Malaysia Embraces Big Data Analytics to Fuel Higher Growth, Productivity

Big Data is unstructured, high-volume, exabyte-scale data. It is generated every day in every single use of social media, every bit of meteorological movement, and every part of running a business. However, such vast amounts of unstructured data are not enough to learn from or suggest business ideas. It is the use of data analytics – the systematic processing of big data and analysing it to extract useful, applicable and most importantly, relevant information - that allows big data to serve its best function.
 
Studies show the importance of data literacy – turning data into insights – as it can boost enterprise value by up to half a billion US dollars. It’s no surprise, then, that the Malaysia Digital Economy Blueprint (MyDIGITAL), targets to develop 30,000 data professionals by 2025.
 
Malaysia’s Big Data Analytics (BDA) marketis expected to grow from US$1.1 billion in 2021 to US$1.9 billion by 2025. Malaysia is one of the few countries with a structured BDA roadmap to fully unlock the value of Big Data. The National BDA Framework aims to create a national BDA ecosystem, making it a catalyst for further economic growth in all sectors. It strives to drive BDA demand in all sectors, activate the adoption and usage of BDA in the public sector, and build a robust BDA industry in Malaysia.

The National BDA Framework is projected to result in the following five outcomes:

  • 30% increase in workplace productivity
  • Stimulate growth in the ICT industry
  • Allows the government to be more efficient, thereby saving costs
  • 30% of Malaysians can reap the benefits of having a robust BDA industry
  • Catalyst for innovations


To drive investments in this space, in May 2024, the Government launched the Malaysia Digital (MD) Tax Incentive, an outcome-based tax incentive offered to eligible MD companies proposing to undertake qualifying activities by leveraging promoted tech enablers, including BDA.

Over the last decade, data-driven investments have been largely concentrated around data centres in Malaysia. Since 2021, data centre investments have generated 3,693 jobs requiring specific expertise, including engineers, data scientists, Big Data analysts, cybersecurity engineers, and IT engineers. The direct impact includes the digital transformation of local companies. This, in turn, allows them to implement digital solutions and automation to improve operational efficiency, reduce business costs and increase competitiveness.




Mastercard’s Data & Services Hub

In May 2023, Mastercard launched its new Data & Services (D&S) Hub in Greater KL to serve clients across Asia Pacific with a suite of offerings beyond transactions, while nurturing a talent pipeline across a range of capabilities focusing on data science, product development and payments consulting.

Mastercard’s D&S experts globally work with nearly 4,000 clients in over 120 countries, drawing on Mastercard’s extensive expertise, data, and technology to offer solutions that cover from personalised loyalty programmes, to product prototyping, to end-to-end marketing solutions that span the customer journey. The hub in Greater KL supports Mastercard in providing solutions to partners in the areas of cybersecurity, credit risk, and data analytics to help clients to scale and enable their businesses’ potential.



Flexi-work and GBS hubs

The rise of flexi-work models globally has positively impacted Malaysia, which is the world’s third-most competitive Global Business Services (GBS) location. The local GBS sector, which is expected to reach a value of US$6.7 billion by 2025, is part of the larger Global Services ecosystem, which includes hubs such as Shared Service Centres (SCs), Centres of Excellence (CoEs), Technical Centres, and Regional HQs.

One example is Finnish cybersecurity firm F-Secure, which chose Greater Kuala Lumpur (Greater KL) as its Asian hub as early as 2006 for the city’s strong pipeline of cybersecurity talents. In March 2022, F-Secure’s corporate arm relaunched as WithSecure. By January 2024, WithSecure became one of the prominent MNC occupying WORQ’s 7,200 sq. Ft. co-working space in Menara Sentrum, Greater KL, which prioritises transit connectivity and flexible working arrangements.
 
Datacom, Australasia's largest homegrown tech company also embraces flexi working models It, too, has chosen WORQ’s Menara Sentrum co-working space for its Greater KL contact centre operations, demonstrating the growing appeal of hybrid workspaces in the region.



Oracle’s US$6.5b AI, cloud investments

In October 2024, Oracle announced plans to invest more than US$6.5 billion (RM28.6 billion) to open a public cloud region to enable its customers and partners in Malaysia to leverage AI infrastructure and services and migrate mission-critical workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

Oracle said the planned public cloud region will help organisations in Malaysia modernise their applications, migrate all types of workloads to the cloud, and innovate with data, analytics, and AI.

MITI Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz said the investment is a significant step towards realising the country’s New Industrial Master Plan’s ambitious vision of creating 3,000 smart factories by 2030.



SAS Institute's new regional hub

In September 2024, U.S.-based digital, data and AI leader SAS opened its new regional hub in Greater KL marks a milestone in SAS's 35-year journey in Malaysia. This office serves as a regional hub for Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam, fostering synergies across geographies and leveraging our regional partner network to deliver and implement SAS technology for local businesses and organisations.

Its clients in Malaysia include Alliance Bank, which implemented SAS Asset Liability Management to bolster its risk monitoring and oversight for its interest rate risk and liquidity risk management. By enabling advanced stress testing, scenario analysis, and predictive analytics capabilities, the bank saw 10-fold improvement in system scalability, transaction per second, and 24/7 system availability and uptime; more than 10% in savings on operational costs, manpower costs, and time spent on production processes; and reduced the average time needed for risk assessment and compliance to less than one day.



AWS’ US$6.2b investment in Malaysia

In August 2024, Amazon Web Services (AWS), announced an investment of US$6.2 billion in Malaysia through 2038, accompanying the launch of the AWS Asia Pacific (Malaysia) Region, which provides developers, start-ups, entrepreneurs, and enterprises in Malaysia greater options for running applications and serving end users from local AWS data centres.

The new AWS Region enables organisations across Asia Pacific to unlock the full potential of the AWS cloud, deploying advanced applications with a broad set of AWS technologies like AI and machine learning (ML). The new AWS Region is projected to contribute US$12.1 billion to Malaysia’s GDP and will support over 3,500 jobs annually through 2038.



PPG’s Malaysia Global Technology Centre

U.S.-based paints, coatings and speciality chemicals company PPG invested in its Malaysia Global Technology Centre in 2018. Since then, the hub has grown from 25 IT professionals in Oracle systems, applications and products (SAP) to more than 160 employees across different IT functions in 2024.
 
With a strategic focus on data analytics, AI, ML, SAP, infrastructure and cloud development, PPG's data analytics centre of excellence handles data from major enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems like Oracle, SAP and QAD, while the SAP centre of excellence continues to expand with teams across operations, basis, development, integration and testing.



AXA’s data analytics, AI and secure GPT investments

French insurer AXA, via its AXA Group Operations arm in Greater KL, has invested in advanced data analytics, AI, and secure GPT, a platform designed to harness the power of generative AI while ensuring data safety and responsible use.

AXA Group Operations, a key player within the global AXA Group, operates as a shared service centre with a skilled team of about 200 employees in Malaysia. It places strong emphasis on digital transformation and innovation, positively impacting the local ecosystem by nurturing technology and expertise in the financial and insurance sectors.




Let us facilitate your growth in the region.

CONTACT US

Reach out to our team

SUBSCRIBE

Receive updates from us

Ooops!
Generic Popup2