News

Hong Kong, December 10, 2008 – IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced today the opening of a new, state-of-the-art Business Resilience Centre to address the increasing demand for Business Continuity and Resiliency Services (BCRS) which help organisations sustain operations in the event of disasters that could cause business disruption and downtime.

Awareness of the importance of BCRS is growing among small and large enterprises from different industries across Hong Kong and the Asia Pacific region. IBM's clients in the banking and insurance industries, for example, are demanding highly available and resilient solutions to ensure business continuity and to meet regulatory requirements while clients in the retail and manufacturing industries are seeking to establish cost-effective BCRS capabilities and draw on the consulting services of a reliable partner. In addition, a growing number of cross-border clients are taking advantage of Hong Kong's relatively low risk of exposure to natural disasters, and benefiting from IBM's ability to provide global best practice and seamless support for their operations.

Combined with IBM's 40 years of global BCRS experience and best practices, and more than 15 years of BCRS experience in Hong Kong, the new IBM Hong Kong Business Resilience Centre will enable businesses to protect themselves against risks and respond quickly in the event of disasters. Clients can leverage IBM's expertise in BCRS services to meet their business continuity requirements and offset the need for direct investment in IT and related hardware and software.

"Today's environment – while dynamic and inter-connected – is also volatile, posing business uncertainties and risks that can negatively impact productivity and revenues," said Annabella Yau, Executive, Global Technology Services, IBM China/Hong Kong Limited. "An end-to-end approach that encompasses planning, protection and recovery for business continuity is essential not only to ensure business uptime, but also to deliver on customer service levels, meet regulatory requirements, and free up resources to focus on developing their core business."

Relocated from its previous Chai Wan location to Fo Tan, the new Business Resilience Centre provides a full range of disaster recovery services, from IT and networking equipment which supports a multi-platform, heterogeneous environment based on client requirements, to the workplace recovery areas that are fully equipped with computer facilities to maintain office operations in the event of disasters.

The new centre was built based on a 'green blueprint' to provide the highest levels of energy efficiency. Key features of the centre include sophisticated air conditioning systems; enhanced air flow cooling capabilities supported by raised flooring; an Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) System and extended backup power supply to cope with possible prolonged power outages; fire protection and prevention systems; security systems with stringent physical security and surveillance system control; printing and communications facilities; and workplace recovery areas that can be leveraged as client command centres during disaster situations.

Based on IBM's established service model of "People", "Process" and "Technology", IBM Global Technology Services is committed to the highest level of service excellence for service competency, governance on external and internal standards, and advanced technology. The Business Resilience Centre, which operates according to these key principles, helps ensure service competency, meets industry standards such as ITIL for service performance, and leverages proven technology.

IBM BCRS solutions span areas such as consulting, business continuity planning, implementation and managed services, collectively empowering companies to take a proactive, pre-emptive approach to avoid, prepare and recover from any disruptions. They include:

• Resiliency Consultancy Services which help clients assess, design, implement and manage effective enterprise wide IT and infrastructure risk and business resilience programs;
• Managed Resiliency Services which avoid downtime and recovery costs by enabling infrastructure to support ongoing availability, performance and meet compliance objectives;
• Disaster Recovery Services which minimize the impact of unforseen events and disasters and leverage people, processes and technologies to allow businesses to respond more effectively to disruptions and minimize the cost and time associate with recovery;
• Information Protection Services – a suite of reliable, proven information protection services designed to help organisations automatically protect their critical business data to improve resiliency.

About IBM
For more information about IBM Hong Kong, go to: ibm.com/hk