IT firm confident crisis won't lead to dot com bubble

With its steady growth of revenues for the last 21 quarters, EMC Computer Systems, Ltd., a multinational IT solutions provider, is eyeing further growth in its international operations despite worsening impacts of global economic crisis.

Quoting an International Data Corp. (IDC) report, Chris Insinger of EMC Asia Pacific and Japan said that the IT industry is foreseeing an economic slowdown but its impact on IT-related industries is limited.

“We do not expect a dot com bubble because the economic crisis will have limited impact on IT,” he said.

He said that with the crises, companies must demonstrate that their investments have returns and that they should keep their doors open and be competitive.

Insinger said that even executives of banks are in consensus that IT is not affected with the recent crises and they do not even anticipate “cuts” on IT expenditures.

Even in terms of jobs, there are still a lot of relevant IT-related jobs that are not yet fully utilized.

Among these include work courses such as virtualization and security which he said is only five to 15 percent utilized.

Vincent Goh, Managing Director for South East Asia of RSA, the security division of EMC even said that the crises is a blessing in disguise because its economic impact has a reverse effect to IT as next year they are looking at new wave of regulations to come in.

“The crisis was the result of not having regulated our risks. Next year we see new regulations. It will mean that the spotlight will come back to risk management and this will trickle down to IT management, security and among others that will be very positive for the IT industry,” he said.

In the recent third quarter, EMC reported to have achieved 13 percent growth of revenue and its international non-US business contributed around 19 percent which composes Europe and Asia.

Asia Pacific, on the otherhand, contributed 46 percent to the international growth which showed that its share in the business is becoming more balanced.

EMC Computer Systems, Ltd. has always been known as a high-end information storage hardware company but it has evolved itself into becoming a solutions company and provides both hardware and software.

Insinger said that the transition of the company is their way of evolving with the market as the demands of their client-base have changed over the years.

Currently, EMC is trying to penetrate the commercial market composed of the middle to lower end with its entry level products as it has already been successful and well established with the high-end segment.

These products that they are pitching to the middle to lower market segment provide high end feature brought down to entry level products.

EMC has been operating in the country for more than ten years already serving top ten 50 corporations, mostly multinationals with operations in the country.

 After ties with businesses based here in Cebu, the company has seen the potential of the area that they are now putting much of its focus on the South which includes regions all over Visayas and Mindanao and currently they are developing strategies and gathering partners.