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CSF expands in Asia

22 September 2011 - CSF, one of the leading providers of data centre facilities and services in South East Asia and the largest provider of data centre services in Malaysia, says that the Group is currently trading in line with current market expectations.

New business momentum remains strong and management continues to make significant progress on the delivery of the Group's stated growth strategy.

CSF's joint-venture company in Jakarta, Indonesia, is pursuing a number of potential new customers for the rental of data centre space at CX Jakarta ("CXJ").

The Group has commenced fit-out works and two levels (out of eight levels) are expected to be ready for service by December 2011. Management are encouraged by the pipeline of potential customers for CXJ and remain upbeat on the growth potential of the data centre market in Indonesia.

It is also in the process of finalising the terms of tenancy for Block A of the CX5 data centre and is now focusing on pre-marketing activities for Blocks B and C of CX5. The Group expects to be on target to complete the construction and fit-out of Block A of CX5 by the end of the year.

The management continues to pursue data centre development opportunities within Malaysia whilst pursuing data centre development opportunities in Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan.

CSF has agreed a collaboration with Pacific Link Telecom (Asia)("PLTA") and Jiangsu Communications Services ("JCS") which it believes will accelerate the demand for the Group's data centres and related products and services across the region.

As part of a strategy to increase the Group's core revenue streams, the Group has entered into an agreement with PLTA and JCS to leverage on the business, expertise, network, products and/or services and resources.

PLTA is providing infrastructure and services for hosting and co-location of computer servers and network equipment and is an existing customer of the Group whilst JCS is a subsidiary of China Communications Services Corporation Limited ("CCS"), a company listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange whose principal activities include the provision of telecommunications infrastructure services, business process outsourcing services, and applications, content and other services.

Dato' Ting Heng Peng, Non-Executive Chairman said: "As a management team we remain pleased with both our strategic progress and financial performance last year and in the first quarter of the current year. I am pleased to be able to report that performance remains in line with expectations."

He added: "CSF is fully focused on its strategy to expand across the South East Asia region and remains encouraged by the growing demand for its data centres, and related products and services."

Source: http://www.stockmarketwire.com/article/4225820/CSF-expands-in-Asia.html

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Free Net Business Solutions (FREENET) Renewed Microsoft Partnership with Gold Competency

September 9,2011, Free Net Business Solutions Sdn Bhd (FREENET) has again successfully renewed its Microsoft partnership earning a Gold Midmarket Solution Provider competency. Gold competencies demonstrate our best-in class expertise within Microsoft marketplace. Earning a gold competency is evidence of the deepest, most consistent commitment to specific, in-demand business solutions area along with the distinction of being among only 1 percent of Microsoft partners worldwide that have attained outstanding degree of proficiency. This is the highest level of certification under Microsoft’s Partner Network demonstrating our level of expertise and client satisfaction.

The Midmarket Solution Provider competency allows Microsoft to truly differentiate and promote partners who are experienced in delivering cross-platform solutions to midsize businesses. Being a Microsoft partner, FREENET has the capability to deliver general cross-platform solutions that meet our customers' requirements.

FREENET leverages its expertise in Microsoft technology to deliver a competitive edge to organizations worldwide. Our expertise and understanding of Microsoft products combined with our industry knowledge and experience enables us to quickly focus on selling and providing services to related Microsoft solutions. More importantly, our relationship with Microsoft has contributed to our ability to provide input on product enhancement and gain access to Microsoft resources that facilitate product placement and services opportunities in the market. Obtaining a Microsoft competency helps set our company apart from the competition by demonstrating our proven Microsoft experience and skills to customers.

Accomplishing the Microsoft Gold competency has been a great achievement for FREENET and is in line with our vision of becoming the regional IT Outsourcing provider that delivers high quality of IT outsourcing services exceeding the customer’s service level expectation.

About FREENET
FREE NET Business Solutions is an IT Outsourcing service provider in Data Center Services, Managed Services, Network Services, Service Desk Services, Business Continuity Services and IT Solutions Services. Its six core services are strategically built to cover the complete IT infrastructure ecosystem. Headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, FREENET also manages network neutral data centers in Asia.

The company is certified in ISO 20000 (IT Service Management - ITSM), ISO 27001 (Information Security Management System – ISMS) and is a Network Services Provider (NSP) license holder. The company owns and operates 3 data centers in Malaysia and our network infrastructure consists of multiple global tier-1 upstream provider, namely, NTT, TATA Communication, PACNET and HGC. We are part of the Malaysian Internet Exchange (MYIX) consortium and we are direct peer with TM, Time, Maxis, Digi, Celcom and many more. FREENET network is positioned and built to cover the best connectivity across Asia that resolve most of China, Asia Pacific and Middle East high latency and connectivity issues.

Source: http://www.openpr.com/news/191124/Free-Net-Business-Solutions-FREENET-Renewed-Microsoft-Partnership-with-Gold-Competency.html

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Basis Bay on acquisition trail and pursuing a Green IT Holistic Approach branding

LANGKAWI, AUGUST
Basis Bay, a Malaysian-owned regional group that has carved a niche for itself helping companies take a green approach to information technology (IT), is mulling acquisitions to ramp up its growth.

Founder and chief executive officer Datuk Praba Thiagarajah said the 15-year-old group, which has been "profitable from day one", has been looking for the right target to buy, both at home and abroad.

This will be its growth strategy over the near term, he said, dismissing talk of an initial public offering for now.

"M&As (mergers and acquisitions) and partnerships, that's the way we want to grow. In the next half-to-one year, we'll be pushing that strategy," Thiagarajah told Business Times in an interview here recently.

The group has already initiated discussions with several potential companies that could complement its businesses, and hopes to ink a deal with at least one within a year from now.

"We dont need to acquire 100 per cent of a company. It could be just a stake, but we'd like it to be a controlling position," he said.

The Basis Bay group has two key businesses - providing green IT outsourcing services and solutions to companies, and building and managing green data centres.

Thiagarajah noted that many companies still do not realise the full value of adopting green technology. It is beneficial in that it not only helps minimise the environmental impact, but also reduces a company's cost and ensures sustainability, he said.

"By not fundamentally understanding and addressing the need to implement green solutions in every environment within the IT infrastructure, from servers to storage to data centres, many chief information officers (CIO) overlook the green advantages and values they can realise," he remarked.

Some of the holistic factors every CIO should consider include the smart procurement and provisioning of servers, extending the life cycle of hardware and equipment as well as the optimisation of IT infrastructure.

On procurement, for example, he said companies could opt for pre-owned computer hardware. Computer hardware is, after all, extremely depreciative and loses its value long before the end of its functional life.

"There are various obvious benefits of pre-owned equipment. Pre-owned Enterprise-Class ICT (information and communications technology) equipment can usually be purchased at a much lower price compared to a brand new similar or equivalent model, thus reducing capital expenditure," he said.

This, he added, would be among the things that could help companies out there address the "triple bottom line of people, planet and profit".

Thiagarajah, who has some 20 years of experience in the premium IT segment, is the major shareholder of Basis Bay.

In 1999, one of the entities within the group was able to show a net profit of "more than RM6 million", and last year, several companies posted "more than double-digit net profit, in the millions", he said, declining to elaborate.

Source: www.btimes.com.my

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COPC Inc. signs agreement with Brandt International Inc. to market COPC® Training in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Singapore, March 2011
Customer Operations Performance Center Inc. (COPC Inc.), the world’s leading authority on customer contact centres and vendor management operations, today announced that Brandt International Inc., one of South East Asia’s leading Business Transformation consulting and outsourcing companies has signed an agreement to market COPC® Training for customer contact operations staff in Malaysia and Indonesia.

“Over the past five years there has been an encouraging increase in the adoption of the COPC-2000® CSP Standard in Malaysian and Indonesian companies, especially in the telecommunications and banking industries,” said Ian Aitchison, CEO at COPC Asia Pacific Inc. “Through this agreement with Brandt International Inc. we aim to improve access to our training programs, such as the flagship COPC® Registered Coordinator Training, the COPC® High Performance Management Techniques Training and also our COPC® Lean Six Sigma for Contact Centres Training for all managers and team leaders in the customer contact industry in Malaysia and Indonesia.”

Munirah Looi, CEO at Brandt International Inc., stated, “Brandt International Inc. has been working in the region for a number of years and we believe that our local knowledge and links with industry bodies, along with COPC Inc.’s global best practices and training expertise will help us to improve the customer contact industry in Malaysia and Indonesia and to enable local firms to deliver better outcomes for their end-users.”

About Brandt International
Based in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Manila, Brandt is a Business Transformation Consulting and Outsourcing Company, focused on enabling clients to positively transform their customer strategy and operations through improving the quality, performance and efficiency of the approach and people and deliver an improved customer experience. For further information, please visit www.brandtinternational.com.

About COPC Inc.
Customer Operations Performance Center Inc. (COPC Inc.) is the world's leading authority on service-chain operations management, including performance improvement for buyers and providers of customer service, customer contact center and business process outsourcing operations. Since 1996, COPC Inc. has helped more than 1,000 organizations in 50 countries improve customer service by using the COPC® Family of Standards, the industry's first and most comprehensive set of performance management operating models for customer service operations. Today, it remains the only performance-driven and industry-governed global best practices model that simultaneously increases both customer satisfaction and profitability. For further information, please visit www.copc.com.

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Kelly partners Deloitte Malaysia

Kelly Outsourcing and Consulting Group (KellyOCG) has partnered with Deloitte Malaysia to offer tax, compliance and immigration support services to its clients in Malaysia.

In a statement today, KellyOCG said Malaysia had evolved into a hub for several industries, and this had resulted in the need for a one-stop centre for human resource consulting services, that KellyOCG currently provides.

"In a constantly evolving world of human resources, we have also found the need to evolve and expand our services.

"Thus, our collaboration with Deloitte is not only timely but strategic," Senior Vice President - Asia Pacific, Kelly Services Inc, Dhirendra Shantilal said. -- Bernama

Source: http://www.btimes.com.my/Current_News/BTIMES/articles/20101118165054/Article/index_html

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FREENET Achieves ISO 20000 Certification and Passes ISO 27001 Certification Renewal

October 1, 2010 - Free Net Business Solutions Sdn Bhd (FREENET) is delighted to announce that it has achieved the ISO/IEC 20000:2005 certification on IT Service Management System (ITSM) from the British Standards Institution (BSI). The scopes of the ISO 20000 certification encompass 4 services - (a) Data Center Services (b) Managed Services, (c) Network Services and (d) Service Desk Services.

Strengthening our processes, service delivery, brand awareness, credibility, customer trust and global positioning are among the contributing factors for FREENET Malaysia to obtain the ISO 20000 certification. The ISO 20000 certification helps FREENET Malaysia to align with our mission of delivering high quality IT Outsourcing services that exceed the customer’s service level expectations. By adopting the ITIL best practices, FREENET Malaysia aims to attract the global market with exceptional business services while continuously improving its processes. In short, securing the ISO 20000 differentiates us against our competitors by providing the much needed global recognition which is in line with our long-term expansion plan.

ISO 20000 is a highly respected international IT Service Management standard that promotes an integrated process approach to effectively deliver services to meet business and customer requirements. The standard is aligned with the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), the global de facto standard for IT Service Management. For FREENET Malaysia, the certification provides us the competitive advantage to expand our client base through continuously improving our service quality. The certification affirms FREENET’s proven ability to meet strict requirements in delivering the highest level of client services that fulfil their business needs. By adopting the best practices, the company as a whole can improve the overall cost efficiency, ensures stability of service, develops consistent quality, churns out predictable results and outcomes. More importantly, the ISO 20000 and ISO 27001 certifications offer global recognition to FREENET.

Following the ISO/IEC 27001:2005 certification on Information Security Management System (ISMS) in 2007, FREENET Malaysia has also passed the certification renewal audit conducted by BSI. The scope of ISMS certification covers area of FREENET’s Data Center & Hosting services, Managed Services, IT Continuity Services and IT Helpdesk Services. Attaining compliance to ISO 27001 demonstrates to our customers that we are committed to security and have the ability to handle information in a secure manner as confidentiality, integrity and availability of information is adequately addressed. The successful reappraisal is an evidence of our successful implementation of the ISO 27001 standards that are put in place, reviewed and verified from time to time.

Source: http://www.i-newswire.com/freenet-achieves-iso-20000-certification/63689

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