'Our Macau team is also focused on growing IBM's partner ecosystem in the city to provide local knowledge and tailor-made solutions,' said Ho. 'The Macau team consists over 10 professional sales, services and support staff focused on growing IBM's partner ecosystem in the city to provide local knowledge and tailor-made solutions.'

'We see our growth in Macau coming from three main sectors: entertainment and tourism, government and banking,' said Ho. 'Our presence in Macau reflects our confidence in Macau's growth potential...IT services and solutions that help address the needs of Macau's booming tourism and gaming industry, will help businesses there to innovate, and to position Macau as Asia's entertainment hub.'

'We foresee the tourism and gaming industries as major growth areas, including gaming, hotel, catering and retail'all of which are major driving forces in Macau's economy,' said Keith Chang, business development manager, Microsoft Macau, whose office opened in June 2004. 'With the Macau government's 'e-Macau' initiative we see the public sector as another area of growth.'

'Our establishment of a local Macau office as a long-term commitment to our customers and partners...with onsite engineers providing Premier Support service to enterprise customers here, said Chang. 'I believe Microsoft is the first major software vendor with a comprehensive local support infrastructure in Macau.'

'At the moment, we have four full time staff at the Macau office while all the staff at the HK office are mobilized to support the work at Macau,' said Chang. 'Most of the IT products and skills come from HK. The local SI is focused on 'box moving',' he added, saying that most of his firm's 'public sector customers have in-house developers to develop tailor made in-house applications.'