This week, SingTel announced the launch of a new cloud PaaS (platform as a service) offering in conjunction with IT enterprise company Progress Software.
Together, the telco and software vendor will attack the regional PaaS market with Progress Software’s OpenEdge platform. It will run on SingTel’s existing cloud infrastructure Alatum, which is a collaboration between SingTel and HP.
Both sides hope to leverage on each other strengths for bigger business returns.
SingTel will leverage Progress Software’s expertise and products in this part of the cloud stack, especially in data services, which Progress Software is a leader in.
Progress Software can tap SingTel’s reach as one of the biggest telco players in the region to go after new enterprise customers.
Although this deal between SingTel and Prgoress Software is non-exclusive, there will be a joint “go-to-market strategy”, said Keith Budge, VP and MD of Progress Software at the launch event.
Progress Software relies on 70 percent channels, with 30 percent of their business direct in Asia Pacific region, so they will need partners to help grow aggressively in this region.
For SingTel, they believe that telcos like themselves have a strong cloud offering because they own all the network infrastructure and thus can manage quality of service (QoS) issues better.
Said Alvin Kok, head of infocomm services, SingTel: “You cannot deploy a secure, reliable scalable cloud service without a reliable Internet.”
Progress Software joins a crowded cloud market in Singapore, with vendors like Salesforce.com and Amazon Web Services providing similar services.
But the good news is that the Asia Pacific cloud market is still set to grow, with tech analyst firm IDC projecting that in Singapore alone the market will grow 43 percent over five years from 2010 to 2014.
