IBM Corp on Friday said it is giving the Chinese government access to some software code, seeking to demonstrate the security of its products as the company tries to expand its business in the country.
Beijing will not receive client data or “back doors” into the technology, IBM said in a statement.
Technology providers including Microsoft Corp have reached similar agreements in China, IBM said.
Microsoft established a program with China in 2003, giving the government access to some Windows source code.
“Strict procedures are in place within these technology demonstration centers to ensure that no software source code is released, copied or altered in any way,” IBM said.
“Those are applied rigorously regardless of country,” it said.
Concerned about cybersecurity, China this year enacted security measures requiring foreign technology companies to show software code to the government.
The purpose of the law is to prevent other parties from illegally accessing China’s systems and data through computer programs like viruses, Constellation Research principal analyst Ray Wang (王瑞光) said.
“As everybody knows, there’s a tacit understanding that if you want to do business in China, you need to show them how this stuff works,” he said. For IBM, “the significance here is the first-mover advantage.”
By fulfilling the government’s requirements, IBM is also to have access to foreign companies operating in China that might be more inclined to store their data on the company’s servers, rather than those owned by Chinese businesses, Gartner Inc head of research Daryl Plummer said.
“In order to grow globally, you have to do business in China, you have to be representative there,” Plummer said.
Giving the government access to the code “seems to be a reasonable risk to take,” he said.
IBM also reduces the risk that its intellectual property could be copied by granting the government access in a controlled environment on the company’s machinery, Wang said.
IBM is probably revealing code for basic features, he said, rather than disclosing proprietary algorithms.
“It’s more about the Chinese government being comfortable that source code won’t kill their government, though there’s definitely a little bit of: ‘Can we reverse engineer this?’” Wang said in a telephone interview.
“For IBM to do this is a little ballsy,” he said.
Companies such as IBM that have closed-source, or proprietary, software typically maintain tight control of its underlying source code.
This is the first time IBM has given the Chinese government access to its software code, having previously shown some proprietary information on its chip technology, Wang said.
IBM and other companies have had their intellectual property imitated before, he said, adding that software is more difficult to reproduce than hardware.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained