Information technology players believe Malaysia is beginning to tap into the potential of the Internet of things.KUALA LUMPUR: Social media, the cloud and big data will be the game-changing trends that will transform Malaysia’s information and communications technology (ICT) industry and spur further growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) next year, says industry players.
National ICT Association of Malaysia (Pikom) chairman Cheah Kok Hoong said Malaysia had started to tap into the rapidly growing potential of IoT, which could be a new economy by itself covering business areas such as embedded device manufacturing, connectivity infrastructure and application deployments.
He said the trend would provide a new opportunity to position the country as the hub for regional IoT innovation projects in South-East Asia.
However, companies would be increasingly challenged by new factors on the back of business agility that came with mobility, security, analytics, and miniaturisation of devices and millennial generation aspirations, he told Bernama.
“Adoption of cloud solutions will also move from conceptual to the practical stage.
“As predicted by International Data Corp’s global market intelligence, Malaysia’s big data market is anticipated to hit not less than RM75mil but many businesses have yet to consider big data as a big business for their organisation and it thus remains at a tactical level,” he added.
IT spending registered significant growth as reflected in the growth of value-added services, which are expected to grow about 13.6% in 2014 to RM68bil from RM59.8bil in 2013.
Cheah said the overall ICT services sector was also projected to grow at 12.7% in 2015 to RM77.7bil.
Meanwhile, CA Technologies South Asia vice-president Chua I. Pin said the country was entering an era where IT had become the central source of revenue for businesses.
He said 2015 would see a shift in the way businesses structured themselves, looking for new engagement and revenue opportunities using connected devices, big data and analytics, and underpinning these new models would be a fundamental shift in the way software is developed and deployed.
“Software will continue to become the primary way that consumers interact with businesses, which would evolve dramatically in 2015 as businesses become more competitive to reach out to their clients, and we will see apps shifting from simply helping people make decisions to being able to predict what people need,” he said.
Cheah added that with the need for more sophistication in the ICT industry, human capital remained the main challenge in the industry towards achieving high-income nation status.
There is a persistent and widening gap of remuneration packages for ICT professionals between Malaysia and neighbouring countries such as Vietnam and Thailand, coupled with the declining number of ICT graduates, he said.
He said although the new trends such as big data and social media had created many new job functions in high demand, the nation still faced a lack of skilled talent in the market. — Bernama
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