Football theory guides Wharf T&T

When he isn't championing Cloud technology, Wharf T&T president Vincent Ma Wai-shin is thinking about how Britain's football clubs are run. But first, he's anxious to point out that after 18 years in the telecommunications industry Wharf T&T no longer calls itself a fixed-line operator.

"We're an ICT [information and communications technology] company," he stresses. "Fixed-line operator sounds very boring and implies we don't do mobile or have iPhones, so how can we survive?" says the 47-year old who until recently was an avid mini-soccer coach.

He describes Wharf as Asia's only telecommunications operator serving the business community with a totally business rather than a consumer brand. In 2006 Wharf subsidiary Wharf T&T e-business was established, to help customers in the front end develop marketing technologies. "Small- and medium-sized enterprises [SMEs] - 95 per cent of our customers - don't have a sales and marketing department, so we can enable their business from back to front end."

Then there's the Cloud, the hot topic of the global IT sector. Ma is cautious, but committed. "We need to ensure Cloud can serve our customers better than we serve them today and there are still a lot of question marks. But Cloud is the way forward for us, with public Cloud services for SMEs." Hong Kong has 200,000 active registered businesses, of which 50,000 are Wharf customers. Ma is not afraid to admit when he is not sure about something. "If you ask me how to run these Cloud services, I am not 100 per cent confident of the proven formula yet," adding there are still trials to run to overcome customer concern about security.

As an ardent Arsenal fan and admirer of football club management, is he one of those football dads on the sidelines, jumping up and down and cheering at a son?

"Actually, I think my son Leroy would prefer that I disappeared - that's why I stopped coaching and may be why he switched to the school team - they practice when I am not there."