AI 2018 Business Excellence Awards

Acquisition International - 2018 Business Excellence Awards 21 infrastructure, and staff, with the adoption of best- in-class technologies and best-practices where applicable, including product development, facilities management, and staff training and development. CITIC Telecom CPC is also Hong Kong’s first VPN service provider to achieve multiple ISO certifications, particularly all four ICT-related certifications (ISO 9001 Quality Management System, ISO 14001 Environmental Management System, ISO 20000 Information Technology Service Management System, ISO 27001 Information Security Management System and ISO 27017 Code of Practice for Information Security Controls for Cloud Services). Speaking of VPNs, that was the company’s first product, developed and offered in 2001 because founder and CEO Stephen Ho clearly saw it as one of the most relevant tools needed for a growing number of enterprises struggling to link up distributed offices. Traditional connectivity measures were too expensive and too complicated for these smaller, more agile businesses. Instead, CITIC Telecom CPC (then called CPCNet) presented MPLS VPN as an alternate solution, to great market reception. The early VPN product has now been refined into the TrueCONNECT ™ flagship family of business connectivity solutions, yet the fundamentals of that early success have remained the same. Today Stephen Ho and his team continue to research the market to identify the most pressing needs facing enterprises, and then proceed to develop compelling, yet cost-effective and user-friendly, solutions to address those requirements. VISIONARY STRATEGY CITIC Telecom CPC has been very accurate at envisioning the continued digital transformation of enterprises, and serving their needs as the business evolution unfolds. Following the success with VPNs, the company was also quick to recognize the importance of cloud solutions, and developed what is now the SmartCLOUD™ flagship family (including investing in dedicated bricks and mortar facilities to support the product). The same can be said for managed security solutions and data center solutions, in addition to various other products and services, all of which CITIC Telecom CPC clearly and accurately predicted their emerging relevance and demand. Two recent examples can further illustrate this point about the company’s ongoing success: The launch of its TrueCONNECT™ Hybrid SD-WAN solution, offering modern enterprises a managed Software Defined WAN solution to accommodate the increasing number of companies who are leveraging a variety of cloud services from different vendors, a situation traditional WANs are not designed to handle. The new SD-WAN solution enables much more efficient and easily reconfigurable WANs to optimize performance and reliability especially when locations or vendors of cloud services change. The other example is CITIC Telecom CPC’s emphasis on realizing potential from the One Belt One Road vision. The company has proactively taken significant steps toward capturing those opportunities, a highlight being the 2017 acquisition of the telecommunication business of Linx Telecommunications, expanding CITIC Telecom CPC’s global footprint (which already includes Asia-Pacific, North America and Western Europe) to the Central Asia and Eastern Europe markets, and gives further credence to the company’s goal of connecting the world to the “Digital Silk Road.” The acquired network resources and staffing cover a high-growth potential market (encompassing Russia, Kazakhstan and the “Stan” region, the Baltic Sea and Eastern Europe), and include a 470 kilometer submarine fiber network covering the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea which connects Sweden, Finland and Estonia. Also acquired are network operations centers (NOCs) in Moscow and Tallinn, and a Tallinn data center which is Estonia’s largest Internet Exchange (TLL-IX). As can be seen, CITIC Telecom CPC has always been a company on the leading edge. Even today, it continues to truly embrace its motto that “Innovation Never Stops,” competently anticipating and addressing emerging market demands with creative solutions that deliver products and services modern enterprises need, while being well positioned to expand its global reach in the coming future.