Soprano Design, a global leader in cloud-based enterprise messaging solutions, has reached a strategic agreement with Smart Communications, the Philippines leading mobile network operator, to offer Soprano Enterprise Messaging Suite (MEMS) to Smart 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 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.
Robin Ng, Soprano Senior Vice President for APAC, said that this agreement is significant as the Philippines is a strong SMS market with enormous potential. Commenting on the deal, Ng said: “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.”
Chet Alviz, AVP & Head of PLDT Enterprise’s Wireless Business, said: “Soprano offers a highly flexible and competitive messaging solution, which allows us to provide a differentiated mobile messaging solution for customers in traditional large-enterprise and government sectors, as well as for customers that are underserviced today in the Philippines market such as microfinancing, outsourcing/offshoring, and local retail.”
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 region.
Ng continues: “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 Chairman, Richard Favero, added that Soprano has become a leading global expert in Application to Person (A2P) business and government messaging, helping many of the world’s largest mobile network operators including AT&T, BT and Vodafone leverage their size and reputation through a white-label software solution that gives them and their customers a competitive advantage. These international partnerships have seen Soprano’s overseas revenues in the past year grow by nearly 20%.