Cloud Excellence Awards 2017

One-stop cloud elite

CITIC Telecom CPC exemplifies the highly valued flexibility enabled by an all-encompassing cloud infrastructure

The provision of an all-encompassing IT infrastructure and the ability to respond quickly to its customer’s changing business needs earned CITIC Telecom CPC the grand prize of the Cloud Excellence Awards 2017: Cloud Company of the Year.‘

“Each year we invest in technology research and service development to maintain our competitive advantages in the market,” said CITIC Telecom CPC’s Senior Vice President of IT and Security Services Daniel Kwong. Such R&D efforts include new technology trend and research, optimization of cloud orchestration and automation process, and utilization of DevOps to enable the fast rollout of cloud services.

Integrated infrastructure and cloud services

“A single cloud solution is not enough to capture the market potential and fulfill enterprises’ requirements,” Kwong said.

CITIC Telecom CPC’s flagship solutions include managed information security, on-demand cloud computing, global networking, data center services, plus other productivity enhancing products. The completeness of ICT offerings makes it one of the company’s key differentiators with other cloud service providers, Kwong said.

CITIC Telecom CPC’s Kwong: Each year we invest in R&D to maintain our competitive advantage in the market

CITIC Telecom CPC leverages its global infrastructure to support its cloud service delivery. It comprises over 160 points of presence regionally and internationally, 15+ cloud service centers, 30+ data centers, and two dedicated Security Operations Centers, which are staffed 24/7 with network and security professionals.

The cloud service provider’s key strength lies in its strive for excellence in people, process, technology, coverage and customer value creation. For example, CITIC Telecom CPC’s highly skilled IT staff is certified in information security, cloud technology and ITIL best practices with its backend infrastructures are also ISO certified.

Highly flexible solution

In its award-winning cloud DR and backup project implemented for financial services trader KVB Kunlun (see page 22), CITIC Telecom CPC exemplified rapid response to a customer’s needs by providing a highly flexible cloud solution.

Given the client’s business nature, KVB Kunlun needed to fast provision new services, while maintaining the flexibility to expand its services offerings within short time spans between three and nine months.

“KVB Kunlun wanted to subscribe for a minimum amount of computing resources initially, with the option to rapidly scale up and down resources according to business needs, while achieving cost savings,” said Senior Manager of Cloud and Security Services, CITIC Telecom CPC Danny Tang.

“Our solution therefore needed to be highly flexible, capable of evolving from time to time. This project was implemented in phases according to the user’s needs,” he said. “We first deployed the SmartCLOUD Compute and onsite backup services, which met the fundamental solution requirements. After few months, we deployed the enhanced services and set up new point of presence with full offsite backup functions.”

While CITIC Telecom CPC keeps on extending its cloud services portfolio, it is also optimizing the services with more value-added service. “With the constant amplification of the portfolio, we strive to become a comprehensive ICT solutions provider that always aim at achieving excellence, meeting the fastchanging needs of enterprises” Kwong concluded.

A single cloud solution is not enough to capture the market potential and fulfill enterprises’ requirements - Daniel Kwong, CITIC Telecom CPC

CITIC Telecom CPC brings comprehensive support services to help Hong Kong enterprises complete their cloud strategy

As the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offering is reaching its maturity, more Hong Kong enterprises are turning to public cloud infrastructure to support their digital transformation initiatives.

“In the era of digital transformation, businesses are driven by technologies such as cloud and mobility to create competitive advantage and innovative offerings,” said Danny Tang, Senior Manager, Cloud & Security Services at CITIC Telecom CPC.

The company is one of the earliest local IaaS providers. It has also won the recognition of the Computerworld Hong Kong’s readers, who voted it as the best infrastructure-as-a-service provider in the Cloud Excellence Awards 2017.

Digitization drives IaaS adoption

Tang added that the IaaS adoption rate is higher among Hong Kong’s large enterprises than the SMBs. Since enterprises realize the advantages of cloud computing earlier, they are more willing to leverage cloud services to boost business performance and create innovative service offerings.

“With the rising trend of digitization, we expect the adoption rate will continue to grow in coming years, as cloud computing is one of the best ways for them to create new business models,” he said.

Although the adoption rate among SMBs is relatively low, Tang said the growth potential is high. This is partly driven by the government’s encouragement, particularly through the Technology Voucher Programme (VTP). Launched in November last year, VTP brings funding support for SMBs in IT investments for a project value of up to HK$300,000.

Developing local cloud expertise

According to Tang, the main barrier for SMBs in deploying cloud services is not only the lack of funding, but also the lack of IT capabilities. Thus the cloud provider offers not only cloud computing services, but also a much wider scope of ICT services.

In order to fill the gap and shortage of cloud talent in Hong Kong, Tang said CITIC Telecom CPC also offers SmartCLOUD Professional Services. It aims to help local businesses to design and deploy cloud architectures through a team of certified cloud experts.

“Unlike other traditional IaaS providers who offer cloud computing solutions in a self-service fashion, CITIC Telecom CPC understands that customers need experts to guide them to design, deploy and implement the best fit cloud strategy tailored to their business objectives,” he said.

Tang from CITIC Telecom CPC: With the rising trend of digitization, we expect the IaaS adoption rate will continue to grow

Integrated ICT services beyond cloud

On top of supporting the SMBs with professional IT services, Tang said CITIC Telecom CPC also offers comprehensive cloud offerings—under the SmartCLOUD family that complement the company’s other ICT services—to enable large enterprises’ digitization initiatives.

“We are targeting enterprises that require integrated solutions, including cloud computing services, information security services, network connectivity services and data center solutions,” said Tang. “This is one of our key differentiations from other emerging global cloud services providers.”

To support these services, Tang said the company achieved different certifications including multiple ISO standards in its infrastructure as well as different cloud and information security professional certifications.

“These services allow enterprises to concentrate on running their core businesses, optimize their IT investment, achieve faster response time and ensure business continuity,” Tang concluded.

Unlike other traditional IaaS providers who offer cloud computing solutions in a self-service fashion, we understand customers need experts to guide them - Danny Tang, CITIC Telecom CPC

KVB Kunlun enabled a cloud-based backup and DR solution to enhance trading platform resiliency and to secure enterprise data

As financial services providers engage in high volume trading, the stakes are high if their enterprise data are not well protected. Lately, KVB Kunlun made its bet on cloud to seize the growing business opportunities in China, and to rapidly provision new services to customers within short time spans between three and nine months.  

KVB Kunlun is a Hong Kong-listed financial services corporation that operates in multiple locations worldwide including Hong Kong and China. To enhance the resiliency of its KVB Kunlun trading platform and to protect its enterprise data, it needed a stable hosting and networking environment between these two points of presences. 

The financial trader formed a strategic partnership with CITIC Telecom CPC, whereby the latter would provide cloudbased backup and disaster recovery (DR) solution to KVB Kunlun. According to KVB Kunlun Senior IT Manager Steven Au, the service provider was selected for its extensive China coverage and knowledge, plus its deep understanding of their IT environment. 

CITIC Telecom CPC was also selected for its extensive carrier-class infrastructure and solutions. “CITIC Telecom CPC provides a full suite of cloud solutions to meet today IT needs with multiple cloud service centers in China and worldwide, making cloud backup and DR possible in various locations. This helped to minimize KVB Kunlun’s operation complexity, supporting overhead and capital expenditure,” Au said. 

Resiliency enhancement

The two parties then embarked on a cloud project called “Resiliency Enhancement for Mission Critical System.” Together they deployed CITIC Telecom CPC’s SmartCLOUD Backup, Replication and Recovery Service, and a tailor-made integrated solution for KVB Kunlun, which comprised an on-demand cloud platform, onsite cloud backup and offsite cloud-to-cloud backup, unified threat management and carrier-class global connectivity.

As KVB Kunlun ran its missioncritical trading platform on the cloud, it conducted proof of concept live testing in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, on CITIC Telecom CPC’s “virtual datacenter” cloud model.

“The live POC performance testing demonstrated a working example of the exact same customized solution to be deployed for KVB Kunlun. Leveraging their cloud service centers in multiple geographic locations, the live testing demonstrated to KVB Kunlun that CITIC Telecom CPC’s capability in providing cross-regional managed backup services for fully satisfying the customized requirements,” said CITIC Telecom CPC’s Senior Manager of Cloud & Security Services Danny Tang.

KVB Kunlun’s Au: This project enabled KVB Kunlun to quickly deploy its trading system to multiple locations in China at the same time

Seamless solution

KVB Kunlun can now back up its business-critical data, and is guarded against business risks and loss that flow from potential vulnerabilities like connectivity outage, data theft and loss, IT infrastructure interruption, hacker and malware threats, etc.

“This cloud project enabled KVB Kunlun to quickly deploy the trading system to multiple locations in China at the same time. This reduced the deployment lead-time and costs, allowed for faster time to market and created more revenue opportunities,” Au said. 

This cloud project gained high recognition from the Cloud Excellence Awards judging panel, and was awarded the Best Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery Project. The judges acknowledged the project’s “localization aspect and seamlessness,” and considered it a good example of multi-location cloud backup implementation for business continuity management.