The SME Magazine:
Hitachi Sunway Information Systems recently released its outlook on the ICT sector in Malaysia, foreseeing rapidly growing business opportunities in ICT infrastructure building presented within the SEA emerging markets such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar and more in parallel with national developments across borders.
The ICT sector will witness accelerated demands for data centre services as the Cloud Computing continue to drive ICT growth throughout SEA markets. More financial institutions, government-linked companies (GLCs) and enterprises will be looking to outsource their business operations in order to further reduce cost and increase competitiveness with faster go-to-market strategies. Organisations will seek alternative solutions such as Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), managed services and secure cloud infrastructure solutions to outsource their data center management and operations.
Due to accelerated demands for data centre services, System Integration (SI) will continue to play an increasing important role to help business organisations to integrate their ICT infrastructure. Meanwhile, local data centre service providers will put in more effort to modernise their data centres' operations while continuously seeking to address their costs due to the increase of electricity tariffs.
For mid-markets and small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs), there will be a faster uptake of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Compute-as-a-Service (CaaS) since these Cloud solutions will enable them to be more agile when delivering their business to customers.
As pervasive ICT becomes incorporated in day-to-day lives and coupled with the proliferation of mobile devices, defence against cyber crimes, cyber attacks and information leaking will rise again to be the focus topic next year as will PDPA (Personal Data Protect Act) policies as security remains the top concern for all businesses.
Overall, more local organisations will look to revamp their current technology infrastructures for better business ROIs, lowered cost of ownership, and simplified operations with Cloud solutions such as IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. Especially in Malaysia, the GST implementation is expected to further drive the adoption of ICT solutions in 2015 as local businesses scramble to adhere to the new policy.
Due to these developments, finding the ideal ICT partners and skilled ICT talents yet remain as the key challenges. ICT partners play a crucial role in today's successful ICT adoptions. This is especially true for many multinational companies which are eager to establish their footprint in these SEA markets. They are aggressively looking for ICT partners that have an on-site presence in multiple ASEAN countries to support their regional expansion and operational ICT needs.
The talent gaps in ICT field continue to be apparent as ICT providers seek to leverage transformational IT technologies such as cloud computing, mobile and analytics. Also many organisations are facing daunting challenges to find people with the right technical skills to fully harness Big Data and other advanced technologies.
Source URL:
http://www.smemagazine.asia/index.php/top-news/malaysia/1987-outlook-for-ict-sec...
