Speech by Mr Lim HNG kiang, Minister for Trade AND Industry, at the opening of EMC SOUTH ASIA DEVELOPMENT LAB (SADL) at Changi Business Parkon WEDNESDAY, 7 NOVEMBER 2007, 10.15 AM

Your Excellency Patricia Herbold, Ambassador of the US in Singapore,

Mr William J Teuber Jr, Vice Chairman of EMC,

Mr Steven Leonard, President Asia Pacific & Japan of EMC Corporation,

Mr Ron Goh, President South Asia of EMC Corporation,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Good morning

I am pleased to be here to open EMC’s South Asia Development Lab (SADL) at Singapore’s Changi Business Park. EMC is the world leader for the manufacture of external disk storage systems with almost 25% of world market share. Today's opening is significant as Singapore will house SADL’s three major laboratories: EMC’s first and largest E-Lab outside of the United States; a disk drive qualification laboratory; and a proof-of-concept laboratory.

Digital information surrounds us. Airwaves, telephone communications, and computer cables are humming. YouTube, a company that did not exist just a few years ago, hosts 100 million video streams a day. Second Life has taken off phenomenally. All this information multiplies and proliferates at an unprecedented rate. According to IDC, a leading provider of market intelligence for the information technology sector, the amount of information in the digital universe will increase more than 6 fold by 2010.We can expect global storage demand to grow in tandem.

This development has implications on schools, factories and businesses worldwide concerning information management, security, search, and storage. Singapore, with its strong intellectual property protection, IT infrastructure and transparent legal environment, is able to partner EMC to provide solutions to businesses. EMC’s establishment of SADL in Singapore is testimony to the value that Singapore offers in the development of new information storage and management solutions for the Asia Pacific region.

Singapore is home to some of the world’s largest hard disk media manufacturers, accounting for 25 per cent of worldwide shipment. We are also the leading manufacturers of enterprise hard disk drives (HDDs), accounting for close to 80 per cent of global enterprise HDD shipments. This has established a strong foundation for our position as a leading hub in data storage solutions for the past two decades. Singapore is today home to industry giants such as Seagate, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, Hoya and Showa Denko.

SADL will enhance Singapore’s capabilities in network storage solutions and further establish our position as a base for high-tech engineering. As the world’s leading developer and provider of information infrastructure technology and solutions, EMC will be able to help companies operating in Singapore to keep their essential digital information safe, protected and available.

Singapore’s strengths in data storage allow us to serve as a gateway to the expanding Asia Pacific market for data storage and management solutions. According to Gartner, this region was by far the fastest growing region for external controller based or ECB storage globally. Our role as a major global telecommunications hub of international capacity where regional submarine cable systems and international cable systems interconnect contributes to this development.

Today, our activities in the hard disk drive sector extend beyond manufacturing. We are seeing a notable increase in R&D activities from companies. This is in addition to the work of research institutes such as the Data Storage Institute, which focuses on research for storage solutions. With Singapore’s strong position in the data storage sector, and the development of the digital universe, I am confident that more of such investments will be undertaken here, creating many exciting and rewarding jobs. .

I understand that SADL will collaborate with our local tertiary institutions and the Data Storage Institute to employ up to 100 R&D engineers. This fits in closely with Singapore’s push towards R&D, which is crucial to bringing the economy to the next level of excellence.

On this note, let me congratulate the management and the staff of EMC on the opening of its new laboratory and wish you all great success. It is now my pleasure to declare EMC’s South Asia Development Laboratory open. Thank you.