IT Brief Australia - Technology news for CIOs & IT decision-makers
Story image
Soprano announces a partnership with Smart Communications
Thu, 14th Mar 2019
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Australian based Soprano Design, a global provider of cloud-based enterprise messaging solutions, has reached a strategic agreement with Smart Communications, the Philippines leading mobile network operator.

Entering the Philippines market for the first time, Soprano will be making its Soprano Enterprise Messaging Suite (MEMS) available to Smart's diverse portfolio of enterprise customers. In the Philippines, the Soprano messaging service will be branded Smart Messaging Suite.

Currently, Smart controls nearly 50 per cent of the estimated 130 million mobile connections in the Philippines and has rightly earned its reputation for being a market innovator, offering enterprise customers access to a diverse portfolio of Smart Enterprise Business Solutions powered by the latest transformational technologies.

By choosing Soprano's enterprise messaging solutions, Smart can supposedly now offer its customers a ‘best-of-breed' mobile messaging solution that is flexible enough to suit the diverse needs of Philippines enterprise customers, from banks to education providers and Government services to microfinanciers.

Soprano APAC SVP Robin Ng said that this agreement is significant as the Philippines is a strong SMS market with enormous potential. Commenting on the deal, Ng says “Smart has earned a reputation for delivering the most innovative technologies to its customers.

"Soprano is proud to be partnering with Smart in the Philippines, enabling its customers to have access to our market-leading enterprise-grade mobile messaging application platform.

This agreement with Smart is significant for Soprano Design, entering the Philippines marketplace for the first time, as part of its accelerated growth plans across the Asia Pacific region.

Ng explains, “The Philippines market is technology savvy and like many regions within Asia Pacific, is experiencing a lot of rapid-fire technology change.

“Businesses are looking for effective enterprise-grade messaging solutions that are flexible, secure and easy to deploy. SMS technology is the principal communication channel in the Philippines and Soprano is expecting to send more than one-billion enterprise messages for Smart customers each year using Smart Messaging Suite.

Within Asia Pacific, Soprano is seeing a surge in demand for enterprise-grade messaging platforms as businesses look to stay ahead of the digital transformation curve. This agreement with Smart is Soprano's sixth major APAC telco partnership. Other APAC markets where Soprano is seeing strong growth include Australia and Singapore.

According to a recent market study conducted by Infoholic Research, the Asia Pacific A2P (application to person) SMS market is expected to grow during 2016-2022 at a CAGR of 6.34%.

Soprano MEMS is currently deployed in some of the most complex enterprise and government IT environments in the world, enabling large A2P mobile messaging deployments in a variety of industries including finance, banking, insurance, retail, hospitality, automotive, transport - logistics, workforce management and government.