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Despite the constant pressure of being the incumbent number one telecom provider in Hong Kong, PCCW has had a banner year with growth across its widening range of corporate communications services. This growth has been capped by winning four of this year's Computerworld Hong Kong awards in the categories of: Managed Services; Data and Telecoms Provider; Managed Security Services and Business ISP.
This represents PCCW's best ever showing at the awards and clearly demonstrates their growing strength of offering across the whole enterprise market.
According to Gary Chow, managing director of PCCW Commercial Group, Hong Kong's buoyant economy in the past year has generated strong demand for data services. "Local businesses have deployed an increasing number of bandwidth-hungry applications to serve their growing commercial needs," said Chow. This overall growth has led to more business premises requiring data connectivity, especially in the retail industry, which saw a rise in the number of new outlets opened, he added.
PCCW has been keen to stress it's delivery of Hong Kong's first "Quadruple-Play Experience." Chow noted that customers are now able to tailor their own digital working experience while on the move and this has been enabled only by PCCW's recent ability to provide innovative services across the four platforms of fixed line, broadband Internet Access, TV and mobile. |
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Specific services that ride on top of PCCW's broadband offering include:
• PCCW EasyWatch Enterprise Solution - Further innovation from PCCW Mobile gave rise to the Easy Watch service: it provides business customers with a one-stop remote monitoring and communication package that enables users via different platforms (internet and mobile) to keep an eye on their business premises effectively and with the utmost convenience.
• PCCW WiFi - our 3000 WiFi hotspots help to ensure business continuity for all customers, they can get in touch with their business partners anytime and anywhere
• NOW Broadband TV - the largest pay-TV operation of it's kind in the world which is now also tailored to enterprise market with NOW on mobile followed by the coming launch on PCCW Mobile
• PCCW FiberNET - Set the standard for the next generation enterprise networks with unparallel reliability, flexibility and throughput.
Network drill-down
PCCW's managed services offerings to the enterprises are focused on providing a macro to micro view on the overall network infrastructure, which tells customers how to improve IT performance from the perspective of the company, the departments and the individuals. "Traditionally, enterprise networks are managed internally and supported by several equipment or service vendors who usually are not able to pinpoint exactly how to address performance issues from the perspective of an overall network infrastructure view," said Bill Wong, AVP, Enterprise Solutions, Commercial Group, PCCW.
Wong added that PCCW's Network Managed Service can help take a complete view of the network to help identify and resolve key performance issues. "This service can benefit all types of companies, specifically who are managing multiple branches; or if you are a company looking for industry benchmarking on network management," said Wong.
Chow also noted how the SME market has grown significantly with PCCW adding new value-added services to its Business Netvigator offering. He pointed to the plan to transform Hong Kong into a "Wi-Fi city" as a commitment to adding value to customers. "The number of wireless hotspots will be increased from 400 to 3,000 to provide true seamless mobility," said Chow.
Growing expectations
Another significant service for SMEs is in the managed network services space and this provides a one-stop total solution that helps customers find a cost-effective and time-saving means to manage their networks and equipment.
Chow noted that SME sector growth continues to be strong and he expects there to be more sophisticated demands from SMEs in the near future. "Our positioning is to create competitive advantages for these progressive SMEs to compete in the market place by serving all the communications needs among employees, business partners and customers," he said.
On top of the network infrastructure offerings, PCCW expects to roll out some online storage tools for securing e-mail and a multi-media file sharing platform will be launched later in the year.
For corporate and enterprise market, high bandwidth data networks are being developed at a fast rate, especially in banking and finance industry which is extremely bandwidth hungry, noted Chow. Mission critical applications in demanding industries like banking and finance have high bandwidth consumption and will continue demanding high performance networks to facilitate their operations
Chow noted that technologies like IP PBX, unified communications are hot in market right now. "Enterprise employees today can use variety of communications tools like IM, e-mail, phone, video or web conferencing to conduct their daily operations and reach people wherever they are and on any medium," Chow added.
Industry revs up
PCCW expects general competition across key industries to become even more intense and companies in these industries will strive to gain any small advantage possible. Being mobile is an increasing trend and can be used to get an edge on competitors. "Enabling staff to obtain company information and do business on the move even from remote locations away from office are valuable features to have," said Chow.
"Both company and employee productivity is raised and decision making in enterprise is much faster-this drive to be mobile is a clear trend in both the SME and large enterprise markets."
The massive explosion of emerging devices, communications mediums, messaging types has spawned an even greater need for workers to find the right people at the right time on the right device. Chow believes that simple-to-use unified communications services are the answer for users in need of real-time collaboration.
Chow also noted that managed network services beyond simple asset and application management will be a key requirement for companies. "Services that enable corporate expansion, reduce company spending, increasing ROI and improving operational efficiency are always the key objectives for today's enterprises," he said.
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Key highlights in 2006-07
Lucrative contract wins in the last year for PCCW include:
• Macau's booming hospitality and gaming market, which includes deployments in WLAN, PABX and other networking infrastructure systems. PCCW's expertise and experience was fully utilized at the new Wynn Casino and Resort project and the new technology has further enhanced its state of the art and best-in-class facilities in the gaming and hotel industry. PCCW's involvement in Macau has also further extended to education and government sectors.
• One of PCCW"s most notable commercial projects occurred when PCCW served as the ICT partner at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) show. This required meeting the technical demands of 600 exhibitors at the AsiaWorld-Expo Complex. PCCW's full range of technologies was utilized to provide wireless communications, optical fiber, Internet access, mobile broadband and the FiberNET services to the participating companies.
• PCCW was also won the Outstanding Innovation Award at the Asia Pacific Service Provider of the Year Awards 2006 organized by the Metro Ethernet Forum
• A number of significant projects were initiated in the public sector including a range of data networking and other technology application contracts. One highlight was the five-year contract with the Transport Department in Hong Kong for its core network development and infrastructure.
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DBS banks on PCCW's Next Generation Metro IP Network
To meet the demands of a growing business, DBS Bank (Hong Kong) Limited initially considered a minor network upgrade. Jansun Lai, DBS' managing director, Head of IT, Greater China, examined the issue more closely and realized it was time for a complete overhaul.
Running on PCCW's Next Generation Metro IP Network, the new DBS network has more capacity than any other bank or corporate network in Hong Kong and offers extremely high resilience to keep pace with the bank's ongoing needs.
Jansun said, "DBS wants to embrace the progressive spirit of modern Asia. The time is right for us to take advantage of the latest technology, and IP technology is mature, in terms of service quality and cost efficiency."
Driving office efficiency
Each of DBS' around 60 branches has undergone a connection capacity upgrade from 128K or 256K to a 10Mbps fiber link, with all connections also enjoying a 10Mbps hot standby link installed and managed by PCCW. Lai said, "The IP network has greatly enhanced our retail service. Staff now feel they can do so much more, so much faster - offering customers an even better banking experience."
"Our people are required to undergo regular training and read a variety of documents. Now, thanks to the Next Generation Metro IP Network, and the launch of our multimedia platform - the Smart Workstation - our colleagues can learn about updated products and changing market conditions, and develop selling and service skills through video role-play. Information is just a click away," said Lai. "The Smart Workstation gives us an edge in providing better service to customers in an ever-changing market."
The new network has enabled centralization of all servers, eliminating the costly need to keep servers at each branch. Staff are now experiencing a significant boost in data-transfer speed between branches and data centers and are freed from having to perform frequent data backups.
As the Next Generation Metro IP Network supports bandwidth-hungry video streaming and real-time multicasts, DBS uses the Smart Workstation for staff training with video content downloaded at the convenience of individuals. This saves cost and eliminates the need for large numbers to leave their posts for training.
DBS Bank decided PCCW was the best choice after researching Hong Kong's various network players. "PCCW's network has wide geographical coverage, which suits us very well, as our branches are located throughout Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories. Only that kind of coverage can guarantee node, exchange and path diversity - so with PCCW, we enjoy unbeatable network resilience and reliability" said Lai.
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