CITIC Telecom CPC is under the leadership of a new CEO, effective since February 2022. Telecom Review Asia interviews Brook Wong, CEO, CITIC Telecom CPC on his stewardship and future plans
You possess tremendous insights in telecommunications and have undertaken leadership roles in CITIC Telecom Group for over a decade. How has the group evolved and grown during this period?
In the past decades, our group (CITIC Telecom) has continued to enhance its platform capability and diversify into new business sectors offering swift, efficient and reliable services to support telecommunications carriers’ global business expansion.
The pandemic has changed the way companies in all sectors and regions do business. It also speeds up the adoption of digital transformation of many companies around the globe. In view of these global trends, our group also continues to enrich the functions of our product platform and procure the development of the platform and the building of an ecosystem.
Meanwhile, digitalization also raises new security and privacy risks, as enterprises are exposed to cyber threats, especially those whose remote workforce lacks cybersecurity awareness. CITIC Telecom CPC has collaborated with different ecosystem partners to offer a range of security solutions covering email security, cloud backup and disaster recovery to ensure business continuity.
CITIC Telecom CPC also continues to expand its global network coverage to provide seamless, high-quality network to our customers around the globe. We have over 160 PoPs in our global network covering over 160 countries.
What is your vision for CITIC Telecom CPC as it navigates an increasingly digitalized landscape?
To complement the group’s development strategy of keeping Mainland China as the foundation of our business, with Hong Kong and Macau serving as both base and springboard to accelerate our digital footprint internationally and global network coverage.
Fostering a culture of innovation and embracing intelligence are our core values essential to our future success. My vision for CITIC Telecom CPC is global and future-oriented; we need to be more agile in response to this constantly evolving industry and digitalized world.
CITIC Telecom CPC is a leading intelligent Technology-driven ICT enabler to multinational and large companies worldwide. To have sustainable traction in intelligent and innovative technologies development, we will continue to enhance our full spectrum of managed ICT solutions with algorithm expertise and AI intelligent capabilities. To embrace innovative R&D, technologies, knowledge, and insights, which will ultimately increase operational efficiencies of the industries, uplift user experience, and create value to the community.
We lead our key markets at the forefront of pioneering ICT development, embracing artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), big data, IoT and other cutting-edge disruptive technologies to transform technical potential into real-world value for our customers, helping them achieve higher productivity, agility and, ultimately, digital globalization.
It is aligned with our company motto “Innovation never stops” – we need new skills, new innovations, and technologies to leapfrog the current state of the art.
We leverage our industry insights to deliver the promise of constant innovation, creating new products and services while refining existing offerings and best practices.
Data science has been widely utilized in various industries, its intelligent power and rapid development have reshaped traditional enterprises for digital transformation.
How is CITIC Telecom CPC capturing new markets and expanding its footprint in China and the rest of the world?
CITIC Telecom CPC will continue to enhance the development of our global corporate service business, improve servicing capabilities and keep innovating cooperation models to increase the scale and value of our corporate service business. We are keen to be the trusted global-local intelligent DICT (data, information and communications technology) service partner of all the enterprises in China and around the world.
To realize our motto “Innovation never stops”, CITIC Telecom CPC has embarked on an innovative and intelligence transformation journey to cater to the changing needs of the future. At the heart of this transformation is the Intelligence and Communications Transformation MiiND (ICT-MiiND) Strategy. This strategy is guiding the company to transform from being a successful ICT solution provider into an intelligent technology-driven digitalization enabler.
Integrating the latest technologies with innovative ideas, ICT-MiiND is the brain that leads enterprises to successful digital transformation. Building intelligence through advanced container technology; together with network, information security, and cloud computing solutions experience; fused years of practical experiences in digital transformation and resources from global technical partners, ICT-MiiND has developed the company’s latest AIOps (artificial intelligence for IT operations) platform, in which integrated with latest technologies like big data, AI, AR, IoT and blockchain, to provide different innovative and intelligent modules integrating tailor-made and customized industry service scenarios to bring enterprises a smarter IT service management platform.
We will continue to enhance technological innovation to foster new core competitiveness with innovative networks, products, services and ecosystem and expedite the progress of “Internet-based”, “cloud-based” and “intelligence-based” development to support high-level development and digital transformation of enterprises.
Digital transformation is under the global spotlight. What are key strategies to deliver high-performance solutions to meet growing and more stringent demands in the enterprise market?
Our strategy involves embracing innovation and intelligence, building digital talents and engaging with digital ecosystems to accelerate digital transformation initiatives.
A digital transformation strategy must address innovation and integrate emerging technologies to power up digital strategies. It might involve changing operating and business models, the company should build up strategic direction and offer insights based on a deep understanding of technology’s evolution. Lastly, it is important to think how to create value for enterprises and bring new experiences that meet their demands.
As mentioned earlier, ICT-MiiND is an intelligence-driven strategy for the future. It rides on CITIC Telecom CPC’s practical IT operations experiences, in-depth business knowledge and expertise in network, security and cloud into building different AIOps modules to provide exceptional IT services through intelligence.
Supported by our global experiences, years of business know-how and dedicated R&D capabilities for different industries, ICT-MiiND Strategy is not only a platform for intelligent IT service management, but the brain to empower digital success.
At CITIC Telecom CPC, we understand that digital transformation is about talent, not just technology only. Our data science and innovation team in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Europe possess comprehensive capabilities in algorithms modelling expertise and AI analysis, dedicated to innovation and integrating the latest technologies into business values.
To build a broader set of talents pool across regions for the next phase of growth, we are combing technical ability, coding and applications specialist, mathematics and data sciences professionals to support our global digital footprint. We will continue to sharpen the professional skills of our data science teams to prepare for our strong engagement in future research and innovation projects
To engage with digital ecosystems to accelerate digital transformation initiatives, we need to have sustainable traction in intelligent and innovative technologies development and an integrated ecosystem approach and strong partnership with stakeholders in various sectors and industries.
CPC's extensive coverage, technical capabilities, and years of industry experience collaborating with ecosystem partners' core competence and expertise can offer crucial benefits and unlock more value to the digital community.
For instance, we partner with Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI) for using AI and augmented reality (AR) innovation to deploy data center AR remote hand services.
Other collaborations with digital ecosystem partners include AI-AR remote hands for seamless collaboration from a distance. This enables streamlining maintenance and inspection for utilities. The AI-AR integrated service will provide field workers with better computer vision capabilities. Field users can access manuals and analyzed data or graphs for maintenance using the AR glasses while receiving immediate alerts of any wrong steps. 5G-enabled cloud connectivity can enable supervisors to guide field users during installation and maintenance verbally.
Another collaboration is computer vision and cognitive analytics solutions for better decision-making. This is critical for business operations planning such as supply chain management. The integrated service can provide workers with extra information during operations. Frontline staff can use data visualizations and object mapping to identify goods quickly and accurately for loading and unloading.
Finally, we collaborate on predictive customer experience for maximizing customer value to enhance customer services experience in all industries. AI and AR allow companies to use predictive and prescriptive data to understand what customers want before they know themselves, delivering exceptional customer experiences.
