HONG KONG, August 30, 2005 – In a recent trade exhibition activity in Dalian City, People's Republic of China (PRC), Mr. Winston Wong, Executive Vice President of Azeus Group of Companies, revealed the company’s plan for expanding IT outsourcing business in the Northeast Asian market including Japan by leveraging its office in Dalian as a service centre.

“In an attempt to break into the Japanese IT outsourcing market, Azeus took a strategic move in 2003 by establishing an offshore development centre in Dalian.” said Wong. The Dalian offshore development centre, assessed at Level 5 process maturity – the highest under the (Capability Maturity Model) CMM level 5, can provide a wide range of IT consultancy services and IT outsourcing services for Chinese and Japanese markets.

Since the early 1930s, Dalian has been an international trading center and an established critical link in Sino-Japanese trade. Its proximity to Japan, just an hour's flight journey, made it a favorite spot for Japanese to do business. Dalian has a large Japanese-speaking population. The city produces some 110,000 trained IT professionals every year, which made the city a good choice for Azeus to establish its IT outsourcing service centre.

“Compared with other cities in China, Dalian is obviously more advantageous due to its close ties with Japan. Nonetheless, it has an established state-of-the-art IT infrastructure, software park facilities, and government’s support in taxation, training and financing benefits, which has attracted around 10,000 foreign-invested enterprises to set up their offshore operation arm in the city. The more than 20 foreign enterprises in the city belong to the world's top 500 enterprises and leading Japanese corporations. This draws more overseas IT professionals and management talents to build this city into an outsourcing hub for information technology,” explained Wong. “With an ample supply of IT talents, IT companies can have a greater scalability in expanding their outsourcing business. And aside from the existing 40 Azeus staff in the Dalian Offshore Development Centre, we are planning to hire an additional 100 staff to meet the increasing needs of our clients.”

“Besides Dalian, we are also exploring ways to develop our IT services centre in Shenyang, another city in China where the software industry has potential. To cope with the needs of potential clients from mainland China and Japanese market, we need to search for more resources to strengthen our competitiveness. Shenyang is another good choice for us.” said Wong.

Established in 1991, Azeus is a leading provider of IT consultancy services. With headquarters in Hong Kong, Azeus has established offshore software development centres in the Philippines and China. In February 2005, Azeus acquired BIGontheNet, an award-winning provider of eBusiness software solutions based in Singapore.

Aside from designing and implementing a wide range of IT software and systems to fulfill the outsourcing needs of customers, Azeus also provides maintenance and support services. Azeus has won the first and thus far, only business outsourcing project from the Hong Kong government, covering IT consulting, IT maintenance and support, as well as office operations and support services.

Azeus is appraised at the highest level of process maturity under the CMMI-SW model, endorsing its commitment to deliver high quality work. Its emphasis on high quality solutions has enabled the Group to build a solid track record backed by completion of over 100 projects for both the public and commercial sectors.