John Lombard (NTT)
NTT has unveiled the leaders tasked with spearheading market expansion in Asia Pacific as the technology giant embarks on a new era of growth across the region.
Three months since launching at a global level, Channel Asia can exclusively reveal that the business has announced 29 executive appointments in Asia Pacific, spanning two regional chiefs, 14 in-country directors, 11 business unit heads and two subsidiary leaders.
Heading up ASEAN is Singapore-based Kim-Meng Png, who is responsible for "strategic development and operations" across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and the Philippines.
Naoki Wakai; Henrick Choo and Hendra Lesmana have been appointed as in-country leaders of Singapore; Malaysia and Indonesia, while Aileen Rodriguez; Sutas Kongdumrongkiat and Hideki Tachi have been handed the reins of power in the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam respectively.
In addition, Mizuho Tada will head up the company’s joint venture in Indonesia.
Other notable appointments include Alex Lu and Zhang JianMing as leaders of Mainland China; Steven Medeiros of Hong Kong; Jason Chung of Korea and Frank Liao of Taiwan. These leaders will report to Taichi Hiramatsu who heads up North Asia.
Simon Gillespie heads up New Zealand, while Kiran Bhagwanani is in charge of India. Miguel Garcia is tasked with running DTSI and Vishal Bambha is leading Emerio.
The technology provider has also made a string of appointments at a business unit level, including Wong Wen Ming as leader of Sales; Sarab Singh running Services; Stephen Wise heading up Consulting; Jan Wuppermann shaping Strategy and Business Operations; Manish Pratap as MS go-to-market lead and Esther Quah spearheading Marketing. A vacant role still exists for go-to-market practices leader.
“It’s an honour to be leading Asia Pacific into this exciting new era where we join hands to build a connected, and more sustainable tomorrow,” said John Lombard, CEO of Asia Pacific at NTT. “The appointees have been selected to lead NTT in Asia Pacific based on their strong track records and exceptional capabilities.
“Building on an already strong foundation of global talent, global brand trust and core NTT values, I’m extremely confident that the team will be able to deliver intelligent solutions that address our clients’ transformational challenges worldwide.”
Credit: NTT Integration process
As revealed by Channel Asia, NTT officially launched to the world in July as a global technology giant housing the capabilities of 28 companies.
Headquartered in London, the $11 billion business will be spearheaded by Jason Goodall, employing around 40,000 staff in offices across more than 70 countries and regions.
In Asia Pacific however, six brands make up the combined entity, spanning Dimension Data, DTSI, Emerio, NTT Communications, NTT Security and Training Partners.
“The diversity of our region in Asia Pacific is a great strength for our business,” said Lombard, while speaking to Channel Asia in Singapore. “We laid the groundwork early on for the integration process, especially from a go-to-market perspective.
“We’ve been running joint pursuit teams for over a year and in Singapore, we have teams focused on areas such as security through NTT Security. Likewise, we have joint pursuit teams focusing on SD-WAN through Dimension Data and hybrid cloud through NTT Communications.
“We are focused on working more closely together and bringing our joint value proposition to clients, with this region kick-starting that process.”
Lombard was named as CEO of Asia Pacific effective 1 July, with a responsibility for NTT’s global business in Asia Pacific, excluding Japan and Australia.
“Some of our clients have been dealing with Dimension Data, NTT Communications and NTT Security separately in the past,” Lombard acknowledged.
“They want us to work more closely together so they don’t have to deal with three different people at three different times. From their point of view, this process is much easier and the feedback from customers has been overwhelmingly positive."
Specific to go-to-market, Lombard said little duplication exists between the businesses, with crossover only occurring in back-end functions such as IT and finance.
“There’s been a little duplication but not much,” he said. “We're not having huge debates about which aspect of our portfolio we should take to market.
“NTT Security, for example, has been our managed security services portfolio, and it wasn’t as if Dimension Data had one also. In that case we moved all assets to NTT Security so the process is clean.
“Likewise, NTT Communications has a very strong data centre footprint whereas Dimension Data doesn’t have a data centre footprint. Dimension Data is stronger in networking which is complemented by NTT Communications which has a global network capable of connecting corporates globally.
“There’s not much cross-over in that respect. Clients want to know that we are going to continue delivering the same quality of service as one brand through a single portfolio.”
From a logistics standpoint, Lombard said plans are underway to consolidate company offices across the region in a move designed to bring in-country teams closer together.
“This represents a huge opportunity,” he added. “We have lots of offices in different countries and teams of people located in some cases next to each other in the same city, but in different offices. There’s an enormous project underway at the moment looking at consolidating office locations where it makes sense.
“But we have to do that with the right sense of where people want to work and be mindful of different locations, safety and ability to get public transport and all the usual things you would expect to consider."
