(Hong Kong, December 11, 2003) Diyixian.com Ltd, Greater China’s largest IP private network service provider, rolled out today one of the industry’s most richly featured maintenance solutions for the local service sectors as part of the company’s ongoing initiatives to help Hong Kong enterprises and professional firms consolidate their presence in the mainland market.

Under the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) recently concluded between Hong Kong and the mainland, the latter will liberalize and lower entry thresholds for 17 service sectors. Capitalizing on preferential measures on trade in service, a number of service sectors including banking, insurance and logistics in Hong Kong will provide additional market access to the mainland. For all the opportunities ahead, however, the business environment beyond the border remains tough and competitive. Local businesses already established across the border still strive to increase market share and deliver better service. As competition increases and tugs at customer loyalty, network reliability will become a critical differentiator.

One noteworthy fact is that application availability, security and prioritization in China are more often than not threatened by server failure and poor network connectivity. Be it internal requirements such as the timely provision of mission-critical applications, or outward facing requirements such as web hosting and e-commerce, the very importance of network reliability and stability mandates fast and predictive maintenance services.

Solving these problems requires an integrated approach to maintenance services. “Diyixian’s proprietary maintenance solution is uniquely positioned to provide these integrated services.” said Lap Man, CEO of Diyixian. “We hope that this solution may help companies migrating across the border to reduce their network maintenance resources and operating costs in face of stiffer competition ahead. Our solution has won a vote of confidence from Soonest Express (HK) and other clients who have recently received prompt and professional services from our expert service teams stationed in China.” The solution combines preventive maintenance with real time monitoring to ensure end user systems are operating at peak performance and are protected from crashes, conflicts and malicious attacks. It also features proactive maintenance services with prompt technical support provided by mission-critical support centres throughout the region.

“Current network maintenance solutions are not enough to meet the new cost-reduction demands that stiff competition and consumers are putting on the industry.” Lap Man added. “Drawing on their broad experience with a long list of IP private network clients such as “K” Line, Soonest Express, Wintarget and Allied Telesis, our network specialists break new ground today in providing an innovative solution to effectively manage the cost associated with maintaining enterprise networks in China, thereby facilitating the market entry of Hong Kong-based enterprises so that they may “occupy the field” before an massive incursion of overseas competitors.”

This service initially applies to Hong Kong and the mainland cities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Dongguan and will later extend to other cities in the Pearl/Yangtze River Delta region and Beijing. Meanwhile, clients mentioned above have deployed the maintenance solutions for a broad range of their mainland operations, reaping the benefits of an over 100-strong specialist team available region wide on a 24 x 7 basis.