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Eric Ng

The on-line business solutions joint venture between Cable & Wireless HKT and United States software firm Computer Associates International is aiming to capture more than 30 per cent of the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) market by the end of the year.

 Hera Siu, general manager of HKT's application service provider operation, said the as yet unnamed joint venture would target about 100,000 of Hong Kong's estimated 280,000 SME enterprises, after operations begin this month.

 It will focus on the finance, international trading and retail sectors.

 Ms Siu said on-line business solutions provided by the so-called 'application service providers [ASPs]' were particularly beneficial to SMEs, many of which lacked the resources or scale to own an in-house information technology (IT) operation.

 'The service allows SMEs to focus their time and money on what they do best, and leave the IT operations to the ASPs,' she said.

 While a price war may loom as a large number of companies have rolled out or are expected to announce their ASP offerings soon, Ms Siu said the joint venture had competitive advantages.

 'We are backed by Hong Kong's largest Web-hosting data centre operation at HKT, while Computer Associates have accumulated comprehensive software offerings as it has acquired 73 software firms in 20 years,' she said.

 While some ASPs were providing low-cost on-line business solutions, many lacked quality Web-hosting facilities to provide 24-hour security monitoring of customer data, which was 'indispensable' to the complete ASP offering, Ms Siu said.

 She said HKT had about 200,000 square feet of Web-hosting facilities.

 HKT has almost 400 ASP customers, 25 per cent of which are in the manufacturing sector with operations in southern China.

 The domestic ASP market will be worth more than US$1.7 billion by 2005, according to research firm International Data Corp.

INTERNET 



HKT venture eyes 30pc slice of on-line service market for SMEs