Attachmate, an American provider of host access management solutions, has set up an Asian consulting team with headquarters in Hong Kong.
“We are targeting our efforts on key vertical markets like finance, telecommunications and insurance where a large amount of business-critical data resides in mainframes and other host systems,” said K. T. Wong, Attachmate’s regional manager for professional services.
Attachmate offers a range of consulting and training services that create and deploy custom business applications for host access, Internet or intranet needs. These services are organized into “Web-to-enterprise” or “distributed desktop management” solutions.
“Web-to-enterprise consulting solutions help companies successfully evolve to e-business,” said Wong. “Distributed desktop management consulting solutions are for companies who want to enhance their productivity by managing their critical desktop and server resources.”
Responding to a question regarding Attachmate’s choice of Hong Kong as a regional hub, Wong said, “According to IDC, 83 percent of Asia Pacific IT spending in 1997 comes from countries using double byte products. Hong Kong is a central place to support customers in these countries.”
Attachmate’s current clients in Asia include the Hong Kong government, several large Hong Kong banks, American and British banks in Asia, a US-based insurance group, a Canadian insurance company and major Hong Kong telecoms.
Wong believes that in Hong Kong, China and Asia “the main challenge to e-commerce will be how to manage the complexity that will be brought about by new and increasing populations of users, diverse platforms and the need for tighter controls to host information.”