DATA-center operator IP Converge Data Center Inc.’s partnership with web-based American firm Salesforce may contribute to half of its revenue contribution to parent company IPVG Corp., its president told the BusinessMirror.

“We’re expecting half of the 30 percent of our revenue contribution to IPVG to come from this,” Reynaldo Huergas said on Wednesday.

According to IPVG, IP Converge Data Center’s year-on-year revenue increased by 12 percent to P98 million for the first quarter of this year from P87.4 million in the same period last year.

“This is in spite of the margin compression in its bandwidth services as a result of a joint venture entered with First Cagayan,” IPVG said in its report to the Philippine Stock Exchange.

Huergas said the other half of the firm’s revenue would come from their data-center operations.

He added that the data center the company is building inside the Cagayan Special Economic Zone and Free Port in Cagayan, northern Philippines, is expected to go online in the first quarter of 2009. The building will be finished before the end of this year.

A third center will be built in Manila, also this year.

On Monday, IPVG told the stock exchange it will borrow P120 million for IP Converge’s capital expenditures.

Huergas told the BusinessMirror that IP Converge’s partnership with San Francisco, California-based Salesforce Com Inc., that began last year, would contribute revenue via licenses sold from the Philippines.

Salesforce sells a customer-relations management product called “software-as-a-service” (SaaS)—over the Internet on a subscription basis.

The product does not require the buyer to buy off-the-shelf software, install and run the application on their own computers. Hence, SaaS eases the burden of software maintenance and of being tied to a five-year contract, Salesforce regional head Steve Russell said.

Russell, Salesforce’s president for Asia-Pacific and India, cited Saas growth in the region as phenomenal, driving them to put up a data-center in Singapore.

This data center houses the computers that provide the software online. Publicly-listed firm IPVG, IP Converge’s parent firm, also operates a data center in Singapore.

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THE Wellex Group of plastics king William Gatchalian is branching into mining through a P473-million beneficiated nickel ore production project in Dinagat, northern Mindanao.

DATA-center operator IP Converge Data Center Inc.’s partnership with web-based American firm Salesforce may contribute to half of its revenue contribution to parent company IPVG Corp., its president told the BusinessMirror.

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