. Think boleh and we boleh!

#10 I never advocate opening up 100% completely without reservation. There are limits. But we need to embrace globalization and even be an advocate in it. Globalization will change us, for the better.

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This article is targeted towards customers who are still hosting web site and email accounts with one hosting provider through me. I don’t want to mention that provider’s name

Are you facing any regular email problem? For example, you can’t connect to server from Outlook, or you can’t login in webmail. Sound familiar?

I acknowledge all the problems. This problem with the service provider occurs from time to time for years already. At the time of writing this, their server was down and just recovered one hour ago, after 3 hours of downtime.

Yes I’m sorry because I had been using this provider. But they were once very good before. However, unfortunately their services and server quality have deteriorated in recent years. After so many complaints, I no longer harbor any hope that they would improve.

Yes, I’m very frustrated about it as you are. Every time their server has such problem, many customers would ring me up, but sometimes I can’t contact them at all. Their technical support line is just too busy!

So, since 2008 I have started to use a few new servers located in a different data centre. These new servers have proven to be much more reliable and better for these two years. I’ve been asking, requesting, urging and even begging customers to migrate over to any one of the new servers.

Thanks goodness most customers took my suggestion and migrated. But there are still a small group of customers who have not migrated. If I asked you to read this article, most probably you are one of them!

So can I help fix all the problems for you by migrating your domain name to the new server? The migration is free. You still pay the same hosting price every year. I have done this migration smoothly for a lot of customers. I’m confident I can do this well for you too.

The only drawback of migration is that, individual emails in webmail cannot be migrated. If your users have been using webmail exclusively, they need to download their emails to their computer using any email software such as Microsoft Outlook.

However, I have customers who have hundreds of users but their hosting was migrated smoothly without problem. Everyone was happy. The much better reliability, services and features on the new server far outweight the inconvenience of having to download emails during the migration period of one or two days.

Here’s a brief guide how to go about it:

1. Let me know you want to migrate. I will send you technical details to set up your email software (Outlook etc) for steps below.
2. You need to set up your email software to download emails from the old server. If you have been using such software to send and receive emails, then you just need to change a few settings.
3. On my side, I will copy over your web site from old server to new server. I will also recreate your email accounts on new server (but I can’t copy over emails to new server).
4. I will send you the “server configuration” of the new server, which you can use to set up your email software to access the new server. The new settings will not work until domain name is migrated below.
5. I will migrate your domain name to the new server at a mutually agreed cut-off date and time. Normally it’s best to do it at night or weekends. The domain name will be down for a few hours. But you still can send and receive emails through the old server. (Technically speaking, it’s just a few mouse clicks on my side to change name servers, but the process called DNS propagation can take a few hours)
6. After migration above, your web site will be up and running on the new server. Your email software will also be able to connect to the new server. You can also use the new webmail to access your emails.
7. You may keep the old server settings in email software for a week or so, just in case there are incoming emails which “accidentally” go to the old server. After that, you may delete the old server settings when you see fit.

If you are interested to read more about the benefits of new server, please check out:

• Free Migration To cPanel Hosting
• FAQ on cPanel Hosting
• Email Hosting Migration – Zero Downtime!
• Do-It-Yoursef (DIY) Server Migration

Please contact me today to migrate over to new server!

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Here are some little pieces of sharing on BizPartner page on Facebook.

• What is a parked domain name? You can “park” a domain name Parked.com to a main domain name Main.com, so that people visiting Parked.com will see Main.com instead. You can park as many domain names as you want.
• http://bizpartner.com.my/ is our major web site. But you can access it at http://bizpartner.my/ also. Why? Because bizpartner.my is a parked domain name of bizpartner.com.my. Would you like such other domain names to point to your web site too?
• Hi Malaysian companies, would you like to register .com.sg Singaporean domain names to protect your brand name? You can register at http://bizpartner.com.my/domain today!
• A domain name is a readable name such as “bizpartner.com.my”. Its actual address on Internet is a string of numbers called IP address such as “110.4.45.95″. We use domain name in place of the IP address to make it easier to identify a web site on Internet.
• We can pinpoint the location of anywhere on the planet by using coordinates. Similarly, we can pinpoint any computer or server connected to the Internet by means of its IP address. It is a string of numbers such as 110.4.45.95.

You can get the above tips in your Facebook by joining as fan on BizPartner page on Facebook.

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