Optus Enterprise returns to Australian hands amid restructure

Optus's Singapore-based parent company Singtel will return the management of Optus’s Enterprise division back to the Australian subsidiary.

In the announcement, Optus chief executive officer Kelly Bayer Rosmarin said the transfer would improve the telco’s ability to “meet the localised need[s] of our business customer[s] and bring solutions to market more quickly.” 

“This change is about delivering better outcomes for all our customers, whether they are consumers, small businesses, enterprise customers or wholesale customers,” she added.

Singtel chief executive officer Yuen Kuan Moon said the transfer, which becomes effective 1 July 2022, was based on the success of other recent decentralisation restructures. 

In 2021 the telco’s ICT arm NCS was spun off from Singtel’s enterprise business as a B2B digital services company in Asia. This included NCS opening a facility in Melbourne to provide cloud products and services to Australian government and enterprise customers in August last year. 

“With NCS scaling its business in Australia, we expect the combined synergies and capabilities of NCS and Optus to be mutually beneficial as both companies respond more easily to the specific needs of that market,” Yuen said.

“By adopting a decentralised opco-driven structure, we can empower our businesses to exploit commercial synergies and capabilities to drive growth.

“This is all the more important in today’s volatile macro-economic environment where business units need greater independence and agility to better navigate the market.

“Optus has been part of the Singtel stable for two decades and a leading player in the Australian consumer market. Given the hyper digitalisation that enterprises are currently experiencing, this is also timely as Optus can focus on advancing its growth as a B2B player.” 

Last year as part of the decentralisation restructure the company also set up a new regional data centre business that built on Singtel’s data centre operations in Singapore.

Telkom in Indonesia and Gulf and AIS in Thailand were among the new business’ first partners, Yuen said. 

Singtel group enterprise chief executive officer Bill Chang would become chief executive officer of the new venture on 1 July 2022, Yuen also announced.

Chang said, “I’m very excited to lead the regional data centre growth business for the Group.”

“This leverages our world-class data centre expertise, excellent digital infrastructure and track record as Asia’s leading network connectivity provider to offer an integrated proposition to enterprises.