The CEO of DesktopIP Phidi Soepangkat is optimistic that Indonesia can develop its own digital products since the country has qualified human resources and potential market to achieve sovereignty.
Heaptalk, Jakarta — The rapid development of digital technology indirectly triggers dependence on certain digital products, and Indonesia is no exception. Hitherto, Indonesia is still dependent on digital products from other countries as the digital fundamental, namely the cloud computing, that is still dominated by the United States (VMware, Microsoft, Citrix), and China (Alibaba).
According to CEO of DesktopIP Phidi Soepangkat, the country has qualified human resources that are capable to make amazing digital products. In addition, the size of the population and the breadth of the territory are a potential market for digital products. However, the archipelago has only been a target market for other countries that already produced digital technology.
“The decision is in our hand, to have it or to build it. A product can be owned by buying it, but are we sovereign? Not necessarily. I think it is more important to build it rather than buy it. If you build the product, you can control everything, including the R&D and costs,” said Phidi during the 10th XCION Conference in Bali (03/03).
By building its own product, particularly cloud computing, this country can achieve digital sovereignty which certainly will have a big impact not only on the government but also enterprises and individuals.
“People are talking about digital sovereignty. The next thing and now people are also starting to talk about is digital self-reliance. We must be sovereign, at the same time we must also rely on ourselves,” voiced Phidi.
In more detail, Phidi explained that the essence of sovereignty lies in control. Having a product does make the owner control it, but there is dependence on other parties, primarily if there is any failure since the one who masters the components in the product is the maker, not the owner.
Govt support is needed to help the digital product makers
On the contrary, building the product ourselves makes us full control over it. Assembling products from scratch allows the maker to master each of its constituent components and later seek repairs when damage occurs. Phidi voiced, “Once it is built, we can control everything, the price, the technology, the people, and everything. If the thing is broken, we fix it, that means control. For example, when there is an embargo, some kind of technology is not allowed to enter Indonesia or whatever the reason such as war, if we build our own product, that means sovereignty.”
However, the effort to achieve digital sovereignty faces its own challenges, one of which is the dominance of western digital products. This makes people spoiled with all the conveniences, making them less motivated to build their own products. For this reason, a high fighting spirit is needed in striving to realize digital sovereignty.
Phidi is optimistic that Indonesia’s human resources have intelligence and skills that are on par with digital technology-producing countries, for instance, the United States and China. These conditions require support from the government, in the form of policies and market absorption. He said, “Owning the technology, it will be useless if you only have products that cannot be marketed. It is not going to do any good even for the government, or enterprises.”
In the efforts to achieve digital sovereignty, DesktopIP is collaborating with the National Cyber and Encryption Agency (BSSN) to build a cloud system to prepare cybersecurity infrastructure in Indonesia which was marked by the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in October 2022.
“DesktopIP with the National Cyber and Encryption Agency collaborates to build a product. Later we will release it to the market, hopefully, it can be emulated,” concluded Phidi.
