Transition has been a hot topic in the telecommunications industry in recent years. In the "Internet Plus" age, transition is imperative as the telecom industrial chain structure dominated by traditional carriers is gradually shifting towards a fully open ICT industrial chain structure.
As the first Sino-Foreign operator focusing on telecom value-added service, Shanghai Symphony Telecommunications Co, Ltd. (SST) is committed to product transition and has become an integrated ICT service provider.
Now, SST has developed the "One + N" structure in product business. One refers to the traditional WAN business while N means new businesses such as mobile application, cloud computing, management data center's hosting service and unified telecom service. SST's new businesses including the cloud computing and mobile management have maintained steady development for two consecutive years, and are gradually becoming new pillars of SST.
In addition, SST has reshaped customer systems. Last year, SST set up its second sales center— Strategic Customer and Channel Development Center, which is engaged in new business expansion and channel construction. SST also improved and standardized the channel management, and explored the new channel cooperation model. That is developing differentiated solutions and offering one-stop package services to users by transforming from single resource sale to strategic cooperation complementing advantages with partners.
Open cooperation leads to success
Currently, SST has achieved great success in new business development with channel partners. One typical case was a cloud computing practice at an international school.
This cooperation was mainly about SST's hybrid cloud service, which was successfully delivered within a narrow timeframe. During the entire process, SST not only supplied products and plans, but also provided full-package one-stop services including preliminary consultation, plan design, construction of hybrid cloud infrastructure, and post maintenance. SST's professional services won acclaim from the user, marking a big success for SST's business transition.
Previously, SST also joined hands with cooperation partners to offer mobile management product plans based on a cloud platform. To satisfy users' special needs, SST and its partners designed customized MDM solutions for customers. The partners provided software while SST deployed a MDM cloud platform, together delivering solutions to customers.
In this reform that carriers and equipment suppliers are striving to enter the corporate level IT market, in which cloud computing and mobile business are two key points. The size of the cloud computing market exceeded 100 billion yuan ($15.34 billion) in 2014 and a research institution once forecast that the scale of the corporate level mobile application market will reach 32.7 billion yuan in 2016.How to leverage the existing resource advantage to win a place in the IT market is a major subject for the telecom industry. As for SST, it has moved ahead and developed its own way.
Complementing advantages to jointly expand the market
SST believes it will achieve more in partner cooperation and welcomes more partners to join.
SST boasts a complete service supporting system with resource and facility support of its two shareholders - China Telecom and AT&T. As cloud computing penetrates all industries and the basic infrastructure and technological architecture will be further trivialized, the corporate IT market will gradually upgrade from the business model of selling products to the model of selling services. SST's professional service will help boost the transition of its partners.
SST also hopes cooperation partners can share common values, such as sticking to high quality services, avoiding low-end competition, and steering clear of price war. SST has been focusing on providing services to multinational corporations as well as mid-and-high end local users. In the current "Internet+" age, these users still need stable and safe network and IT services. In fact, many enterprises still doubt about the security of public cloud. However, SST hopes to join hands with partners, explore a brand-new business model, and bring corporate users trustworthy ICT services conforming to the future development.