Eastern promise

CXO. What potential hurdles exist for European CIOs looking to expand their operations into Asia?

Barry Walsh. It’s really the complexity of doing business in the Asian region. Asia comprises highly diverse markets. Each country has its own different stages of market development, and deregulation. The region comprises different languages, different cultures, different business practices and protocols.

You need to learn how to handle each country individually. Your approach and the way you are going to do business will not be the same whether you are looking at a regulated country or a fully open and deregulated one.

So it can be a challenging place to do business if you don’t know your way around.
A CIO has to consider how he’s going to overcome these problems and who he needs to speak to in order to address particular areas of concern. That’s where a company like SingTel comes in because it has its own footprint in the region and you can exercise its network of contacts and relationships.

CXO. How exactly has SingTel been of assistance in situations like this and what is it that makes the company stand out from its competitors?

BW. We’ve been operating in the Asia Pacific region for 128 years. So SingTel has deep experience, strong local and regional knowledge and excellent on-the-ground presence including our own offices staffed by our own people. Everything from service managers, network operations people, engineers, etc. There’s a whole spectrum of skill sets that enable quality service to be delivered to our customers.

Additionally we have a strong network of tried and tested partnerships and contacts to help us in service delivery. This is extremely important in Asia. All of these things combined help us to help our customers grow their business and extend their presence in the region.

Just to give you some key advantages that we have. In terms of on the-ground presence, we are operational in 19 countries in the region including 37 SingTel offices. A key advantage that we have is we own extensive submarine cable infrastructure around Asia Pacific. This is particularly important. The ownership that we have gives us the control and assurance of network capacity and the assurance of network diversity which enables us to guarantee service availability, resilience and service quality to our customers.

This is a vitally important point if you consider that AsiaPac is a region prone to earthquakes, tsunamis and any number of other powerful natural forces. Cable cuts in the region are something which the market has to deal with so our advantage of additional cable ownership and resilience takes us a long way to securing service to our customers.

Another aspect to this is the investment that we have in telcos around the region. Overseas’ investments are an integral part of SingTel’s strategy for growth. To throw some examples at you: in Australia we own 100 percent of Optus. We have other sizeable investments such as Globe Telecom in the Philippines, Bharti in India, AIS in Thailand, Telkomsel in Indonesia, PBTL in Bangladesh, Warid Telecom in Pakistan. That’s just a few examples, the list goes on. Again, this is important, because it gives us that additional level of control and capability to deliver service to the customer’s front door.

CXO. Would you recommend that European companies work with regional or global carriers when seeking to expand into the Asia-Pacific region?

BW. Well, we feel that all the advantages I’ve just pointed out make SingTel a more attractive option than the major global players. These global service providers, or GSPs as we refer to them, are pushing into Asia and that’s the obvious thing to do with the marketplace growing like it is. There are now great opportunities in the region.

But we’ve seen this before. Prior to the dotcom crash we saw some competitors investing, starting to put some points of presence in Asia and then pull back after or around the time that the market faltered. One of the key things where SingTel is concerned is the assurance that our customers have that we’re there to stay. We’re not going anywhere, because it’s our back yard so to speak. Asia remains the core competency that exists within the organisation.

To add to that, SingTel itself is pushing out globally so we are extending our presence in Europe and in the Americas and even in the Middle East. We are increasingly taking on a global service capability. But it’s our strengths in Asia that gives us that particular competitive advantage and compelling reasons for CIOs to choose SingTel rather than the GSPs.

CXO. What technologies do you have in place to assist the European companies in expanding to new territories?

BW. We have a full spectrum of managed business communication services that incorporate voice, data, video conferencing, internet, mobile, satellite, IT and data centre technologies and services.

So a customer coming to us can be assured that we’ve got the broadest portfolio of managed services to offer. As an example we would see our managed IP VPN integrating data, voice and video as a core service with which other services such as satellite or hosting capabilities can be combined. We can supply hosting services via as many as 37 Data Centres across the region. We have excellent Satellite coverage which helps connect our customers to areas not well served by fibre. In fact, SingTel was the first operator to offer a global Wide Area Network solution in Asia (IP WAN) that integrates IP-VPN, BGAN (Broadband Global Area Network) for mobile connectivity, satellite IP for land-based remote communications and maritime VSAT for “ship to shore” communications.
Another example is our Ethernet WAN service that provides a cost-effective managed end-to-end Ethernet solution. This is proving particularly interesting to the financial services community and we have many customers on board. We also deliver professional services including assisting our customers in analysing, prioritising and accelerating their network traffic to get best value for money.

CXO. What is the profile of a typical SingTel customer?

Our corporate customers range from Global Fortune 500 organisations through to mid-sized companies. Over the past few years, we have built up an impressive portfolio of multinational business customers that include well-known brands in the financial services industry, manufacturing, automotive, media, energy and electronics. Today the majority of European MNCs are SingTel customers.

About the contributor

Barry Walsh is Managing Director of SingTel Europe. He has over 20 years of expertise in the IT industry, of which 16 were spent in the global telecommunications sector. Prior to SingTel, he held various positions at Equant, including UK Sales Director and more recently Head of Eastern Europe Region. His background also includes Business Development for Sprint International and American Airlines.

Based at SingTel’s European Headquarters in London, Barry has responsibility for the company’s overall business performance in Europe. SingTel Europe delivers a portfolio of high quality communications services targeted at European multinational companies with business interests in the Asia Pacific region. Barry’s appointment reflects SingTel’s commitment to serving and growing its European customer base.