It's a long way from Scotts Valley to the lush and balmy tropics of Singapore, where Creative Technology has its headquarters. From the historic, colonial era Raffles Hotel, it's a 30 minute ride on Singapore's sleek transit system - a ride into a new millennium - to Creative Resource, the brand-new world headquarters for Creative Technology.

Founded in 1981, with the vision that multimedia would revolutionize the way people interact with their PCs, Creative has become one of Singapore's true success stories, and is now a global corporation with current revenues of over $1.3B and about 5,000 employees worldwide.

The Singapore headquarters is also home to several design and development teams, as well as manufacturing and production facilities. Creative also maintains production facilities in Malaysia and other countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Closer to home, Creative's marketing and sales operation, Creative Labs, is based in Milpitas, in the heart of Silicon Valley.

The Creative Advanced Technology Center (Creative ATC), just over the hill in Scotts Valley, is charged with new technology development, including chip design, audio research, system design and software.

Other Creative operations in the US include Creative Labs, Malvern, in Pennsylvania, primarily responsible for OEM designs, and Creative's technical support center in Oklahoma. Creative also has a major presence in Europe through its Creative Labs Europe (CLE) operation, as well as sales offices worldwide.

Creative's subsidiary Cambridge Soundworks manufactures and sells a range of high-end speakers for home stereos, home theaters, car stereos and multimedia systems under its own brand. Emu-Ensoniq is Creative's electronic musical instrument division, with a broad range of electronic music production and recording equipment for the professional musician. Another subsidiary, Broadxent, provides a wide range of communications equipment from stand-alone modems to corporate rack mounted data/fax, T-1 and DSL solutions.

Creative also maintains a strong on-line presence through its own website at www.creative.com, and also www.soundblaster.com, as well as on-line consumer hi-fi outlets at www.hifi.com and www.herhifi.com. Creative hosts on-line music for the Asia-Pacific market at www.soundbuzz.com, and innovative sites for new Creative technology at www.nomadworld.com and www.lava.com.

Best known in the PC world for its groundbreaking SoundBlaster series of sound cards, as well as a line of high-performance graphics cards and web-camera products, and leading-edge audio technology for surround-sound home theater, Creative is now the leading supplier of consumer personal digital entertainment (PDE) products.

Last year, in a forward-thinking move, Creative introduced the Nomad - a tiny, pocket-sized portable MP3 player, capable of storing an hour's worth of high quality music. Since then, in part due to Napster's controversial success, MP3 has exploded as a medium for music storage and distribution. Creative seized the opportunity and developed the Jukebox, with 100 times the storage capacity of the original Nomad - as much as most people's entire CD collection, and which is reaping critical acclaim from reviewers and public alike. The Jukebox shot to the top of the best-sellers charts, becoming the number one consumer digital audio player in the US within two weeks of shipping.

Today, Creative is working on the next step, to bring new and exciting levels of performance and capability, and true convergence of audio and video technology, communications, and entertainment to the home and portable markets.