My Police Life: 5. Sun Behind the Cloud

Yesterday was my last day in Oracle as the Global Lead for Justice & Public Safety. Tomorrow I will start writing a new chapter in my career, about my joining of Huawei (华为) as the Global Chief Public Safety Expert (全球首席公共安全专家). In this 5th article of my past career, I will be sharing with you my exciting 6 years in Oracle after it acquired Sun Microsystems. The above photo was taken during the Singapore IDA’s Smart Nation event on 29 October 2014

Converged Team, Converged Infrastructure

In my last article, “Sun Rises from the East”, I related to you the final sunset that started on 20 April 2009, when Sun’s CEO emailed the whole company: “Today's Sun/Oracle Announcement”. But in view of the various international regulatory hearings, Sun was only merged into Oracle about a year later. Singapore-based employees officially joined Oracle on 1 April 2010; it was definitely not a joke for many. 

INTERPOL General Assembly was held in Singapore in October 2009. Oracle and Sun Microsystems were still two separate companies. We creatively "partnered" each other in one booth.

Some of my former Sun colleagues across the globe received their termination packages and did not join Oracle. For those who crossed over to Oracle, most of them ended up in a new business unit: Systems Line of Business (LOB). It took awhile for many of them to adjust to Oracle’s more established and stricter processes, from running events to getting discounts, from giving quotations to managing partners, etc. Navigating the 130,000-staff company comprising various other LOBs, including Technology, Middleware, Applications, was also no mean feat. 

I did not join the Systems LOB and was posted to the then Industry Business Unit (IBU), a converged team of experts covering more than 20 industries, representing all the LOBs in Oracle. Specifically, I joined the Public Sector IBU led by an awesome and fatherly-figure boss, JR. Under JR, there were a few segments each led by a global lead: Social Services, Taxation, Defense, Transportation, Smart City, etc. And of course, Justice & Public Safety (JPS), led by PN, a retired British police officer. I was in PN’s global JPS team. PN retired from Oracle in October 2010, and JR selected me to take over as the Global JPS Lead. Over the last six years, I had between 5-7 experts in my Global JPS Team.

It was rumored that few suitors were going after Sun Microsystems. Although saddened by the end of a great innovative company, those of us who made it to Oracle were generally glad that it was Oracle that had acquired Sun, and that Oracle continues to invest in Java, Solaris and SPARC. While Oracle had already started working on its converged infrastructure, Exadata, with HP before acquiring Sun, it was after the acquisition that allowed Oracle the full momentum in developing the series of Engineered Systems.

Visiting Sun's Menlo Park Executive Briefing Center in January 2010. I was still technically a Sun employee. Exadata in the background.

Above and Beyond

After I crossed over to Oracle, the management of Singapore Police Force (SPF) approached me to ask whether I was keen to return to the SPF to be the Director Technology as the previous Director had resigned. I was very honored. Although I would not suffer any reduction in my compensation, I did not take up this noble offer because I felt I was contributing and enjoying my role in Oracle under the great leadership of JR.

In Sun, I was a lone ranger, leading Criminal Justice & Public Safety, mainly because it was a hardware company. In Oracle, we had about 9,000 products and I led a global team of 5-7 JPS experts. There was a retired head of intelligence from a federal police, a former CIO from a national public security agency, a former prosecutor turned CIO of a justice ministry, etc. In Sun, all our solutions were with partners. In Oracle, we had so many software and cloud services to choose from to design our solutions, such as Intelligence, Policing, Judiciary, Border Management, Prison and Disaster Management.

A rare occasion for the entire Global JPS Team to be together, England, March 2014. 

Despite the many Oracle products, we also worked with partners to ensure the completeness of our solutions; areas such as fingerprint identification, video analytics, voice analytics, and link visualization. And we had to convince and enable Systems Integrators to adopt our solutions when they bid for JPS customers’ tenders.

These solutions were not just “Marketecture”; we built demos, some of which even with real data, to show the values of such solutions to JPS customers. And our customers didn’t just include the IT people, but also the actual frontline officers, such as the police chief, head of intelligence, director criminal investigation, prosecutor, judge, etc. 

This was why my global team of JPS experts was in demand. It may be because JPS officials were usually very secretive and suspicious, and did not trust people easily. It may be because we had once carried guns and fought crime. But it was tough for a normal sales person or engineer to engage these customers early. These solutions allowed us to be in front of the JPS customers at the early part of the sales cycle even though we were neither the prime bidder nor the Systems Integrator. I am very proud that my team of JPS experts directly contributed to many wins for Oracle, and even prouder that we helped to fight crimes and terrorism through the use of ICT. 

SVP JR, our global public sector boss, was very visionary and supportive. He empowered us to execute our plans and he was very resourceful too. But at times I wondered whether he thought I was still a police officer; it was not uncommon for JR to call me, “Hong-Eng, I need you in Brazil next week.” JR retired some years back and he is now an advisor to a national government on green energy.

JR did many good things for me; two great ones that I will never forget. Firstly, I was the prestigious FY11 IBU Above and Beyond award recipient. This gave me the chance to attend Oracle Club, usually meant for quota-bearing salespeople. My wife and I had a fantastic time in Maui ;)

Oracle Club, Maui, September 2011.

Next, my proudest moment in Oracle: my promotion to the very unique IC6 level. I remember in 2010, Human Resource told me that IC6 was meant for experts who were globally recognized in their field of expertise; and that there was none based in Singapore and only one throughout APAC. Rather than promoting me to the more common M5, JR and management took one extra year to push through my promotion. I was the first Oracle employee in Singapore, and second in APAC, to get my IC6. Thanks JR!!

In 2014, I was very fortunate to be voted by the Security.World (then was SecurityHive) community as Top 12 influencers in the Physical Security and Video Surveillance industry. They interviewed me and the article can be found here.

“Police Spokesman”, Once Again

I was the spokesperson for Oracle on JPS matters. My cached profile can be found here. My real police spokesman experience in Singapore Police helped (2nd article, “Wow, I have a Gun!”). Globally, I was interviewed many times throughout my six years in Oracle. A regular interview topic was on the “Social-Enabled Policing” concept I introduced in 2013; I will describe this concept later in this article. As an example, this report by Computerworld New Zealand: “Social-enabled policing is the ‘next wave’”.  

I was regularly asked to comment on terrorism too, such as this Japanese report by the Diamond Group “現代人はグーグルのことを100％信じてしまう――オラクル法執行機関?公安担当グローバル?リード　ホン?エン?コー氏”, or specifically on Tokyo 2020, “マイナンバーが施行されると日本の犯罪は一時的に急増する？”. Or on smart city and safe city, such as this Chinese interview, “讓城市交通更有智慧！”.   

The most nerve-wracking experience was when Oracle Australia PR put me “live” on Sky News. Business news anchor, Nigel Freitas, interviewed me on terrorism, intelligence fusion, social media and big data. You can watch the interview here. It reminded me of my police years: like a duck, I appeared calm above water (in this case, table), but was actually paddling furiously underneath! 

"Live" interview by Nigel Freitas on Australia Sky News.

Besides media interviews, I also had the honor to be the keynote speaker in many international conferences, some of which Oracle was not even a sponsor. Examples include World Cities Summit, CIFI Security Summit, Strata-Hadoop World, INTERPOL Global Conference on Vehicle Crime, SRI Security Congress, GTACS (Governance, Technology Audit, Control and Security) Conference, etc. I hope I won’t bore you to sleep, but you can find two major presentations online:

• 2014 General Assembly of the Inter-American Center of Tax Administrations (CIAT), Rio de Janeiro: I keynoted on “Detecting Tax Fraud & Evasion Through Big Data”
• 2014 Annual Conference of the International Association of Emergency Managers, San Antonio, I keynoted on “Cloudy with a chance of Big Data: the New Normal in Emergency Management”

It Takes a Network to Fight a Network

The common themes behind the last two presentations were on Cloud, Social, Mobility, and Big Data. These are the driving forces behind digital disruption in this sharing economy; like Uber disrupting the taxi trade and Airbnb disrupting the hotel trade.

Unfortunately, the bad guys from terrorists to pedophiles are leveraging on such technologies and networking too, which are helping in their illicit collaboration, especially across borders, and gaining direct and faster access to their victims. 

A single law enforcement agency cannot fight alone. The good guys need to collaborate and even have partnerships with the community. It takes a network to fight a network. This was the idea behind the Social-Enabled Policing concept I developed in 2013. In essence it is about community policing started by Sir Robert Peel, but in the age of social networking.

A great example of a network fighting another network is in child protection. Unfortunately, technologies and social networking are the catalysts behind the surge in child exploitation cases globally. Many pedophiles do not act alone and have their networks globally, especially in trading child exploitation materials.

Fortunately, there are networks of very passionate police officers, academia, psychologists, NGO members, and industry representatives out there working very long hours to protect our children. But unfortunately, the networks of the good guys are way too few compared to the networks of the bad guys. More needs to be done; and I regularly reminded governments that we probably have more victims from pedophilia than from terrorism.

I am very humbled to know many of these good guys globally and will always try my best to support their fight against child exploitation. I was also honored to attend a couple of meetings of the INTERPOL Specialists Group on Crimes Against Children (ISGCAC), an international multidisciplinary group dedicated to preventing the abuse of children. 

ISGCAC Meeting, Bangkok, March 2013.

More Public Safety Beyond Revenue

In my last article, “Sun Rises from the East”, I mentioned how I got to know the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC). Among other things, ICMEC organized regular child protection trainings around the world. ICMEC’s Director for Law Enforcement Training & Technology, Guillermo Galarza, is a great guy who sacrificed a lot to travel around the world to conduct as many training sessions as possible. I am glad to have supported some of these sessions, sharing ideas on how technologies can be used to protect children, and even to detect pedophilia activities. 

ICMEC's Training for the Philippine National Police, September 2015. Guillermo Galarza is on the left.

The other organization that must be highlighted is Task Force Argos of the Queensland Police. In 2011, my society, POLCYB, presented them with the International Law Enforcement Cybercrime Award for their great work in Operation Achilles. The successful completion of this operation and its associated sub-operations resulted in the removal of more than 70 children from sexually abusive situations, the arrest of 22 network members globally, the closure of four commercial child exploitation websites, and the arrest of more than 100 offenders internationally who allegedly purchased child exploitation material.

Task Force Argos, led by Inspector Jon Rouse, is internationally recognized; and they have been organizing a very successful annual conference in child protection: Youth, Technology and Virtual Communities. I am privileged to have had the opportunity to support the past conferences. Join us if you are also passionate about child protection!

Beyond child protection, I am also very honored to have been appointed by the China Public Security University as a visiting researcher. Nearer to home, I sit on the Bio-ethics Committee of the Jurong Health Services, and I am also a member of the Ministry of Health National Organ Transplant Ethics Committee. I was also very excited to have a chance to contribute to Singapore’s efforts on safe city: I was an advisor to both the National Research Foundation and Ministry of Home Affairs Safety & Security Industry Programme on safe city.

Lecture at China Public Security University, Beijing, June 2014.

Safe City is Not CCTV

Since I am on the topic of safe city, it disturbs me whenever someone tries to imply that safe city is about CCTV. Firstly, CCTV, or closed circuit television, is a wrong term! Most surveillance cameras today are digital, using Internet protocol, and no longer using the analogue CCTV.

Secondly, safe city is about much more than just surveillance videos. Remember how I talked about prevention being better than cure in my last article, “Sun Rises from the East”? To make a city safe, we should broadly think about the four phases: prevention, detection, response, and recovery.

No two cities are alike and for each city, we need to study the threats, both natural and manmade, and their impacts. Then we need to identify ways to prevent them, such as through regulations and licensing. For example, forbidding vehicles carrying HAZMAT (hazardous materials) to drive through a populated housing estate. 

Then we need processes and technologies to allow the early detection of threats that cannot be prevented. I mentioned the Pacific Disaster Center (PDC) in my last article, “Sun Rises from the East”; they are the experts in recommending various sensors for different threats. Today, surveillance videos also come with advanced analytics to detect events as they unfold, such as behavioral analysis.

Once a threat happens, we are into the response phase. This is about the swift dispatching of relevant resources to save lives, to reduce property damages, and to mitigate the threat. Key components include Computer Aided Dispatch system and Communication system.

Very often, governments do not focus enough on the recovery phase; tasks such as victim identification and victim assistance. Evidence collection and investigation are crucial too to help prevent future occurrence and to make sure justice is served. 

As said earlier, my Global JPS Team designed various solutions using Big Data, Cloud, Social Relationship Management, Customer Experience, etc. to support the requirements of the four phases of a safe city. We regularly conducted enablement workshops on such solutions for our colleagues and partners globally.

Since joining Oracle in 2010, I also started the Global JPS Roundtable at the annual Oracle OpenWorld event in San Francisco. We had customers and partners who talked about latest JPS challenges, trends and requirements. It was a good way to sense the market and to improve our solutions and technologies accordingly. San Francisco, rather the entire Bay Area, is actually my number one favorite spot on earth!

Global JPS Roundtable, Oracle OpenWorld, September 2014.

Up in the Air

I have lost count of the number of times I have visited the Bay Area. Despite 50 countries and about 480 cities, I always feel very at ease on the Bay Area. Maybe it is the nice blue sky, the air, the shopping, the people, and definitely, the food!

After 15 years of international travel, I can definitely relate to the many stories of the 2009 movie, “Up in the Air”, by George Clooney; not the romance part though. Tricks such as going to business class check-in counter though I was holding an economy ticket by saying I wanted to pay to upgrade; and doing quick visual profiling of other passengers and deciding which immigration line to take.

It definitely pays to stick to a number of hotel chains to maintain one’s hotel loyalty level. It is very common to see colleagues staying in 2 different hotels for 2 consecutive nights in a same city! They were meeting their loyalty level by hitting the target on the number of stays as opposed to the number of nights.

After so many years of globetrotting, I wrote a note on HEKOH Travel Laws; they are actually all Murphy’s Law. Five of the many laws:

1. The distance between gates of connecting flights is inversely proportional to the time for connection
2. The lesser hand-carry baggage you have, the higher chances the checked-in luggage will get lost
3. Middle seats attract passengers bigger size than you on both sides
4. Turbulence/air pockets usually happen when you are not belted
5. Visitors with immigration/customs problem are in the same line and in front of you

Click here for the other laws.

With Pakistan Rangers, which were deployed in major cities during a heightened security period, June 2014.

Very often I was asked whether I encountered any paranormal activity during my travels. I actually have a story to share with you! Hold tight! Sun Microsystems hosted an event in Bali in October 2008. After a long meeting with NCS in Singapore on 16 October 2008, I took a late flight to Bali. By the time I reached the resort hotel it was almost 11pm.

While checking in, the staff told me the club wing was full and he had to assign me to a room at the normal wing. I was (and am) at the highest loyalty level of this hotel chain; and usually the hotel would put me at the club wing, enjoying more privacy and club lounge access. It was a BIG mistake: I demanded for a room at the club wing. Not long later, the check-in staff obliged but explained that they needed some time to prepare the room, and asked me to wait at the lobby.

As it was very late, I probably waited for around 30 minutes, before starting to walk towards the club wing. The check-in staff tried to stop me, saying the room was not ready. I just replied I could wait outside the room and continued walking there. At the room, the door was ajar and there was a housekeeping cart outside. I knocked and pushed open the door. Four male housekeepers were sitting on the floor playing cards! They were surprised to see me. They apologized and asked me to wait awhile outside while they finished up with the cleaning.

And so I had my room at the club wing. After a long day, I had a hot shower and was all ready to slee. I always sleep with all the lights turned off. Lying on the comfortable bed, I was very tired and I closed my eyes. But whenever my eyes were shut, I had a very uncomfortable feeling that there were movements in my surroundings!! When I reopened my eyes, and had by then gotten used to the darkness, I was sure there had been nothing. I shut my eyes and the sensation repeated. That was it! I decided to turn on a light and continued sleeping. I slept well and did not think anything about it.

It was a long day on 17 October 2008; I had to present my topic and networked with the many customers and partners there. At the end of the day, I returned to my room for a shower before the grand welcome dinner. After the shower, I noticed there was a missed call on my mobile phone. It was from a colleague in Singapore. I called her back and the first thing she said, “Wow! Why a lady answered the phone? And what language was she speaking?”

I F.R.O.Z.E.! All my hairs were standing! My colleague initially did not believe me and I told her I could send her the screen capture of the call history on my mobile phone to show her that when she called me earlier it was a missed call. I then told her my strange encounter the night before: she just screamed on the other end of the line.

Obviously I went to reception to change my room. No question was asked and neither did I want to find out more. I still have goose bumps whenever I relate this story. On hindsight, it had clearly been unused for a while and that was why four housekeepers had been sent to clean the room. So remember, never demand for a room after the hotel staff tells you there is no more room!

Just Someone Else's Data Center

Just like the dark secret behind the hotel room, I am sure many organizations have some matters that they do not want to be made known publicly. This is why one needs to be careful in choosing a cloud service provider! 

Remember, cloud computing does not mean your data and applications are in the sky. Cloud computing in essence is using someone else’s data center! There is still hardware somewhere behind the cloud, and likely, there is still Sun hardware behind the cloud.

There is more than enough information on the web now to help you convince your board about the values of adopting cloud services as opposed to having your own data center, and buying your own software and hardware.

At an international disaster management conference, I met many small companies offering cloud services for first responders and emergency services. The ideas are good. I fully support the use of cloud services for disaster management requirements. There will always be spikes on computing infrastructure during a disaster; cloud elasticity can support that. And a good cloud offering sits on infrastructure across different physical locations; reducing downtime in case one location is destroyed by the disaster.

But I am also very concerned. Some of these companies run such services from their small offices. Before you adopt a cloud service, do consider the performance, availability, scalability, and very importantly, security, of their offerings. Remember the failed server in Thailand during the Asian tsunami (4. Sun Rises from the East)? Make sure your cloud provider has no dark secret in their data center!

Silver Lining

This major movement towards cloud computing has also resulted in many companies changing their strategies and even organizations to stay competitive. Despite being a big company with about 130,000 employees, Oracle is able to make this change rather quickly and readily to offer as much cloud services to its clients as possible.

The change in Oracle also involved organizational changes, including two levels of my bosses. I had an interesting encounter with my big boss, LI. She was from a competitor before joining Oracle. After receiving "intel" of her joining us, I requested for a connection through LinkedIn. When we met for the first time in Oracle, LI said, "So you were the policeman who tried to connect on LinkedIn and I was unsure whether to accept it."

We were at a dinner in San Francisco and I knew she was staying at the South Bay Area. Nearing the end of dinner, I said to LI, "You had a few drinks, are you driving back home to xxx town?" She replied, "No wonder you are the police! You even know where I stay! No, I am not driving."

That interesting first meeting between LI and me did not end my career. In fact, LI was very supportive of what I was doing despite the organizational change. This is why when a foreign headhunter first called me about seven months ago because of my LinkedIn profile, I was not interested in the new role.

The headhunter was helping Huawei to seek a candidate for a new global position. After working for an American MNC for 15 years, I was initially unsure about moving to a Chinese MNC, especially with LI being very supportive of me in Oracle. The team in Huawei did not give up on me; they were very sincere and continued to pursue me for a few months, even accommodating many of my requests such as allowing me to be based in Singapore. The pull factors were getting stronger and in February 2016, I saw a silver lining in the cloud.

Indonesia Bandung Safe City project. To date, Huawei’s Safe City solutions have served more than 400 million people in 100 cities across 30 countries.

I tendered my resignation in Oracle on 3 March 2016. Thus ending a major chapter in my career life. Although LI was disappointed and saddened with my decision, she said to me, "...we certainly know how much your work in JPS did to have an impact globally to preserve the safety and peace for many who often feel alone or a victim of crime, violence, discrimination, and even the atrocities of governments. I am comforted that there are people like you that have a strong sense of purpose who are making an impact beyond themselves." Thanks LI!

Tomorrow I will be back to walking the beat in Huawei, doing what I am most passionate about: designing solutions and being at the frontline enabling public safety through ICT. And in probably a few months’ time, I will share my experience of this new chapter in my next article, “6: Back to Walking the Beat”.

One final reflection till we meet again...

Edited by my daughter, whom my wife and I are extremely proud off.