KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 23 — 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, say industty players.
National ICT Association of Malaysia (Pikom) chairman Cheah Kok Hoong said Malaysia has started to tap into the rapidly growing potential of IoT, which could be a new economy 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 Southeast Asia.
However, businesses will be increasingly challenged by new factors on the back of business agility that comes 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 Corporation's global market intelligence, Malaysia’s big data market is anticipated to hit not less than RM75 million 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 per cent in 2014 to RM68 billion from RM59.8 billion in 2013.
Cheah said the overall ICT services sector is also projected to grow at 12.7 per cent in 2015 to RM77.7 billion.
Meanwhile, CA Technologies South Asia vice-president Chua I Pin said we are entering an era where IT has become the central source of revenue for businesses.
He said 2015 will see a shift in the way businesses structure themselves, looking for new engagement and revenue opportunities using connected devices, big data and analytics, and underpinning these new models will 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 remains 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 have created many new job functions in high demand, the nation still faces a lack of skilled talent in the market. — Bernama
