Tiens Group Co., Ltd., a biotechnology company specializing in manufacturing, retail and international trade, and IBM have entered into strategic partnership to build an advanced information technology (IT) infrastructure platform to support Tiens Group's aggressive business growth plan in the global marketplace.

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Under the agreement, IBM will provide Tiens International Health Industrial Park (Tiens Industrial Park, or the Park) with integration service, technical support and technology including servers, network equipment, storage systems and security solutions for building and maintenance of an IT infrastructure platform to support the Group's management and business operations.

As part of its strategy to grow the company as one of the world's top 500 companies, Tiens Group has invested 7 billion yuan to set up the Tiens Industrial Park, an integrated base for research and development, manufacturing and production, international logistics and distribution, and training and education. The manufacturing base will be able to make products worth 30 billion yuan a year. The construction of the Park, where the Tiens Group's headquarters will be located, will be completed next year.

"Since its inception in 1995, Tiens Group has been placing much focus on information technology as part of the company's growth strategy," said Bai Ping, Vice President, Global Marketing, Human Resources and General Administration & Executive President, China Region, Tiens Group. "We have selected IBM as our long term, strategic partner as IBM brings decades of IT expertise and industry experiences to pull together a world-class technology platform, which will help improve the company's operational efficiency and competitiveness in the marketplace."

This enterprise-wide IT initiative includes migration and relocation of the Group's existing data center and servers to the Park, construction of the Park's intelligent data, voice and unified communications network, and implementation of an end-to-end network security solution. To meet the anticipated rising business requirements, Tiens Group has recently purchased an IBM System x3850 M2, an enterprise server that supports the Group's "go green" strategy.

IBM Global Technology Services team will accelerate virtualization and consolidation of the group's existing IBM UNIX servers in Tiens' headquarters in the Tianjin City, as well as its overseas offices in the U.K. and Singapore. The team will also optimize the group's storage environment to reduce the overall cost of storage hardware through virtualized storage provisioning.

This project is expected to reduce daily operating costs through reduction in power consumption while improving scalability and capacity of the servers.

"IBM is proud to be Tiens Group's key partner as the group is executing against a strategy of turning the company into one of the largest 500 companies in the world," said Janet Ang, Vice President, Integrated Technology Services, Global Technology Services, IBM Greater China Group. "We are committed to supporting Tiens Group build a smart operations base in Tiens International Health Park."

  The agreement was signed in July 2009.

  About the Tiens Group

Since its founding in 1995, Tiens Group has been growing by leaps and bounds -- it was listed in NASDAQ and AMEX in 2003 and 2005 respectively. Today, it has direct offices in 110 countries and its products are sold in more than 190 countries. For more information about Tiens Group, visit www.tiens.com

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SOURCE: IBM