Hong Kong outsourcing firm to open San Francisco office for revised strategy

Amid the bleak landscape of fallen dotcoms in Asia, Hong Kong- based Internet outsourcing firm Outblaze is looking towards a sunnier future by beefing up its presence in the United States.

Chief executive Yat Siu said the company had been generating increased business in the US over the past few months as companies there tried to deal with the weak economy through the outsourcing of key Internet-related projects to overseas-based hi-tech firms such as Outblaze.

A private company, 43 per cent-owned by Pacific Century Cyberworks, Outblaze will set up shop next month in central San Francisco to gain better access to its targeted customers. It has a temporary office in Redwood City in California's Silicon Valley.

'We want to grow our US revenues to more than 50 per cent of our total business,' Mr Siu said.

That growth will be based on Outblaze's revised business strategy, focused on custom-fit online tools that integrate e-commerce systems to a company's communications infrastructure.

Although a small, 100-staff company, Outblaze has become a key e-commerce systems provider to many large US firms, including Internet services providers Verizon Online and Earthlink, personal-computer vendor Dell Computer, Citibank, CNN and search engine AltaVista.