Whenever we meet we always end up talking about books. Is the printed book still your first love?

My first books business goes back to 1981 when I started a little bookshop in a red light area called Patpong in Bangkok. We opened until midnight to catch the punters. Books are still a favourite, but not more than electronic information which becomes more and more challenging as the technologies develop and change. I have to be at least par with the industry and sure of the directions we take.

  As information has changed from print to electronic, you've been told by 'people who know' that the iGroup will be 'disintermediated'. Yet the iGroup has survived and gone on to prosper. Why is the iGroup still here?

It's very simple. The first rule to being an intermediary is don't be greedy. Be fair to both customers and publishers and you will always be safe and always grow. That's my belief.

  How about skills and relationships?

Skills and what we call the iGroup culture is a valuable asset. Our team work is very much like a big family. I take care of everyone and in return, my managers have stayed with us many years, some of them 18 years. At the same time, I take care of customers and publishers personally as do my managers.

  From a presence in three countries in the early 1990s, the iGroup has offices in almost all the countries in the region, from India to China. What has been the impetus for that?

The growth and investment in education in Asia has been and continues to be an important motivator. Every government is spending on education and some of that, big or small, ends up with libraries. And an equally important reason for opening offices in so many countries is to give a full range of services to our customers and to take care of our publishers' interests. So we staff our offices with local people rather than expatriates because they know better how to take care of their customers.

  You haven't opened an office in Japan. Is there a reason for that?

Very good question. I've been trying very hard. Japan is a tough market for everyone but I think we'll have a presence very soon, certainly before the end of this year. I've been saying that forever, but this time it's going to be true!  

  Do you think the rapid economic growth that we see in Asia is related to the amount of money governments spend on information?

I agree with that. Take South Korea as an example. The country invested a lot of money in information which clearly contributed to the rapid expansion of their industries. 

  So which economy is going to be the next South Korea? India? China?

China and India are similar in some respects and different in others. Both are using research to expand their economies. China has some very sophisticated high tech industries like aerospace in which they've invested huge sums. In the life sciences they have better labs than anyone in the region. India also has world class research institutes, multinational companies, the advantage of a good education system, an abundance of talented, well qualified manpower and very importantly, the English language. China still doesn't have the language skills so India will continue to excel in the IT and service industries. The Indian government understands that if it is to innovate, it must provide enhanced information services in its libraries to support high end research. And this is happening in a big way. The same is true for China. Both grasp the importance of information but they're setting about providing it and modernizing their delivery systems in different ways. These differences reflect their different cultures. I feel good that we're serving both countries.

  Are they comparable in what their university libraries can offer in terms of databases and e-collections?

In China, when the universities and colleges access websites outside the country, there is an expense that they have to bear for every access or every download. I think this is smart because in our part of the world, universities have to pay large sums to provide students and faculty with internet access. And throughout the region, internet speeds are slow because students and teachers download liberally. I think this is one reason why the Chinese education system discouraged downloading and accessing foreign sites. Instead, China built one of the best infrastructures in the region, run by CERNET, to connect their academic and research libraries. Nonetheless, slow speeds and access fees, discouraged many publishers from selling there. But the libraries were saying, "We don't want to pay for the downloading, so we don't want to buy unless you provide a solution." There are only two solutions: to buy a pipeline between CERNET and the publisher's server overseas, or a local host. iGroup is fortunate because we have our own database solution developed for Thailand. So we negotiated with publishers to get their raw data to use with our platform, eBridge. We use that technology in several countries, including China, to host both ejournals and databases and now, ebooks.

  ebooks and ejournals are sold differently but they both make use of the same access technologies. Why aren't we seeing products on the market which treat both as information rather than keeping them separate and distinct?

In our region, ebooks and ejournals remain separate and distinct. Depending on which country you are and even within a country, universities treat them differently i.e. they are paid from different budgets. The most important factor is the publishers' business model, not keeping them as separate entities. Librarians in Asia are not yet asking for them to be grouped together or to change access models. What's important to them is that ejournals must be subscription based and ebooks perpetual access.

  Do your customers grumble that they have to buy bundles at the expense of titles from smaller, more specialized publishers?

No. There are two types of bundling. The first is by aggregators who bring together titles from various publishers, create a full text database, and sell it as their product. The second is 'the big deal' or consortia deals. Libraries are still happy with the consortia deal especially the smaller libraries with limited budgets who cannot afford to buy what they want. These deals provide them with access to ejournals they could never subscribe to alone. Libraries that have been buying a lot of print and have to maintain their print subscriptions may feel that they're buying titles they do not want. But on the whole I think that Asian libraries who subscribe to the bundles feel there is an advantage in doing so.  

  Is acceptance of ebooks happening?

Ebooks are getting more popular. We're seeing more ebook deals being sold to consortia and perpetual access makes users and subscribers happy. Librarians also want to see unlimited access and they want reasonable prices. Three years from now I predict all reference books will be ebooks and for other titles we'll see a dramatic rise in on-demand printing. For on-demand printing, publishers will move their books to an online environment and when a customer orders the title they will print and send to the buyer. This makes sense to publishers because they reduce their overheads like warehousing and they don't have the expense of printing thousands of copies for bookshops and libraries.

  Is open access having an impact on your business?

Yes and no. The important peer-reviewed titles with high impact factors will always be with us. In this part of the world open access hasn't had an impact on the iGroup.  

  iGroup is known as a distributor of intellectual property yet for years you've been developing information management tools. What have you got?

We do so many things. When I'm asked what our business is I say: whatever you see in a library minus desks and tables, we do! We've developed several technologies including our own database publishing platform, eBridge, which handles Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai and other Asian languages. CABI is using our platform for its own CAB Abstracts. eBridge is COUNTER compliant. We also have technologies which we use to host ejournals and other content from our partner-publishers such as ACM, Emerald and SIAM in China. We'll also soon be working with World Scientific of Singapore to host their journals and proceedings in China. They'll also be using the same technology for their global service. I'm very pleased about this because working with World Scientific benefits us in other ways: they are responsive, they tell us what they want and if there's a problem, they're in touch quickly. We learn a lot from this and develop a better product because of it. With all the COUNTER compliant usage reports that libraries get, they'll need tools to analyse them. We're working on that too.  

  You haven't mentioned library management software.

We represent VTLS in Thailand which is used by a large number of university libraries. It's well established and is UNICODE compliant. In Thailand we also have a union catalogue solution from VTLS. We feel too that institutional repositories will be the next important development. There are freely available solutions like DSpace and Fedora but we've developed our own solution for Thai universities which they're using well. Our strength is the indexing power in all our technologies.  

  What do you see happening in the next few years?

The internet will still be with us and so will online access. Where we will see changes is in the business models. We'll still have subscriptions but the transaction based business will grow. So I want iGroup to put more emphasis on understanding the needs of the corporate and professional market. Academic and research libraries will remain with subscriptions; transactions will be for the corporate market.