Hitachi upbeat about local industry

Hitachi Data Systems Sdn Bhd is optimistic on Malaysia's communications, media and entertainment (CME) industry outlook given its increasing sophistication and large market size. Managing Director Wee Kai Teck said the industry is the second largest vertical market in Malaysia following the banking sector, with a market size of US$9.8 million in 2011 and US$5.4 million in the first half of 2012 alone for its disk storage systems market. "Although Malaysia's CME industry is still relatively small compared with Hollywood, it is a growing key vertical with media content rapidly growing in format, size and density. "It is obvious that the industry here is maturing. Blockbuster movie Life Of Pi's win at the Oscar Awards for Visual Effects is proof of that as Malaysian talents were behind the visual effects for the movie," he told Bernama. Meanwhile, Hitachi Data Systems Corp, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd, plans to focus on expanding its business in Malaysia and Indonesia given the two countries' emerging market status and healthy economy. Senior Solutions Marketing Manager for Communications, Media and Entertainment Jeff Greenwald said the company has aggressive targets in terms of revenue growth in this region, but declined to elaborate further. "We have the solutions to help clients efficiently store and manage complex visual effects, at the same time reducing operational cost, migrate data even faster and enable more reiterations of shots because renders are completed more quickly," he added. Hitachi Data Systems has 12 solutions for customers to store and compute their visual effects, including with the Hitachi NAS Platform.