Netpluz Asia to acquire business assets of two Mediaring companies

Netpluz Asia, a newly formed Singapore-based managed services provider, said today it is paying S$3 million for the business assets of two Mediaring communications companies – Mediaring Network Services (MRNS) and Mediaring Communications (MRC). On the cards are plans to establish a regional footprint with in-country offices in Indonesia and Malaysia to directly support customers in these markets. The goal is to become a leading managed communications service provider in the region.

The purchase, to be staggered over four phases till mid-2017, will complete a full circle for Mediaring, a trailblazer at its initial public offering in 1999. At Mediaring’s peak in 2000, it had the largest market share worldwide as a one-stop service provider of voice, data and computing services with leading-edge VoIP technology.

Netpluz Asia, comprising a management team who worked in Mediaring in 2005, has agreed to purchase the commercial assets of the brand. The retail assets of Mediaring will continue to remain with its existing owner, publicly-listed Si2i.

With the transfer of MRNS and MRC underway, Netpluz Asia aims to:

- Inject newer systems and technologies and offer the likes of cloud computing, IP private branch exchange (IP-PBX) and data analytics to corporate customers;

- Enhance its managed service offerings to the 2,000 active customers from the MRNS and MRC pool, substantially increasing its overall group of clients; and

- Leverage on Mediaring’s ownership of IPv4 addresses, an increasingly valuable asset as the number of such addresses is rapidly dwindling.

While there is no shortage of managed service providers in the IT market, Netpluz Asia is solely focused on small and medium-sized businesses. There are currently other IT service providers which target larger enterprises, but many do not offer a gamut of offerings to small-and-medium-sized businesses, the company notes. The Mediaring acquisition will beef up its pool of small-business customers as well as targeting medium-sized organisations with five to 200 users. With the integration of the Mediaring assets and projected growth from the regional perspective, Netpluz Asia is looking to generate annual revenues of S$10 million in 2017. 

Netpluz's Managing Director Lau Leng Fong said: “Netpluz evolved into its current form because of its strategic focus of offering managed services over the internet to smaller and medium-sized companies. We add value by delivering high quality managed data, voice and video services over a single, converged network.

“Small and medium-sized businesses are springing up in Singapore and the region. These businesses find it hard to leverage on emerging technologies in a comprehensive manner because large managed service providers do not necessarily allow them to benefit from economies of scale. Hence, these smaller players end up taking a piecemeal approach to technology implementation.”

He explained that the current information technology needs of small and medium-sized businesses are met, to a small extent, by system integrators who have the ability to address the nuts and bolts of technology. However, these same system integrators are often unable to harness the power of the Internet via the simultaneous use of data, voice and video.

Looking ahead, there are plans to introduce a string of new services in Asia, including a surveillance video system that is able to pump out data via emails without any human intervention. Customers will have a choice of implementing this service either on their networks or have it managed remotely via Netpluz.