Utopia Inc., a global player in Enterprise Data Lifecycle Management solutions, announced the opening of its latest office in Singapore.
The Singapore office will be headed by Regional Director David Padgett. Mr. Padgett has almost 20 years of working experience with SAP, of which 10 have been in Asia Pacific.
Utopia, headquartered in the US, has offices in Canada, Europe, the Middle East, India, Australia and now Singapore as the Asia-Pacific headquarters.
“The opening of our office in Singapore not only enhances our local presence, but also demonstrates our commitment to support our customers and partners throughout the region,” said Narinder J. Singh, Singapore resident, co-founder and chief operating officer of Utopia, Inc.
“Through this office, we will be able to service, train and scale locally, with even faster deployment times at client sites,” said Mr. Padgett. “Utopia is known for our rigour around training, along with a scalable methodology that improves the results clients see from their data migration and data governance projects.”
“We are holding our first region-wide training program in Singapore, starting on Jan. 30, to train in-region Utopia data professionals in advanced techniques to meet the needs of our most demanding clients,” he added.
BIOTRONIK, a manufacturer of cardiovascular medical devices, will be opening their new regional headquarters in Singapore.
“BIOTRONIK will fully leverage the accelerated development of the Asia Pacific countries to further propel the industry-leading growth trajectory that the company has maintained during previous years despite the global economic downturn. BIOTRONIK’s further plans for full-scale business development in Asia Pacific will be coordinated by a team based out of the new headquarters in Asia,” said Dr. Werner Braun, Global Managing Director, BIOTRONIK.
Budget airline Jetstar is taking key steps to establish Singapore as its main business and operations hub. It shifted its information technology centre from Melbourne to Singapore a year ago, and its global sales team will make a similar move in the coming weeks, group chief executive officer Bruce Buchanan said.
Jetstar, which operates three carriers – in Australia, Singapore and Vietnam – is also finalising plans to build its own aircraft hangar at Changi Airport (expected by 2014).
The airline currently has about 1,000 employees in Singapore and 20 planes parked at Changi Airport. Headcount is expected to grow by up to 200 a year, over the next few years.
The Economic Development Board (EDB) expects fixed asset investments in Singapore to reach $13 billion-$15 billion in 2012 - which would most likely top 2011′s $13.7 billion. When the slew of projects secured in 2011 are fully implemented, they are expected to contribute $15.5 billion to Singapore’s gross domestic product a year and create about 20,300 skilled jobs.
Much of the hum behind 2012′s higher fixed asset investments will stream in from traditional heavylifters: chemicals and electronics. Singapore will also keep on wooing high-value, complex-manufacturing outfits and investments.
