For CDC's CRM, China's Number Two!

This reporter was as surprised as the next guy to see Communist China's flag flying over the White House and the Empire State Building turned into a large Chinese lighthouse.

So I put on my made in China t-shirt, fired up my made in China computer, cleared my kid's made in China toy cars off my made in China chair and sat down with a cup of green tea in a china cup and fired off a blog comment bitching about it.

CDC Software sees a gold mine at the end of the ol' Silk Road these days, having recently added seven resellers to its Global Partner Program since it thinks China will be the second largest market, in terms of revenue, for the company in the next few years.

"As of the second quarter of 2009, approximately 50 percent of CDC Software’s sales were generated from North America followed by 30 percent from EMEA," company officials noted.

That's a pretty far cry from just four years ago, when as Customer Think's Sampson Lee pointed out, IDC China pegged the Chinese CRM market at $25 million, accurately describing spending on CRM as "insignificant compared to the world CRM market."

CDC's new partners include a firm reselling Pivotal CRM to jewelry and fashion manufacturing in Hong Kong and South China, one reselling CDC HRM and Ross ERP to the chemical manufacturing markets in East China and one, Radica System, an e-mail marketing vendor, planning to bundle Pivotal CRM with their e-mail marketing product to the large enterprise market in Hong Kong.

CDC Software has also signed a term sheet to acquire up to a 51 percent stake in Beijing-based Hejia Software Technology, an ERP software provider in China. CDC itself includes China.com, focused on portals for the greater China markets.