Twenty Years of avodaq in Singapore

This year, avodaq celebrates the 20th anniversary of its Singapore branch. What began in 2006 with technical training courses on Voice over IP (VoIP) has now developed into an important location with its own identity, strong customer relationships, and clear technological focus.

Our decision to begin our international expansion in Singapore, over ten thousand kilometers away, was based on several developments. With the turn of the millennium, globalization intensified. Consequently, many German companies – including some of our customers – expanded their operations to China and Southeast Asia. At the same time, IT Technology – and with it, the Internet – made great strides, enabling global IT architectures for companies with operations around the world. Internet telephony (VoIP) also became increasingly popular. Consequently, IT responsibilities shifted from regional to central structures, and uniform IT solutions were implemented worldwide from headquarters.

As a relatively small but ambitious medium-sized company, we knew these were big ideas that needed careful consideration. While still in Germany, we reached out to the East Asian Association (OAV) in Hamburg for advice from experienced professionals.

One key question was: Where should we go? The selected candidate cities were Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Ultimately, Singapore won because it offered many advantages, including good connections to Germany and the region, a reliable legal framework, a strong chamber of foreign trade that provided excellent support, and great customer potential.

avodaq initially started with IT training because we had extensive local experience in this field. We gradually established ourselves in the local market and acquired our first customers as both a training provider and a system integrator that plans and implements comprehensive IT infrastructures, as we do in our home market in Germany. In 2008, we entered the private education sector with one of the world’s most renowned international private schools (with around 5,000 students at one location). The education sector quickly became a mainstay of our local activities.

avodaq is a strategic partner of Cisco Systems in Singapore, among others. It serves customers in the education, finance, logistics, and aviation sectors and is increasingly focusing on software solutions. Full stack observability accounts for approximately half of the local business, with application performance monitoring (APM) as a core component. This is supported by close collaboration with technology partners such as Dynatrace and ThousandEyes.

Close ties with Germany in all areas ensure continuous knowledge transfer in both directions. One aspect that was not initially a major focus is now playing an increasingly important role: the rapid pace of digital transformation in Asia, especially in Singapore.

The close cooperation between our employees in Singapore and Germany is particularly valuable for our location and our customers in Germany. Regular exchanges across national borders bring new ideas and inspiration from Asia to Europe and are further strengthened by the regular presence of our CEO Andreas Kusch on site. We are inspired by the openness to technology, high level of innovation and dynamism that we see in Asia, and these qualities flow directly into our projects and consulting services.

After 20 years in Asia, we are looking ahead with confidence, armed with a global perspective, regional proximity, and the ambition to actively shape digital transformation.