Red Hat Sees Potential In Malaysia, Sets Up Unit To Augment Presence

KUALA LUMPUR, July 29 (Bernama) -- Global open source solutions provider, Red Hat Inc sees potential in the Malaysian market by opening a subsidiary, Red Hat Malaysia Sdn Bhd, to further strengthen its presence in the country. Senior Director and General Manager, ASEAN, Damien Wong Yok Weng said Malaysia was an important market for the company and it had much potential for the adoption of open source technology across industries. Speaking to reporters at the official announcement of the subsidiary here, Wednesday, Wong said in terms of expansion strategy, Red Hat had looked at all the surrounding factors in the information technology (IT) industry. Citing a report from IT research and advisory firm Gartner, he said IT spending in Malaysia was forecast to grow by 7.5 per cent in 2015 versus a decline in global IT spending of -1.5 per cent, which showed the desire of the Malaysian organisation to leverage on IT to become more effective and successful. "Besides that, the support we received from the Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) for growing the Red Hat skills certification plus growing adoption in the public sector for open source are among the factors we have considered to strengthen our position here," he added. Red Hat, an American-based company listed on the New York Stock Exchange, is a software company that provides open-source software products, including cloud, virtualisation, storage and middleware technologies. Digitalisation around the world is impacting the way we work, live and play, Wong said, adding big industry players continued to leverage innovation on big data, mobile and cloud technologies which were driven by open source and its innovation. Being the leader in these areas, he said Red Hat continued to register double-digit revenue growth and recorded 53 quarters of revenue growth consecutively up to the first quarter of its financial year (FY) 2016 ended May 31, 2015. For FY15 ended Feb 28, 2015, Red Hat registered US$1.79 billion in revenue from US$1.53 billion a year ago. "Our traditional business that is infrastructure related offerings grew 15 per cent in FY15 while our emerging technology portfolio grew at 45 per cent, larger than any other open source based companies in the world," he said. Wong said Asia Pacific contributed about 20 per cent to global revenue in the last quarter, which was more than last year, indicating an aggressive growth. -- BERNAMA