Amazon Web Services (AWS) invests worth RM25.5 billion (about USD5.7 billion) over 15 years for a new infrastructure “region” in Malaysia. The investment aims to drive the digital transformation and digital trust in the country.
According to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, the largest international technology investment to date into the country will in turn lead to greater innovation and investment in Malaysia, propelling the nation to truly be Southeast Asia’s data center and digital hub.
Anwar said that the announcement is a vote of confidence and support for Malaysia’s leadership in the global digital economy, and they look forward to deepening their collaboration with AWS to advance their nation’s digital economy ambitions.
He said the investment will also advance the Malaysia Madani vision of a highly skilled, innovative, inclusive, and sustainable economy, where wealth is shared more equitably.
Today, they’ve already seen a large number of Malaysian companies — from start-ups to enterprises — transform their services and processes, resulting in greater innovation, more secure processing of data, and lower operational costs with Cloud service providers like AWS.
The Prime Minister took the Petronas (Petroliam Nasional Bhd) as a lighthouse example of how a leading Malaysian organization accelerates its digital transformation journey by leveraging the power of the cloud to modernize its information technology, drive smarter operations and faster decisions through insights from data analytics, and build new digital applications such as Setel to improve customer experience.
The PM said the same goes for Silverlake Axis, a Malaysia-founded finance and financial technology company, which had used AWS to digitize and modernize 25 applications, enabling them to offer more innovative services to their customers.
Moreover, he said, Pos Malaysia Bhd, by migrating to the cloud, had been able to navigate its business transformation to diversify beyond the traditional provision of mail and parcel delivery to now offer retail, logistics, and other innovative products and services.
For these companies, Anwar said an AWS region in Malaysia will further accelerate the transformation and the creation of innovative digital services, using the secure, high-performing, resilient, and trusted infrastructure.
Anwar further said that AWS has also signed the cloud framework agreement with the Malaysian government, giving a booster to cloud adoption in the public sector, and helping agencies save costs, enhance digital skills and drive innovation.
The digital economy’s contribution to Malaysia’s gross domestic product (GDP) stood at 23.2% in 2021.
“Our goal of increasing the digital economy’s contribution to 25.5% of Malaysia’s GDP can be reached well by 2025. This is possible through public- and private-sector investments in digital infrastructure, human capital, business capacities, and improved public service delivery,” the Prime Minister said.
Earlier this year, Malaysia has also received international technology investments from different tech sectors like data centers, telecommunications and cyber security.
AirTrunk, an Asia Pacific & Japan (APJ) hyperscale data center specialist, has announced its entry into Malaysia with plans to develop a 150+MW data center named AirTrunk JHB1 (JHB1) which will be the company’s first in Malaysia.
A joint venture of real estate private equity firm Gaw Capital Partners and A3 Capital also announced their plan to invest into greenfield and under-performing data center assets across key markets in the Southeast Asia region, including Malaysia.
As for the 5G Services, telecommunications companies Ericsson, a Swedish telecommunications giant, and Intel, one of the world’s largest chipmakers, were also set to collaborate in Malaysia on the development of 5G use cases that can accelerate the adoption of new technology for enterprises and digitalization in the country.
Furthermore, Malaysia has also partnered with Singapore to cooperate on issues such as personal data protection as well as cybersecurity. Additionally, Siemens Energy, a German renewable power company, has also launched the region’s first MDR operational technology cybersecurity operations center (CSOC) in Cyberjaya, Malaysia.
