- Largest online SME community
- Everything-as-a-Service solutions for businesses and governments
- Innovative solutions for mobile workforce
- Asia Pacific’s first satellite integrated network management system
Singapore, 1 November 2012 – Singapore Telecommunications Limited (Singtel) today launched a suite of innovative ICT solutions that will help large corporations, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and governments improve productivity, increase agility and lower their operating costs effectively. These innovations are part of the 200 solutions that will be showcased at the biennial i.luminate event at Resorts World Sentosa on Tuesday, 6 November 2012.
With the focus on ‘Powering the Future’, i.luminate 2012 highlights the challenges in today’s fast-changing world and the role that Singtel Group Enterprise plays in harnessing ICT innovations to partner businesses and governments for success.
Mr Bill Chang, Chief Executive Officer of Group Enterprise said: “In today’s volatile business environment, we face rapid changes in technology and workforce trends. These developments have become the ‘new normal’. As the premier ICT innovation platform in Asia, i.luminate 2012 brings together industry leaders to visualise the unlimited possibilities of tomorrow. Through innovations, smart partnerships and co-creation, we can anticipate and help businesses and governments to proactively meet the challenges and tap new opportunities. The solutions which we unveil at i.luminate 2012 will help customers drive greater success by enhancing their agility, increasing productivity and lowering costs.”
Mr Chang added: “For SMEs, the development of the myBusiness online resource portal demonstrates our commitment in partnering them to grow. One of the innovative features of the portal is a virtual market place where SMEs can take up job tenders, pitch for business, or join others to bulk-buy services or products. By doing all these on a single portal, SME owners can save time, cost and resources and allocate them to more productive uses. In addition, this portal will feature thought leadership and best practices by SMEs who have successfully transformed their operations and capabilities through innovative use of ICT services and solutions.”
“In the enterprise and government space, we are bringing together a suite of communications and collaboration solutions to offer Everything-as-a-Service through trusted Cloud based technologies and services. With a mobile collaboration tool like the OneTouch and the Unified-Communications-as-a-Service, an enterprise's workforce will be fully mobile and empowered to work and collaborate, on-demand, anywhere, anytime, on any device,” Mr Chang said.
i.luminate 2012 marks the first time that the Singtel’s Business Group, NCS, Enterprise Data and Managed Services (EDMS) and Optus Business are jointly presenting their capabilities as one entity under the newly formed Group Enterprise.
Mr Chang said: “This organisational transformation has enabled us to combine our core competencies to set us apart from the rest of the field. By leveraging our leadership scale in Asia Pacific, deep ICT expertise and drive for innovation, we can efficiently and effectively deliver one-stop ICT experience for all our customers. This is a unique and powerful value proposition to customers in these challenging times.”
PLEASE SEE THE APPENDIX FOR INFORMATION ON THE SOLUTIONS
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APPENDIX: GROUP ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS LAUNCHED
1. ICT solution for SM
i) myBusiness
The future for SMEs is about leveraging the cloud, gaining greater insights and connecting with communities to grow their businesses. To empower SMEs to harness emerging technological trends, Group Enterprise is launching myBusiness portal to cater to their needs. myBusiness portal aims to create deeper interactions to help SMEs succeed in the market place.
The main features of myBusiness portal are:
- Thought leadership: myBusiness provides a one-stop resource for the online SME community by delivering thought leadership on how SMEs can keep abreast of the latest developments in the market. Users can also sharpen their business acumen by learning from successful business case studies.
- Trading Board: myBusiness provides the platform that assembles the SMEs as a cloud community to help them leverage their scale and capabilities. This enables them to better exploit business opportunities and reduce costs. The trading board aggregates jobs, tenders and Requests for Proposals from government agencies for the participation of the SMEs. The trading board is also an e-procurement platform where SMEs come together to purchase services or products in bulk. This helps them save costs as well as offer other SMEs the opportunity to provide their services.
- Software-as-a-Service: With no capital expenditure needed to use the cloud apps, users are only charged for the software they use. In addition, SMEs can scale up or down the number of users according to their business needs. This helps them to reduce operating costs, improve productivity, increase agility and profitability.
- Grants: myBusiness also provides comprehensive information on government grants and credit schemes to help SMEs utilise these financial resources to grow their businesses.
With 500,000 visits per month, myBusiness is currently the largest all-in-one online SME community in Singapore.
2. ICT solutions for enterprises and governments
i. Everything-as-a-Service (XaaS) solutions
Everything-as-a-Service (XaaS) is defined as the availability of services such as, but not limited to, communications, collaboration, connectivity, storage and security, being accessible online across a network.
a. Unified Communications and Collaboration-as-a-Service
Unified Communications is defined as the provision of integrated communications, including telephony, video conferencing, instant messaging, social media, email, voicemail and data. As an extension of XaaS, Group Enterprise will be coming up with Unified Communications and Collaboration-as-a-Service to address enterprises’ need for scalable, on-demand integrated communications.
As a cloud-based application, the enterprise grade solution enables enterprises to enjoy seamless and integrated communications and Collaboration on fixed or mobile devices. Hosted at Singtel’s secure data centres, this solution can be provisioned anywhere, anytime and on any device. Enterprises can adopt an asset-light business model and enjoy the benefit of the elastic scalability of the service enhance agility and increase their productivity. Since the dedicated enterprise applications reside in Singtel’s very own cloud, enterprises can activate employee subscriptions to some or all of the available services, as needed, and pay for the services on a per-user basis.
The solution comes with a Mobile Unified Communication Client for the mobile workforce. This solution is designed to extend business telephony solutions to mobile handsets allowing them to access advanced Unified Communications and Collaboration features, whether workers are in or away the office.
a. Media Delivery Platform-as-a-Service
Enterprises are increasingly adopting new media tools and solutions, such as online video, to reach, engage and communicate with their customers. With the Singtel Media Delivery-as-a-Service (MDPaaS), enterprises have access to a user-friendly, cost-effective and scalable solution to deliver engaging communications directly to their target audiences.
The MDPaaS encodes digital media contents into high-quality video which is suitable for streaming over the internet to multiple devices and across different platforms. The audiences or customers of the enterprises can view the video contents on any connected digital device such as mobile phones, tablets and computers on demand. From the viewer analytics generated by this solution, enterprises can gain insights into their audiences which could help them customise their future contents.
An example of the use of this service was the recent live video streaming of the arrival of the two giant pandas Kai Kai and Jia Jia to Singapore (the video can be viewed at http://pandas.riversafari.com.sg/panda-tv-3.html).
By providing MDP as a cloud application, Group Enterprise is enabling enterprises can use the MDP to publish and manage their digital contents online using a single platform, anytime, anywhere.
b. i-PhoneNet mobile client
Supported on iPhone and Android devices, Singtel’s iPhoneNet mobile client service allows users to make and receive call on smartphones using an assigned i-PhoneNet number and save up to 90% on roaming bills.
Using Wi-Fi connections, a user who dials on the launched app to make a call back to Singapore will only be charged Singapore’s local fixed rates. Calls made to his office in Singapore by extension dialling will not be charged. Similarly, the user will not be charged for taking incoming calls from Singapore. For 3G connection, the applicable data roaming charges shall be applicable-1 hour of talk time only takes up 13.5MB of the data plan.
This solution is ideal for Small Office, Home Office set ups, start-ups and growing businesses as it removes the need for office desk phones. Users can also protect their personal mobile phone number identity for business calls. As calls are charged directly to office bills, there is no hassle of making claims for users. Users also enjoy the convenience of viewing call history, access office contacts and the ability to control call settings on this application.
The unprecedented mobility offered by the i-PhoneNet service enables executives the ability to work on the road and keep in touch with their offices.
c. Connectivity-as-a-Service
Connectivity-as-a-Service is a solution which enables an enterprise to tap fast, temporary bandwidth upgrades via a convenient self-service online portal.
With quick activation times, as fast as 5 minutes in Singapore, and 24 hours globally, Connectivity-as-a-Service is a swift and convenient solution for enterprises which need a surge in bandwidth to cater for unforeseen or seasonal requirements.
As this service is based on daily rates, enterprises pay only for what they use. This removes the need to incur needless cost for unused fixed bandwidth services.
As part of Singtel’s PowerON suite of cloud-based services and solutions, this service is available for Singtel Meg@POP, MetroEthernet and SingNet services in Singapore, and for customers in more than 10 countries via the ConnectPlus Internet Protocol Virtual Private Network (IP VPN) to provide a truly flexible global network solution for global businesses.
In 2013, Group Enterprise will launch the Connectivity-as-a-Service for its IP VPN services to more countries in Southeast Asia, China, Australia and New Zealand.
Group Enterprise will also be launching Connectivity-as-a-Service for its ConnectPlus Ethernet Line, for customers which require greater flexibility for their dedicated point to point Ethernet connections.
3. ICT innovations for the mobile workforce
With today’s workforce evolving into a more global and mobile one, employees’ need to remain connected to their corporate resources and to each other takes on an added emphasis. Group Enterprise envisages that the future work domain will be a seamless one where employees work, communicate and collaborate on the move, anywhere and anytime. To address the emerging enterprise needs for collaboration and communications on the move, Group Enterprise is launching two solutions.
a. OneTouchTM
OneTouchTM is an interactive and integrated mobile collaboration solution which enables enterprises to provide their clients with a collaborative and engaging experience. Users can use its telephony and email as well as access the enterprise’s applications and information such as customer data, content and services from its backend systems, while they are on the move.
By providing a ‘swipe and drop’ intuitive interface and integrating the application to an enterprise’s backend database, such as customer relationship management and marketing, an executive will be able to meet his customer on-site and engage in the entire sales process, using a single mobile device. This interactive platform can be used to present product catalogues intuitively, fill forms, generate proposals and collaborate with clients and colleagues. A suite of productivity tools facilitates easy communication, enterprise social collaboration and personal content management.
OneTouchTM incorporates location-based mobility, social network, and analytics to function as a portable collaborative suitcase. By enabling one to accomplish in mere minutes what used to take hours or days, OneTouchTM is an indispensable tool that helps enterprises to raise the productivity of their mobile workforce.
b. Global WiFi Roaming Service
Group Enterprise is the first operator in Singapore to offer a global WiFi roaming service. Enterprises which subscribe to this service will enjoy lower WiFi roaming costs across 1.1 million hotspots in 113 countries and territories.
The service also provides subscribers with unlimited data connectivity when they are overseas. With fixed subscription fees per month, subscribers will not be faced with sudden and hefty bills.
The global WiFi roaming service complements Singtel’s mobile DataRoam plan and provides subscribers who use both services with the assurance of always-on internet connection, anywhere, anytime.
4. ICT innovation for satellites
i. Singtel Integrated Satellite Network Management System (iNMS)
The Singtel Integrated Satellite Network Management System (iNMS) is Asia Pacific’s first mobile platform for an enterprise to monitor, detect, report and manage multiple satellite broadband services concurrently. These capabilities set the Singtel iNMS apart from existing systems in the market, which typically cater to just a single satellite service.
Supporting both maritime and land services, Singtel iNMS is an on-demand portal that comprises an intelligent dashboard which provides a single point of access for enterprises to monitor their satellite broadband networks, devices and fleet.
This solution is able to detect faults or disconnections in the satellite broadband service and notify users in real-time via email and SMS. This capability helps enterprises to identify and prioritise real-time satellite connectivity issues for quicker problem resolution.
Through performance monitoring, spectrum analysis and service level management, the Singtel iNMS offers enterprises the reliability and convenience of managing multiple satellite broadband subscriptions.
