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'The best technology in the world is no good unless it is sold and used,' he said.

'Technology is only half the game. The culture of Silicon Valley is what makes teckies good businessmen. You've got to understand a balance sheet, understand profit and loss and have solid governance.

'And it's critical to service your customers. We're eight years old and we've got 13,000 customers. We're myopically focused on helping our customers become successful.

'It they're successful, we're successful.'

That customer list must be the envy of the hi-tech world. It includes big hitters such as large global banks and multinationals.

One such customer is Federal Express, which once relied on a single global hub in Memphis. BEA helped the company develop systems that allowed it and its customers to track consignments worldwide.

Mr Chuang travels constantly, seeking out those prized customers and introducing the latest BEA products, all designed to make complex technology easier for everyone to use.

On this trip to Asia, he unveiled eight new products.

He sees enormous opportunities in China, where he has invested heavily for the long term.

He has sold large products to Beijing - customs, immigration, banking - and to state-related and state-influenced businesses.

Much of BEA's success and growth is based on its acquisition of 38 smaller companies. Mr Chuang buys access to state-of-the-art technology, then launches their products as soon as possible. Of 3,800 employees, 2,600 are in sales and marketing.

He remains passionate about cutting-edge technologies and what they will mean to end-users.

When Mr Chuang talks of the next hi-tech revolution, he is speaking of items now being tested in Japan and which could be on sale worldwide next year.

Take the humble mobile phone. Soon - and he means next year - you will be able to see the person to whom you are talking. You will download videos. It will be your portable information machine.

And likewise in the near future, 'you'll be driving to the airport and your car will tell you the flight is three hours delayed', he said.

'So you'll divert and go somewhere to eat. 'What sort of restaurant?', the car system will ask. 'Japanese', you reply. The car locates the nearest Japanese restaurant, the system makes a booking and when you pull up, the car valet is waiting to park your Ferrari.'

Ferrari? Yes, he likes Ferrari, so he has 10 of them parked in his two luxury homes - one atop San Francisco's hill and another down in Silicon Valley.

His parents, business people from Shanghai, left China in 1949 and settled in North Point. His father was a pioneer in the credit-card industry in the 1960s.

Mr Chuang studied at Wah Yan school, went to school in North America aged nine, came back home to Wah Yan and at 16 was sent to St Andrew's preparatory school outside Toronto.

Ready for college, he went across the continent to the University of San Francisco.

'I come from a traditional Chinese family. My sister's a lawyer, my brother an architect, so I was due to be the family doctor,' he said, laughing.

'I did pre-med courses and studied biochemistry. Let me tell you, it's unbelievably boring.

'But as part of that, I had to do statistics courses and in those, I had to use computers. I fell in love,' he said. Computers became his passion, leading him to do a master's course at the University of California at Davis.

His first job, in 1986, was at Sun Microsystems, designing and building increasingly more complicated equipment. The aim was to make equipment that would be simple to use and which would run existing applications.

The notion was compellingly simple.

Swiftly promoted, Mr Chuang was running international operations for the electronics giant. This meant everywhere outside North America and Europe.

'I love Hong Kong. This is home. That job gave me an excuse to come back,' he said.

By 1995, heavily involved in Sun Microsystems information technology, he was at a personal crossroads.

'Do I go on with a big company, or do I go with myself?'

He took the bet on his own talents and with two partners set up their broom closet office in East Palo Alto, south of San Francisco.

'It was before Internet, prior to the dotcom explosion,' he said.

'But it was pretty clear that information technology was going to move much closer to the end user.'

What he saw coming was an era when people used their own computers to run their businesses rather than depending on a specialist computer company doing it for them.

'We built technology that allowed entrepreneurs to use all applications,' he said.

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