IBM to continue playing nation-building role through public-private partnerships
30 Sep 2020
Having been in Malaysia for close to six decades, IBM Malaysia Sdn Bhd continues to play a ‘nation building role’ while doing its part to transform Malaysia into a high-income nation through the socialisation of transformative technologies.
Its managing director Catherine Lian said the company would continue to collaborate on public-private partnerships to also boost the country’s digital economic growth.
“In doing so not only helps accelerate the development and deployment of new-age digital solutions for the rakyat but also ensures that the public sector also gets the support they need to develop their digital capabilities fully,” she told The New Straits Times.
Penang Island City Council is one such example when it partnered with IBM Malaysia to accelerate ‘smart city’ initiatives.
“IBM will continue efforts to further digitise the city council by providing advisory, technical expertise, and consultation around four key technologies, namely cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, and internet-of-things related to MBPP’s smart city implementation,” Catherine said.
The company has also been continuously working with both public and private sectors to infuse cloud and AI in healthcare, banking, manufacturing, and public services.
“We offer them our latest technology, services, and expertise that will enable them to unlock the combined value of technology platforms,” said Catherine.
Today, IBM Malaysia works closely with organisations such as Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), Invest KL, Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) and the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) to support the government’s objective of preparing Malaysian businesses for the challenges and opportunities arising from trade liberalisation and globalisation.
As the 4th Industrial Revolution (IR 4.0) becomes the key driver Malaysia’s digital economy, Catherine believes that leaders in both public and private sectors need to assess their organisations’ fundamental aspects.
“The need for partnership and collaboration between public and private sectors is crucial to make a better future for digital Malaysia and accelerate us towards IR 4.0 and ensure they can survive in the post-pandemic world,” she said.
For Catherine, Covid-19 has been a turning point for governments, industries and businesses.
“It is a ‘reset’ of sorts whereby the disruption can create opportunities for companies to emerge, grow and even leapfrog the competition,” said Catherine.
“Only by working smarter, more openly, and more collaboratively will businesses and economies begin to rebound, albeit with a new outlook and new priorities on what’s meaningful and valuable,” she said.
Hence it is critical for organisations to start embracing cloud and AI technologies, if they had not done so already, so that they become more agile, harness the power of a distributed workforce, and engage their customers in new and innovative ways so that they may emerge stronger and more resilient post-crisis.
Most importantly, the pandemic has underscored every organisation’s need to continue modernising operations to realize the immense benefits of cloud-native capabilities – location independence, talent flexibility, scalability, resilience, interoperability, and seamless transition to a virtualized engagement and delivery model, she said.
“The imperative nature of innovative technologies allows us to operate, plan, and respond to this crisis that past era never could. The changes we are experiencing are, in this way, preparation for the future,” said Catherine.
IBM can help Malaysian government and businesses by extending the full benefits of cloud – scalability, flexibility, security, and cost advantages – what we call cloudified delivery, she added.
Its cloud services portfolio – including cloud infrastructure, platform services for the development, file sharing and collaboration services, event management, analytics, and security services for countering cyber threats – is positioned to support businesses for their sustainability, growth, and innovation agenda.
“We bring the whole of IBM to our engagements with clients in Malaysia from start to finish, from providing leading-edge technology to solution design, to project implementation and delivery and to follow-up support,” she said.
Source: NST
