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Sun going for growth, NEW STRAITS TIMES-MANAGEMENT TIMES

Posted on: Thursday, 7 August 2003, 06:00 CDT

xfdws SUN-GOING-FOR-GROWTH sked Emerging Markets Datafile

August 07, 2003

NEW STRAITS TIMES-MANAGEMENT TIMES

MALAYSIA

ENGLISH

Sun going for growth, NEW STRAITS TIMES-MANAGEMENT TIMES

Ferina Manecksha

ASIA WorldSources, Inc. 322 MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE 2ND FLOOR, NE WASHINGTON, DC 20002 COPYRIGHT 2003 BY WORLDSOURCES, INC., A JOINT VENTURE OF FDCH e-Media, INC. AND WORLD TIMES, INC. NO PORTION OF THE MATERIALS CONTAINED HEREIN MAY BE USED IN ANY MEDIA WITHOUT ATTRIBUTION TO WORLDSOURCES, INC.

NEWLY appointed managing director of Sun Microsystems (M) Sdn Bhd, Cheam Tat Inn, aims to steer the network computing company towards further growth.

At a media briefing in Kuala Lumpur on Monday to announce his appointment, Cheam said among his priorities is to grow the company's revenues in terms of the number of systems and in totality, which includes growing the professional services portion of its revenues.

In addition, he hopes to help the company gain market share, particularly in the telecommunications and banking industries.

''These verticals experience a change in structure of their ICT (information and communications technology) spending, involving reshaping, resizing and rebalancing their ICT investments from infrastructure to managed and information value-added (type of) services,'' Cheam said, adding that since such moves will require more computing platform, they are likely to opt for Sun.

''In fact, we are already seeing big wins (albeit not in the traditional type of engagements) as many corporations are reshaping their existing infrastructure to maximise their return on investments and looking at Unix-only-focused vendors to deliver that.''

According to Sun Microsystems Asia South's vice president and managing director Lionel Lim, the company has between 50 and 80 per cent market share in the telecom sector in all countries across the region. In India, for example, almost 95 per cent of the servers in the telecom sector run on Sun, he added.

''Going forward, it's not about winning new blue-chip accounts, but reshaping the ecosystem drivers, that will in turn shape industry standard networks, which is important for the competitiveness of the industry and region.''

He added that Sun Malaysia's 14 per cent revenue growth ended last June, albeit lower than the initial 30 per cent target, was remarkable, taking into account the current economic climate. In Asia South, Sun recorded a 22 per cent revenue growth for the same period.

In terms of unit shipments for the first quarter, Sun registered 74 per cent growth in Malaysia and 73 per cent in Asia South, according to research firm International Data Corp (IDC). ``This year we are targeting 20 per cent growth for Asia South, and Malaysia is expected to grow faster than the region because of the bullish outlook,'' Lim said.

Copyright 2003 NEW STRAITS TIMES-MANAGEMENT TIMES all rights reserved as distributed by WorldSources, Inc.

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