ITR ready to make headway in China's market Author: Zhou Kan

IT Resources (ITR), a leading systems integrator, plans to expand its presence in China's massive market, the world's largest, by meeting companies' needs for information technology (IT) infrastructure.

"Unlike in North America or Europe, which are undergoing a sharp downturn in demand for IT products, the demand in China remains substantial," said Scott Freeman, ITR's China North Region general manager.

"This demand stems not only from telecoms carriers, but also from China's substantive enterprise market," Freeman told Business Weekly.
Demanding foreign-invested and domestic enterprises have in the past six years forced the expansion of ITR's business.

The company during that time has grown from two to 130 employees throughout China.
Most multinational companies are placing greater importance on their operations in China, and are increasingly expecting their local subsidiaries to meet or exceed their worldwide corporate standards.

This, in turn, has provided substantial business opportunities for both IT products manufacturers and systems integrators, Freeman said.

A recent Fortune survey indicated more than 92 per cent of multinational corporations either have or are considering establishing regional headquarters in China.

ITR as part of that trend has signed many big-ticket companies and institutions as clients including Air Canada, Coca-Cola, DHL, Vivendi, Volkswagen, DaimlerChrysler and the People's Insurance Company of China (PICC).

ITR was recently honoured as one of China's top five "Enterprise IT Solutions Experts" during a recent annual awards ceremony for systems integrators sponsored by the Ministry of Information Industry (MII).

China's systems-integration market last year was worth 4.47 billion yuan (US$539 million), indicates Beijing-based IT consulting firm CCW Research.
CCW predicts the market will grow 12.3 per cent this year.

Multinationals' increased spending on IT infrastructure is believed to be the main reason for the market's growth.

"Today's established multinationals have solid telephone and data systems in place, and are looking to implement higher-end, value-added systems such as call centres or customer-relationship-management systems (CRM)," Freeman said.

ITR plans to release next month the beta version of its new native bilingual CRM product range, based on the latest Microsoft Development and Server technologies.

The increased importance that multinationals has placed on China's markets has resulted in more sophisticated requirements and higher service-delivery standards, said Andrew Lavinsky, ITR's international sales director.

"Today's multinationals in China increasingly expect to see all parts of their standard IT infrastructure, and they expect these parts to be integrated so they increase productivity," Lavinsky said.

"Partnering with top IT manufacturers such as Microsoft, Siemens, Cisco, Avaya, IBM, HP, Nortel, Citrix and many others, we can put all these parts together and meet expectations of the international business community."

About 60 per cent of IT-related costs involved with establishing an office are for workstations, servers and associated software; 40 per cent of funds are spent on other items such as structured cabling and UPS (uninterruptible power supply), networking equipment and telephone systems.

The transition from Windows NT-based software to Microsoft's new Windows 2000 is one of the biggest challenges currently facing multinationals, said Scott Worley, ITR's chief technology officer.

Windows 2000 offers firms significant advantages - security, stability and backup filing - but requires time and customizing to implement the features, Worley said.
"Most multinationals have allocated at least one year for this transition, and they expect their China offices to implement the same standards," he said.

"Outsourcing for this transition and associated user training to systems integrators such as us is typically a much more cost-efficient choice than flying in or hiring in-house personnel," Worley said.