Ahmad Al-Neama (Indosat Ooredoo)
Indonesian telecommunications provider Indosat Ooredoo plans to target the small- and medium-sized business (SMB) market after striking a new strategic partnership with Google Cloud.
It is claimed that the partnership is strongly aligned to the Indonesian government’s digital economy development program goals and will serve Indonesia’s SMBs as a priority target segment, spanning many areas that are core to the capabilities of both Indosat Ooredoo and Google Cloud.
The strategic deal will see the two organisations work jointly to digitally transform Indonesia’s SMBs across their business lifecycles.
Specifically, Indosat Ooredoo and Google Cloud plan to create a marketplace of tailored software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings with a goal of fully digitising SMBs from the day they register their businesses and at every stage of their business journeys.
The companies also hope to work together to digitally transform enterprises and communities by drawing on 5G infrastructure and technology.
On this front, the two organisations plan to build a portfolio of 5G edge computing solutions that bring together Indosat Ooredoo’s network, Google Cloud technologies and edge computing to help enterprises address business challenges across industries.
By bringing Google Cloud compute and capabilities to the edge, it is hoped that businesses can move infrastructure from centralised locations to the edge, running applications closer to end-users and building industry-changing experiences in retail, healthcare, manufacturing, entertainment and more.
This comes just weeks after Google Cloud updated its edge efforts, in October delivering a portfolio of solutions consisting of hardware and software designed to extend the vendor’s infrastructure to the edge and into users’ own data centres.
Another key aspect of the new partnership will see Indosat Ooredoo and Google Cloud explore the development of business-to-business security managed services to advance resilience and protect companies from cyber security risks.
“We understand the significant impact the pandemic is having on our nation’s SMB community and this partnership will deliver new and outstanding digital products and services that these businesses need to thrive,” said Ahmad Al-Neama, Indosat Ooredoo president director and CEO.
“Through this partnership, Indosat Ooredoo will offer SMBs new cloud-based and 5G enabled digital solutions...that will empower new business models and enable them to tap new markets and opportunities that would not have been possible before.
“We look forward to a long and fruitful relationship with Google that will accelerate digitalisation among SMBs and Indonesia’s transformation into a digital society,” he added.
The partnership will also see Indosat Ooredoo digitally transform its own operations, the move aimed at enabling the telco to continue on its own path to innovation in building a cloud-first organisation. To achieve this goal, Indosat Ooredoo will modernise its infrastructure and applications on Google Cloud.
Moreover, Indosat Ooredoo and Google Cloud plan to define a clear roadmap for advanced data analytics modernisation and artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) adoption that is expected to enable the telco to improve its core operations, costs and customer experiences.
It is hoped this roadmap will also help Indosat Ooredoo advance its position in the telecommunications ecosystem and enable it to identify and maximise new business model opportunities in future.
“The key to delivering next-generation applications and creating new customer experiences with Indosat Ooredoo is our shared culture of innovation,” said Rob Enslin, Google Cloud president. “We’re excited to work with Indosat Ooredoo to help digitise businesses of all sizes in Indonesia and help the company create new engines for long-term innovation and growth.”
Indosat Ooredoo's Google Cloud deal comes just days after the telco deepened its partnership with networking vendor Cisco in a bid to help strengthen the carrier's mobile and fibre network to support more commercial launches of 5G and high-speed connectivity services.
The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on 3 November with the intention to collaborate on the development of next-generation connectivity solutions for businesses of all sizes across the country.
The agreement follows an earlier partnership, announced in June, that saw Indosat Ooredoo work with Cisco in its first commercial deployment of segment routing over IPv6 (SRv6) technology to support the development of its 5G services across the country.
