The strength of Chinese IT vendors has been highlighted in the MIS Asia magazine Strategic 100 list, complied by an independent panel of 30 expert judges from Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
Singapore (PRWEB) November 23, 2009 -- The growing economic power of China has been reflected in the number of firms from the Middle Kingdom that have been selected to one of Asia's most prestigious lists for IT vendors.
The strength of Chinese IT vendors has been highlighted in the MIS Asia magazine Strategic 100 list, complied by an independent panel of 30 expert judges from Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
Fairfax Business Media Asia director, Andrew Smart, said that making the Strategic 100 list was a considerable achievement.
"IT vendors only made this list after being carefully evaluated on their industry leadership, products and services innovation and their strategic roles in the global enterprise IT market," Smart said. "They were also judged on their contribution to IT industry development and their financial performance in the past year."
The Strategic 100 - now in its 13th year - consists of three categories; The Global 75, the Regional 20 and the Rising Stars 5.
Reflecting China's potential as the growth powerhouse of the world, 55 per cent of the enterprises that won their way on to the Regional 20 list for the Asia Pacific, have their headquarters in China. These included enterprises such as China Mobile, China Telecom, CPCNet, Hutchison Telecommunications International, Jardine OneSolution and Kingdee International. Last year this China representation was less than 30 per cent.
Singapore companies made up 20 per cent of Regional 20 list, Malaysian companies 15 per cent, with one company each from the US and Japan.
Once again, US-headquartered firms dominated the Global 75 category of the Strategic 100. American enterprises filled 60 per cent (45 companies) of the Global 75 list, followed by Japan at 12 per cent, China (including mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan) 6.7 per cent, India and Germany - 4 per cent each and France - 2 per cent.
Among the newcomers to our Global 75 this year are global telecommunications corporation Alcatel - Lucent , India 's Tata Consultancy Services, AT&T, BMC Software, which is thriving with its Business Service Management approach, unified communications specialist Polycom and WAN optimization products manufacturer Riverbed Technology.
Other new Global 75 list entrants include Brocade, CA, Capgemini, Check Point Software Technologies, CSC Asia, Dimension Data and D-Link.
Also new to the Global 75 list this year are F5 Networks, HCL Technologies, HTC, Kingston Technology, Lexmark, MessageLabs, NEC, NCR, NetApp, Novell, Siemens, Software AG, Teradata, Trend Micro, Toshiba, Unisys and VMWare.
Fairfax Business Media managing editor, Ross O. Storey, the editor of MIS Asia magazine, said that there has been considerable Strategic 100 'churn' from last year to this, perhaps reflecting the shake up and turmoil of the economic times.
"Given the dynamic nature of the IT vendor environment, it's perhaps no surprise that 40 per cent of our Global 75 this year did not appear in the 2008 list," Storey said. "This could be regarded as a healthy situation for end users because it demonstrates that IT vendors can never rest on their laurels, they must always be striving for excellence to maintain their market standing."
Storey said there have been positive signs from a number of directions about an impending economic upturn. Research house Gartner recently reported a healthy 16.1 per cent increase in PC shipments in the Asia-Pacific PC market in July to September compared to the same period last year, driven by strong demand in China, which was estimated to have surged by 28.5 per cent.
"Hence it is no surprise that PC hardware producers HP, Acer, Dell, Lenovo and Toshiba all feature in the Global 75, as do Fujitsu, Sony, Panasonic and Toshiba (new to the list this year)," Storey said.
Although there are signs that demand is starting to plateau, there are already 3.5 billion mobile-phone users across the globe, far ahead of the numbers of computer owners, so mobile phone manufacturers like Apple, Research In Motion, Samsung, Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia plus HTC and Vodafone (both new to the Global 75 this year) all have made their presence felt globally to impress the Strategic 100 judges in 2009.
The Regional 20 had the most stable vendor list, with Hong Kong ICT service provider Wharf T&T standing out as the sole newcomer with its 'strictly business sector focus'.
The Strategic 100 judges also chose a new group for the Rising Star 5, including China's digital rights management firm Irdeto and cloud computing services provider NZ Intergrid, from New Zealand. The other two rising stars for 2009 are Indian firm Bharti and Sweden-born business intelligence enterprise QlikTech.
Special cocktail events to congratulate the Strategic 100 Honourees were held in Singapore (Wednesday, 18 November 2009) and Hong Kong (Friday, 20 November).
**About Fairfax Business Media
Fairfax Business Media Asia publishes Computerworld Singapore , Computerworld Malaysia, MIS Asia and CIO Asia (all at web portal: www.mis-asia.com) magazines. It is part of Australia 's Fairfax Media, Australasia 's leading media company with titles such as the Australian Financial Review, Business Review Weekly, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Melbourne Age, The Sun-Herald and The Canberra Times.
For inquiries on MIS Asia's Strategic 100 List:
Contact: Ross O. Storey - Tel: +65 6395 8058
###
