Introduction: As the only Sino foreign joint venture value-added telecommunication enterprise in China, SST shouldered special mission ever since its inception, and its birth even indirectly pushed forward the progress of China’s accession to the WTO. However, its growth was not uneventful, it is not until it perfectly integrated Chinese and Western skills that SST finally attained full maturity and competence. Today, at the age of gaining independence, SST has found a new target: it will open up new markets together with China’s emergence.

Birth: Special mission

Shanghai Symphony Telecommunications (SST) is the first Sino foreign joint venture  telecommunication enterprise in China, the evidence of the opening up of China’s telecommunication industry to the whole world; it even indirectly pushed forward the progress of China’s accession to the WTO.

Nevertheless, glorious birth does not necessarily mean smooth proceeding on the road of development. In fact, the early stage development of SST which shouldered the opening up pilot mission in the telecommunication industry was not smooth. As what it acquired was not the qualification of  basic telecommunication market access, for a certain period it was considered futureless by the market. However, as the saying goes: “misfortune might be a blessing in disguise”, it is exactly due to this reason that SST caught the spring tide of enterprise market development.

Growth: Integrating East and West

In 2013, before the 12^th anniversary of the company setup, SST met its 500^th key customer in its history.

It’s worth mentioning that among these 500 customers, over 300 are top Fortune Global 500 corporations. After all, it’s not in the least easy for SST to acquire the achievement today.

Over the years, in order to establish competitive advantages in the corporate market, SST on the one hand strived to provide telecommunication service guarantee of the highest international standards to customers; on the other hand, it actively introduced advanced products and services from overseas; after absorption and assimilation, superimposed them on basic network services, the combination of both finally helped SST establish differentiated competitive advantages in comparison to traditional telecom carriers and telecom value-added service providers, and won acknowledgement from high-end foreign investment customers.

Independence: Open up blue ocean

Benefiting from the rising of a great nation, when Chinese enterprises one after another walked onto the global arena with the development of the national economy, SST also accordingly opened up new blue ocean.

This is because, when the globalization pace of Chinese enterprises picked up speed to walk out of China and embrace the global market, their demands for premium cross-border telecommunication value-added service providers naturally arrived.

Since SST is based in China, yet at the same time it boasts world leading telecommunication value-added service ability, Chinese multinational corporations have enough reasons to deem it as their favorite service provider.

Consequently, while serving world top 500 corporations, SST began to harvest the brand-new market from domestic enterprises. Although the percentage of customers in this new market is less than one third of its total customer volume, its speed of growth is considerable.

This marked an excellent opportunity for SST; and also the best chance for SST to bring about future business transition, and open up brand-new business blue ocean.

Instead of gaining independence at the age of thirty, which is a traditional maxim in China, SST gains its independence at the age of thirteen. Compared with initial hardship in its early years, the 13-year-old SST has sufficient confidence and stamina.

On the one hand, the experience of serving world top 500 corporations endows SST with experience and standards of world-class telecom service, which is one of the most important values that its numerous high-end customers appreciate; on the other hand, more products and services from AT&T are continually being introduced and digested, which infuse it with confidence toward the future. Finally, cooperation with China Telecom also became more frequent, not only in the utilization of local network resources; SST can also develop healthy linkage with China Telecom in the aspect of overseas telecommunication service ability.

Most importantly, cloud computing and mobility have auspiciously arrived, and IT informatizaion demand in the enterprise market continually displayed explosive growth. At this moment, with its long years of experience in the enterprise market, SST exactly meets a key stage in the eruption of technology revolution and market demands. With such favorable advantages, there couldn’t be better timing for gaining independence.

Interestingly, though failed to become the first Sino-foreign joint venture basic telecom carrier, it is exactly due to this reason that SST’s transition appeared much more calm and unhurried.

Compared with traditional telecommunication market which has touched business ceiling, enterprise level market is in the prime of youth. Consequently, in contrast with traditional telecommunication carriers which have trouble in making turnaround, SST is able to confidently grasp annual average 20% business growth, and make unhurried deployment by relying on its penetrating insight into the development opportunities of enterprise market accumulated over the years.

Blueprint: Marching toward the future

Unhurried action does not necessarily mean relaxation and slowness. SST is picking up speed on the road of development to march toward the future.

In June this year, SST compiled business development plan for the next three years, which points out that SST is facing two big development opportunities:

1. Can fully bring out professional service advantages accumulated over one  dozen years in the past, develop more domestic and overseas new customers (including: Chinese/foreign customers, domestic channel cooperation customers, international channel cooperation customers), so as to make scale contribution to business growth;

2. Vigorously develop, integrate, and introduce new business resources and products, expand sales product collections and business clusters outside the company’s existing WAN business, develop product portfolios oriented toward key industry customers, and provide more diversified one-stop services to multinational customers.

These two are also core deployment of SST’s business transition strategy aiming to become “a specialized value-added service carrier characterized by high quality services, and oriented toward mid to high end multinational corporate customers, dedicated to providing advanced value-added service and solutions on the basis of global network services”.

Pillars: Three divisions

Planning of future development blueprint is reflected on the level of business product portfolio. SST is cultivating three new pillars for business development, they are respectively: Enterprise data hosting service, enterprise remote collaboration service, and enterprise network technology service (including enterprise mobile data management service).

I. Enterprise data hosting service

SST is now converting enterprise data hosting service into the best option for multinational corporations to carry out centralized  management: This service is based on new generation data center, independent of all carriers, and offers customers complete network resources and telecommunication technology services. All network and IT resources, network, storage, network management naturally including cloud computing that needed by the customers are available.

The brand-new integrated cloud service is also ready, it will face cloud service needs from customers such as e-commerce, cloud backup, enterprise information system cloud migration, and provide all-inclusive cloud service portfolio, including basic IaaS service, customized SaaS service, high-end enterprise level IaaS cloud mainframe, and IaaS cloud mainframe with better cost performance etc.

II. Enterprise remote collaboration service

Remote collaboration is the most common application among WAN users, and also a new service on the basis of WAN that SST is able to offer to customers.

In the eyes of multinational corporations, Telepresence and multiple-side collaboration are the most prevalent remote collaboration tool between its branches and the headquarters. It is exactly due to this reason that SST introduced the world’s first cross-company (B2B) end to end hosting Telepresence solution. This solution integrates AT&T’s global network ability and Cisco’s Telepresence technology, making it the most competitive B2BTelepresence solution currently in China.

Meanwhile, SST also introduced corporate level remote collaboration service based on global MPLS backbone network. It supports conference, virtual classroom, online seminar, network broadcasting service forms. It can simultaneously be connected with computers, handheld intelligent terminals and desktop calling equipment; it covers the whole globe, capable of offering service platform of reliable remote collaboration or all types of activities participated by multiple sides.

III. Enterprise network technology service

IT service outsourcing is becoming the priority option of an increasingly number of multinational corporations when newly building branches or implementing IT upgrading. Whereas SST is among the first batch of suppliers that have passed their stringent screening.

In combination with its long years of experience to provide multinational corporations with IT outsourcing service, today SST has formally introduced new businesses aiming to satisfy Chinese and foreign multinational corporation customers to meet all-inclusive IT outsourcing needs. This business will include management of the whole process ranging from early-stage IT consulting, system design to after sales maintenance, in order to meet customer needs in business, technology, corporate strategy and other aspects.

Furthermore, as BYOD (Bring your own device) is now accepted by an increasing number of enterprises, mobile device management service (MDM) also becomes newly added demand of enterprise customers. To this end, SST has prepared MDM solution oriented toward enterprise mobile IT whole procedure for customers. This plan supports mobile device management, mobile application management and mobile content management functions of mainstream mobile terminals currently on the market, and can help solve the demand for safety guarantee, application control, UnifiedConfigurationand distribution, and file sharing by enterprise mobile intelligent terminals.

Clinching success: Vertical industry

Apart from setting up three major new business units, if SST wants to reap harvest in the brand-new blue ocean, it cannot go without in-depth insight into all vertical industries in the blue ocean.

The good news is that SST boasts thirteen years of service experience in the manufacture industry. Plus, this industry is heavily dependent on network in system operation; with zero inventory, Six Sigma management also decides its high level of requirement for network, therefore SST has huge potential in this market.

For retail industry, which is another vertical industry, SST has also accumulated a lot of experience.In the retail industry itself store fronts are always changing, and its feature of weak location fixation determines its high likelihood of meeting problems of basic network access. Moreover, like manufacture industry, it also needs rapid response, and less IT investment. This can perfectly match services that SST can provide at the current moment, because SST can not only undertake its IT outsourcing, but also help them manage the entire equipment system through concentrating many retail customers, and adopting a shared cloud platform, so as to improve IT efficiency and save cost.

In addition to the above manufacture industries, retailing, automobile, auto accessories, logistics, and medical industries are also vertical industries that SST has entered. At present, the market development work targeted at these industries is proceeding in an orderly manner - according to available signs, SST’s vertical industry battle aiming to opening up market blue ocean is now in full swing.

Conclusion: Service foremost

As if he could already hear gunfire, Samuel Qi, General Manager of SST, was particularly involved; with firm determination typical at the age of no more doubts, he would lead the young SST to open up brand-new markets, and let it rekindle the passion of youth.

 “From front end to back end, SST team has more than 100 professional and warm-hearted employees; it is these professional quality and untiring efforts that enabled SST to maintain advantageous position for a long period of time.”

 “Of course, service is still the key. Regardless of service upgrading or introducing multiple newly added businesses, they all aim to provide better services to customers.”

 “In fact, the needs for transition all come from customers. We only attentively listened to their particular demand, and offer the best solution with consistent service quality. Customer recognition is the true support for us to focus on transition, and clinch success in the future.” Samuel Qi summarized.

SST official website: http://www.sst.net.cn/en/

http://www.sst.net.cn/cn/