Singers for their supper

The opening was celebrated with a Chinese lion dance

Ascot based Cisco managed service provider Intact Integrated Services has opened a Singapore office hard on the heels of its US launch – and expects to go on expanding.

Bob Dalton, chief executive officer of Intact, says the business environment had been “extremely challenging” but the channel-only firm – a 2009 Datatec spin-off from Logicalis – is continuing to invest for the future.

“Last year for the first time, we could focus on where we fit independently as a business. And we began developing in some different areas,” Dalton says.

Traditionally, 75-80 per cent of its business has been Cisco based, but in multi-vendor environments developing technologies such as unified communications. In the UK, it has been doing a lot of localised services, but customers are increasingly grappling with the complexities of going multinational or even global.

“We spent a lot of time building up our InSpan partner network to deliver services globally,” Dalton says.

Singapore is its fourth location, after the UK, Germany, and the US, meaning it can support complex partner operations across three continents and some 80 nations. The Singapore office will support Asia-Pacific growth of its managed services, he says.

“We looked at Hong Kong, Malaysia or Singapore as the potential hub, and they all have much going for them,” says Dalton. “We looked at stability, and governmental stance on investing in infrastructure and promoting growth.”

Singapore saw a “slight dip” rather than a full-blown recession, and also does not put “inordinate barriers” in front of businesses seeking a footing there. The culture is friendly to foreign investment. The country has excellent educational institutions – making for quality human resources – and strong business and cultural links across Asia-Pacific, he says.

“Speaking English is fine there, with a little ‘Singlish’, because there are some dialectual differences,” says Dalton. “But if you’re operational, out in the darkest reaches of China, you would need Mandarin, for example.”

In the US, things happened differently, and Intact bought a partner there, MTS, that became effectively its eyes and ears locally. In Singapore, Intact hired a British expat and IT industry veteran who was there with BT, Kevin Slaughter – who now leads the Singapore office as general manager for Asia-Pacific.

The new Intact office is on on the 31st floor of International Plaza in the heart of the CBD above the Tanjong Pagar MRT station, and its opening was celebrated with a traditional lion dance.

Slaughter says things do indeed look auspicious for the new headquarters. “We have experienced rapid growth with new customers in the pipeline, and strong demand from existing customers in the region. The team has already grown to 14 people,” he says.

The Singapore government recently announced it is stepping up efforts to attract foreign businesses, especially in partnership with Singaporean firms. “The recent crisis has turned the attention of the world towards Asia, which is now widely acknowledged to be the centre of growth for the 21st century,” it said in an International Enterprise Singapore statement.

Intact acquisition drives US expansion plans
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