Good connection. to the Far East

Transcription

1 24 Projects Asia Good connection to the Far East There s no stopping China s economic growth and T-Systems is growing right along with it. The ICT service provider also offers its customers in the Far East its full range of services: across borders, based on demand and from one source. PHOTOS PAGE 24: IMAGE COURTESY OF THE SINGAPORE TOURISM BOARD, ISTOCKPHOTO; PAGE 25 : IMAGINECHINA

2 25 Far Eastern markets continue to boom. T-Systems runs the communications network linking the over 20 Airbus locations in China, Japan and Singapore. Best Practice 01/2008

3 PHOTOGRAPH: RINGZWEI 2624 Gross Domestic Product 2006 in billion $ The upturn in China and South-East Asia means that the region can offer European businesses promising prospects as a location for production and as a market for sales % THAILAND +7.4% 48.3 C H I N A MALAYSIA SINGAPORE VIETNAM +7.8% +6.0% % Booming region: Impressive growth rates (in comparison with 2005) are evidence of the economic strength and speed of development in South-East Asia. P H I L I P P I N E S +5.3% I N D O N E S I A % 116,9 China Singapore Vietnam Malaysia Thailand Indonesia Philippines State Commissioner Tang Jiaxuan s speech was very impressive. The Chinese government official traveled to the port city of Tianjin to greet the new investors. With this shared undertaking, we ve reached a new milestone in the strategic partnership between China and the European Union, the former foreign minister of the People s Republic of China said. Then the ground-breaking ceremony commenced a historical moment. Construction of the first final assembly line of Airbus outside of Europe could now begin. The A319 and A320 models will soon be assembled in the new economic area dubbed Binhai near Tianjin. The region is expected to make economic history. The government hopes to attract 20 billion dollars worth of investments until 2010 over the course of the development of the 150-kilometer long area on the northeast coast, especially from companies in the high-tech industries. Airbus goes with the flow Airbus is ahead of the game. The aviation company is currently conducting the prestigious and strategically important project at a rapid pace. It has not even been one year since construction got underway last May and already the company is getting ready to put the factory into operation. Airbus is planning to start production in August and the first airplane is scheduled for completion soon thereafter. We re hoping to be ready for delivery in the first half of 2009, says Fabrice Brégier, Chief Operating Officer at Airbus. The company plans to continuously expand until 2011, at which time 500 employees will already be building four of the to date most successful civilian mid-range machines a month. Employees are being trained for the job in Toulouse and in Hamburg the factory near Tianjin is expected to become a perfect copy of the production facilities in the Hanseatic City. By taking this step into the Far East, Airbus is emphasizing its long-term dedication to the development of the Chinese aviation industry, says Mr. Brégier. The facility s operators include European companies as well as the Tianjin Free Trade Zone and local aircraft production companies. T-Systems is also on board. The Telekom subsidiary, which has been providing information and communications technology (ICT) to Airbus for years, is operating Airbus company network in the Asia-Pacific region.

4 Projects Asia 27 Topic Full service from a single source With its three locations in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, T-Systems s covers the entire spectrum of ICT services. Telecommunications Establishment of local and international communication networks. Driven by two-figure growth rates in some cases, Asia is developing an enormous demand for mobility among its workforce and for traffic systems to keep pace. Desktop Services Tailor-made service packages at flexible prices, including multilingual user help desk. Airbus is going with the flow with the set-up of its China location. According to the World Bank, investments by foreign companies recently grew from 50 to 70 billion euros per year. The country s continuing fast-paced growth is attracting small, mediumsized and large companies alike. They want to do more than just benefit from favorable production conditions. As Airbus plans show, China s sales market is also quickly gaining in significance. Dynamic growth There is no end to the boom in sight. Since the beginning of the 1980s, the Chinese gross domestic product has increased by an average of almost 10 percent each year. The World Bank is expecting a plus of 10.8 percent for the current year (2008) despite the housing market crisis and slumping economic situation in the US. Nothing seems to be severe enough at the moment to throw China s growth dynamics off course, says Milan Brahmbhatt, the economist responsible for the region at the World Bank. The country is expected to continue to catch up to the traditional industrialized nations in the future as well. While experts predict an annual growth rate of 1.5 percent each year for Germany until the year 2020, prognoses for China put the annual growth rate at over five percent. And this attracts investors. More than 2,000 companies from Germany alone have braved the jump to the Far East in the meantime. Car manufacturers and their suppliers, logistics companies and mechanical engineers are among the pioneers. The basis for success also includes state-of-the-art ICT solutions. These are needed to guarantee secure, fast communication between individual locations both within and outside of the country. Global companies therefore need experienced service providers that are also well-established in the region and that offer reliable connections to additional locations. Take Airbus, for example: T-Systems does more than just set up the network infrastructure for increasing data traffic. As long-term ICT partner of Airbus we make sure that our customer can fully concentrate on his core business while expanding business in Asia, states Jürgen Friedrich, Key Account Director Airbus at T-Systems. And this requires a whole package of innovative services. For example, Airbus and T-Systems in the Far East cooperate for some time now in an extensive SAP project. The Telekom subsidiary increases the bandwidth for more than 20 Airbus locations in China, Japan and Singapore, keeping the data traffic flowing, and also brings together Airbus internal data traffic, Computing Services Provision of computing services as required on the basis of dynamic services for SAP from the three computer centers in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai. System Integration Planning and implementation of SAP solutions with subsequent support for applications (Application Management Services). PHOTOS: PAGE 26 ISTOCKPHOTO (ILLUSTRATION), PAGE 27 IMAGINECHINA Best Practice 01/200808

5 28 Projects Asia Singapore is traditionally a center for trade and financial services. However, the city s ICT industry already employs 130,000 people and in recent years generated annual earnings of 34 billion US dollars. communication with suppliers and network access for maintenance work at the airports on one shared platform. What s more, the ICT service provider connects the aviation company s main Asian hub in Beijing with Airbus headquarters in Toulouse via a secure 155 megabit connection for fast data transfer. The ICT infrastructure adapts to future needs offering the highest flexibility, says Friedrich, who knows that his customers expects top-quality service. Therefore, T-Systems experts offer fast and competent assistance directly on the Airbus Campus in Tianjin, if engineers of Chinese airlines need technical support with their work with Airbus-specific software. With the new service desk Airbus and T-Systems reacted to a rising number of customers from the region requesting services not only in English but also in Mandarin and in the southern Cantonese dialect. The new plans are based on a close partnership, tried and tested in Europe. Airbus and T-Systems are already working together on an extensive SAP project in the region. In Germany, the Telekom subsidiary has been operating the aviation company s corporate network for several years now as well as the company s standardized desktop infrastructure in Germany, France, Great Britain and Spain. Tried and tested partnership International companies know that their communication requirements grow with each new location. T-Systems recently responded to this by constructing a high-performance data center in Shanghai, the third in China, in addition to those in Beijing and Hong Kong. The data center was put into operation last May. Data center customers include three German car manufacturers and their suppliers. With this, the Telekom subsidiary is paving the way to benefiting from the growth of one of the world s most dynamic hightech markets. According to a survey by the German Association for Electrical, Electronic and Information Technologies (VDE), China will emerge as the world s leading ICT market in the coming decade according to VDE, the country will dictate the pace in this industry. Already today, China and India are responsible for skyrocketing expenditures for information and communications technology in those regions. For 2008, market researchers at IDC expect an increase of around ten percent to 154 billion dollars for the Asia- Pacific area not including Japan. This growth reflects the momentum of the previous year. IDC analyst Eva Au even forecasts explosive growth, around 40 percent of which can be attributed to China. Small and medium-sized business will also grow: According to IDC, they have upped their ICT expenditures in China by over ten percent in the past year. According to expert Ms. Au, products that combine the advantages of telecommunications and information technologies are in particularly high demand, as are IT offers that are tailor-made to meet customers demands which is exactly what T-Systems offers. We design solutions like these that are tailor-made and from one source, says Christiane Eder, Head of Sales Management at T-Systems in Shanghai. They increase flexibility and reduce costs by up to 30 percent. No. 1 for Bosch That was a convincing argument for the Bosch Group, a leading global supplier of automotive and industrial technology and of consumer goods and building technology. In Asia-Pacific, T-Systems is Bosch s number one IT infrastructure service provider and is now tackling a new project. The Telekom subsidiary will connect over 200 locations in the Asia-Pacific region via a high-performance network. In order for Bosch to also be able to centrally provide IT services for all locations from Singapore, T-Systems is setting up a new network architecture with standardized services and systems including high-performance connections between the data centers in the US and Europe. This huge project will support Bosch s strong growth in this region, says Tobias Bos, key account director of T-Systems in Singapore. Heinz Derenbach, Bosch Executive Vice President Technical and Engineering in the Corporate Sector for Information Systems and Services, says

6 29 LINKS Interview Strategic Significance beyond South-East Asia. Thomas Schmidt, Director Corporate Sector Information Systems & Services, Bosch that as a European service provider, T-Systems has an excellent understanding of our requirements and is very flexible. We count on the company s experience and dedication for Bosch s expansion process in the Asia-Pacific region. * And the German company with a long tradition has set itself ambitious goals. Made by Bosch and T-Systems Asia-Pacific continues to be a growth motor for Bosch: For 2007, the company expects sales in the region to have increased by some 13 percent in local currencies. By 2015 Bosch is aiming to triple sales in Asia from the current level of approximately 7.4 billion euros to some 22 billion euros. The main emphasis will be placed on environmentally friendly automotive engineering. Safe, clean and economical increasingly applies to cars in Asia as well, Bosch s Chairman of the Board of Management Franz Fehrenbach says. We re going to increase our presence because we intend to significantly expand our business volume, in particular with Asian car manufacturers. In order to achieve this, Bosch intends to apply the knowledge it has gained about regional markets over the past few decades. Bosch has been rooted in Asia for quite some time now, Mr. Fehrenbach says*. The company has also been active in China since 1909 and is still setting new benchmarks. For example, in 2008 the largest winter test circuit for cars will be opened. This is only one of many prestigious projects. The technology for the stage at the China National Grand Theatre and for the world s largest Ferris wheel in Beijing all made by Bosch. In Suzhou, one of the company s large Chinese locations near Shanghai, Bosch produces control units for airbags and electronic brake control systems. A new technology center relies on a tried and tested partner for its data exchange. The necessary connections and network components in China and other regions in Asia-Pacific made by T-Systems. IMME UBBEN How significant is Singapore for the IT operations of Bosch in South-East Asia? Bosch operates a comprehensive Technical Center for its IT in Singapore. This facility includes a R&D department and a computer center. Both functions are not limited to South East Asia. The results of the platform development will be used worldwide and the Computer Center has a hub function for the whole Asia-Pacific region and provides services to customers from India in the East to Japan in the West and southwards to Australia. Hence, Singapore is strategically significant for the Bosch IT even beyond South East-Asia. What is the importance of a reliable ICT partner for a globally active enterprise like Bosch? Bosch is working together with T-Systems in the Asia-Pacific region on Wide Area Networks and Computer Center Services. The reliability of our partners in respect to these IT basics is an indispensable prerequisite. There is hardly anything to add. When talking about globally acting enterprises under a general aspect another topic is more significant to me. Worldwide requires more and more concepts for services based on globally agreed and accepted standards and thus an international organization of service delivery and service support. To be able to make know-how from somewhere in the world effectively available on the spot somewhere else in the world will become more important in the future. What kind of targets do you have for 2008? We have consolidated Mail and ERP Services last year. In 2008 we will introduce new file server technologies, which will leverage the established network infrastructure to flexibly choose the location of prime and back-up data dependent upon the customer needs and optimization of availability and costs at the same time. What is so special about Singapore? The passion displayed when watching the English Premier Football League seems very special to me, I had interesting evenings taking the side of the underdogs. On a serious note, the availability of well-educated and skilled workforce, the geographical location within the region, excellent traffic links, a very good infrastructure and optimal sub-sea cable topology, the political and economical stability, all merits the case for Singapore. * Above information about Bosch and quotes have been extracted from previous press releases and published news articles. The Asia-Pacific region is one of our fastest growing markets. Franz Fehrenbach, Chairman of the Board of Management of Bosch PHOTOS: PAGE 28 ISTOCKPHOTO (3); PAGE 29 IMAGINECHINA (BOTTOM), PR Best Practice 01/2008