Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The Malaysian ICT market is going through a lot of changes and will gain momentum. Capabilities will be built in digital content, software development and testing, Internet of Things (IoT), data centers and cloud services, cyber security and big data analytics (BDA). The Government has taken the special interest in developing the Internet of Things (IoT) sector, which has resulted in several market partnerships. The commercialization of ‘smart city’ infrastructure, applications, and services such as smart highways, intelligent traffic management systems and advanced energy management systems are expected to drive IoT adoption across key social and economic sectors. Over the last five years, the data center industry has grown rapidly to support 26 data center service companies and nearly 200 specialized service providers capable of providing affordable, scalable and high-quality remote data storage and retrieval services to the growing numbers of multinational corporations looking to establish regional headquarters in the country. Cloud computing is expected to gain momentum with growing investments in data centers and ICT infrastructure in Malaysia. Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) Malaysia has named cloud computing as the most important of its top 10 strategic technology priorities. The government hopes that adoption of cloud computing, building on the national broadband initiative, could accelerate Malaysia’s development into an advanced economy. In Malaysia, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has the highest adoption of cloud computing followed by Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). Hybrid Clouds remain the dominant form of deployment by enterprises and this model has been recognized by service providers as a key growth market. While the adoption of cloud computing offers multiple potential benefits, there are also concerns regarding bandwidth consumption, lack of maturity of cloud environments, latency, data security and privacy guarantees from service providers. Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation (MOSTI) identified R&D in cyberspace security as a critical issue for the continued development of its IT and telecoms sectors. MOSTI stated the imperative of reducing the vulnerability of critical infrastructures such as power grids, air traffic control systems, military and financial systems. More focus will be given to key areas such as secure communications to protect the confidentiality and integrity of information during transmission and storage, high availability systems to ensure continuous and uninterrupted operations of critical IT software projects, network surveillance to detect and respond to incidents of system disruption, secure access to protect the ICT system from unauthorized entry, and system integrity controls to ensure that a system and its data are not illicitly modified or corrupted. These changes in growth are attributed to the move from traditional computers to smaller ICT devices and wearable gadgets, the increasing amount of real-time and interactive multimedia content supported by mobile technology, the rising popularity of cloud computing, Big Data Analytics, software-as-a-service (SaaS), social media applications, Internet of Things (IoT) and wearable technology, the integration of systems and processes and ICT services by and with the people and institutions and service providers. Currently, its share to gross domestic product (GDP) is 17.3 percent (USD 62 billion in current prices) in 2016. Despite the slower economy in 2016, the ICT industry registered 14.2 percent growth, based on the 12.5 percent growth that the industry experienced in 2015. The outlook for consultancy services remains bullish specifically in the risk management associated with cloud computing projects, Internet of Things (IoT) projects, e-commerce, and security systems.