T-SYSTEMS SEES CONSISTENT REVENUE GROWTH IN ASIA PACIFIC MARKETS

Samantha Tan

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 28(Bernama) -- T-Systems, the enterprise customer unit of Germany's Deutsche Telekom, sees its business in the Asia Pacific growing between 30-50 percent despite the challenging economic environment.

Its Singapore and Malaysia chief executive officer, Thomas Jakob said the
Asia Pacific markets would shield the company's operations from a slowdown as
companies globally were looking at opportunities for cost structure by venturing
into lower cost destinations in Asia.

"At the moment, if you look at opportunities for growth globally, it is
actually in the Asia Pacific," he told Bernama at the recent launch of the new
Deutsche Telekom Centre in Singapore.

He said T-Systems had also seen a growing demand for international
telecommunication services from multinational corporations as they expanded into
new regions.

As the Malaysian market was growing faster that others in the region, Jakob
said it would be the focus of the company's expansion in the Asia
Pacific.

The company is looking for suitable buildings in Malaysia to facilitate its
operations.

It is understood T-Systems requires bigger facilities over the next 12-18
months to manage the infrastructure and information technology (IT) for Shell's
global data centres.

Earlier this year, T-Systems took over the three of Shell's data centres in
the Netherlands with one each in Malaysia and the United States.

T-Systems intends to make Malaysia a centre for service management and turn
the local data centre into its operational hub for the Asia Pacific
region.

"Five hundred employees from Shell have joined us and they will be based in
Malaysia. The next focus is to leverage on these assets and expand the scope of
operations over the next six months," Jakob explained.

He said T-Systems was also working on external market opportunities in
Malaysia, adding the company, had a couple of contracts now.

"We are already servicing the local clients and intend to expand the
business significantly over the next year," he added.

As part of its commitment to Malaysia, T-Systems acquired MSC Malaysia
status in January.

In the Asia-Pacific, T-Systems provides information and communications
technology (ICT) solutions to multinational customers including Airbus, Allianz,
Bosch, Infineon Technologies, Mitsubishi Motors and Volkswagen.

Moving forward, Jakob said T-Systems's strategy in the Asia Pacific was to
focus on expanding its partnership with global customers even more while
building stronger ties with selected local leaders in the
automotive,manufacturing, services and finance sectors.

According to Jakob,the difficult economic climate at present, actually
translated into opportunities for T-Systems as customers were looking at ways to
become efficient by focusing on their core business.

"The outsourcing model in general is becoming more prevalent at this time
and is a positive driver for our business growth. We believe that we
will double our revenue over the next two to three years in the Asia Pacific,"
he said.

T-Systems posted a revenue of 12 billion euros last year and was a leading
provider for the automotive and telecommunications industries as well as the
public sector.

It offers network-centric ICT services ranging from data centre operations
and global services based on the Internet Protocol (IP) to the development and
management of applications.