EMC names RP rep

EMC Corp., the world leader in information storage, has appointed a country manager to handle the company's fast growing business in the Philippines.

Previously operating through two resellers, this is the first time EMC has chosen a local representative.

Ronnie Latinazo, an economics degree major and a cum laude from the University of the Philippines, expressed optimism that the domestic office could gain a sizable share of the enterprise storage market which is estimated to grow at an annual compound rate of 59 percent from 1998 to 2003 in Asia Pacific.

According to the International Data Corp., factors behind the demand include the rapid use of Internet, customer relationship management and data warehousing since such new applications need to manage, store and protect more and more information, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

In his position, Latinazo will focus on developing EMC's core business in the Philippines to provide intelligent enterprise storage-based information infrastructure offerings.

He is responsible for providing the overall direction, recruitment and partner strategy, as well as ensuring customers in the Philippines receive the world class customer service that EMC is reputed for.

Mike Ruettgers, EMC chief executive officer, noted that rapid information access is now widely regarded as the fuel for the world's economy, and two-thirds of the world's most important information lives on EMC technology.

"We had an exceptionally strong first quarter in all geographies, particularly the Asia-Pacific region, which grew more than 60 percent over last year's first quarter. We saw surges in demand from large companies as they built their increased Internet initiatives on the EMC E-Inforstructure. We believe we gained market share against all major competitors during the quarter, in both storage systems and software," he explained.

EMC continues to provide information infrastructure for the world's most successful companies, including Citibank, Amazon.com, AOL, British Telekom, NTT DoCoMo, Development Bank of Singapore (DBS) and Malaysia Telekom.