IBM Announces New ASEAN Telecom Center of Excellence to Accelerate Growth of Telecommunications Industry in the Region

IBM announced recently the opening of the ASEAN Telecom Center of Excellence (CoE) to accelerate telecommunications solution development and streamline product delivery to help ASEAN telecommunication service providers compete more effectively in the fast-changing market. The center will bring together cutting-edge technical skills, specialized offerings and industry best practices to meet the rising challenges in ASEAN’s telecommunications industry.

Located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia -- the ASEAN Telecom CoE leverages IBM’s globally-integrated network of capabilities and partnerships. The CoE offers a range of new telecommunications software solutions based on IBM’s Service Provider Delivery Environment (SPDE) 3.0 framework, as well as hardware, services and business partner applications. Clients will include telecommunication operators, network equipment suppliers, independent software vendors (ISVs) and extended service providers.

“To sustain growth in this competitive industry landscape, service providers must offer customers a more positive and differentiated user experience while reducing complexity and cost,” said Rey Lugtu, Country Manager for Telcom and Utilities Industry, IBM Philippines. “The CoE offers the ASEAN telco industry an unparalleled level of expertise and support to speed implementation and facilitate effective use of applications and technologies. This is very beneficial to the Philippines, wherein the telecommunications industry remains one of the more exciting and rapidly growing sectors in the country.

The CoE is staffed by technical and telecommunications experts with experience in deploying service creation, service delivery as well as business and operation support systems.

According to research firm IDC¹, the combined telecommunication services market of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, would reach US$35.7 billion in 2009. Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand were expected to show modest growth at a 4% to 6% range. Vietnam and Indonesia, each with double-digit expansion rates, would demonstrate higher growth as they are at the early stages of the technology adoption curve and currently addressing the digital divide in their markets.

“By supporting ASEAN’s telecommunications service providers in innovation efforts which leapfrog traditional technologies plans to be world-renowned leaders, we have established a unique position in the industry,” said Lugtu. “We will continue to help telecom providers improve their competitive capabilities by enabling them to combine their strategic assets with innovations that address new market opportunities.”

IBM is one of the world’s largest technology suppliers to the telecommunication industry – more than 90 percent of the world’s communications service providers are IBM clients.

In the past few months IBM has announced numerous strategic deals around the ASEAN region:

* Maxis recently made a multi-million dollar investment with IBM to implement an end-to-end Service Quality Assurance offering in a Service Quality Management (SQM) project. This SQM project is a single, integrated dashboard-based solution that provides a uniquely modular and highly scalable platform for a 360-degree view of Service Quality. This allows the customer service team to access real-time information about service quality and to analyze customer experience metrics from numerous views.
* In collaboration with Nokia Siemens Networks, IBM has delivered a service delivery platform that will make it easier and faster for Globe Telecom, a leading telecommunications company in the Philippines, to streamline its business operations, generate new revenue and reduce the time it takes to bring new services to market.
* IBM signed a multi-million-dollar agreement with Gtel Mobile in Vietnam to facilitate the implementation of the Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) network for Gtel Mobile to manage the 24/7 operation of the company. IBM will also provide the technology and associated services to build the business solutions for Billing, Customer Care and Value Added Services.
* Excelcomindo Pratama in Indonesia selected IBM Service Management solutions to support its growth plans as it integrates its business and IT processes to increase customer satisfaction.


For more information on IBM Telecommunication offerings, visit: http://www.ibm.com/telecom_www.ibm.com/telecom