NEC Asia Head Looks to 2009

Kiyofumi Kusaka sees opportunity for the Japanese IT company despite slower growth in Southeast Asia and India

By Vivian Yeo

Having served as president of NEC Thailand and NEC Corporation (Thailand) between 2001 and 2006, his second Asian stint, which started in Singapore in June this year, is a breeze, he told us in a recent interview.

Not only is it much easier to find talent with, for example, Cisco certification in Singapore—several hundred certified professionals compared to 30 in a Thai population of about 60 million then—getting to customer sites in the tiny island-state is less of an effort.

The veteran, who spent 20 years in the IT systems development and systems integration (SI) business of NEC, shared NEC Asia's services push, the company's proposition for Singapore's standard operating environment (SOE) project for schools as well as his outlook for NEC's corporate health in the region.

Q: What are your short- and long-term goals for NEC Asia?

Kusaka: I want to make NEC Asia one of the most advanced and established companies in this region. NEC has four [regional offices]—I want NEC Asia to be the fastest growing and biggest.

Currently, NEC Asia [does] develop original solutions and deliver them to Asean countries. In the future, we can expand to outside of Asean…to Australia also. It means we're not [just importing] products from Japan, we [provide] additional value—develop some applications or integrate several solutions—to the customers. We can take the lead to expand NEC's global business, not rely on hardware and software which NEC exports [from Japan].

How big is the SI business for NEC Asia?

Currently we are doing [mainly] systems integration, but we have to expand our business in systems outsourcing. Expansion will come from not only system integration, but [also] the systems services field.

In emerging countries—[we focus on] mainly hardware, but in more [mature] countries, it becomes more of a solutions business. So in Singapore, sure, we have to shift to service from systems integration, but like in Thailand or Malaysia, [it would] probably be systems integration as the main core. Indonesia, Vietnam or India, [NEC's] main portfolio should be hardware. There should be a mixture.

How big is the services component today?

If we talk about NEC's Singapore operations, 10 percent of our total revenue is systems hardware, only 10 to 15 percent is services-related. But I believe that this part can be expanded to more than 50 percent.

I understand that NEC Asia is a member of the Ednovate@SG consortium led by SingTel bidding for the SOE Schools project. What does NEC bring to the consortium, and how confident are you of winning the approval of the Ministry of Education?

For many years, we have been building good relations with the Ministry of Education (MOE). We think we understand the requirements of the customer. Solutions business normally starts from understanding the customers' situation and requirements.

We can [implement initiatives from] other countries…we do a lot of business globally. It means we can refer to…[projects in] the United States, Europe or Japan.

We want to propose more advanced concepts to the Singapore government. And of course, in some hardware [aspects], we also pay much attention to eco-friendly, energy saving [products]. We're also thinking how we can carry out advanced concepts with minimum energy expense. That will be the combination—some hardware that can minimize energy consumption and some advanced concepts.

Can you share some of these advanced concepts?

[There are] several components. We are saying that the school management system, which is a necessary component, [is one in] which individual schools have to manage more efficiently. SOE 2 will use next-generation networks, it means [faster] broadband. And broadband in Japan is more advanced. So the advanced solutions which are already available in Japan could be [recommended] to the Singapore government.