AIM’s Managing Director Chiew Kok Hin said, “We want to be the ASEAN solution to companies like Netflix, and serve them as a group.”
TIME Group currently has three main lines of business, that form an end-to-end value chain – TIME itself is in the fixed line business, AIMS has five data centres, crucial as data centres are where data resides, while Global Transit is in the submarine capacity business, with stakes in underwater cable builds like the Asia Pacific Gateway (APG) and Asia-Africa-Europe1 (AAE-1).
Chiew also spoke of having recently acquired a Facilities Based Operator or FBO licence to put fibre in Singapore. “So, now we own fibre in Malaysia and also Singapore.”
Chiew added “Owning all these allows us to control service level agreements, costs and also the whole value chain.”
All these capabilities also, ultimately allow AIMS to offer much valued flexibility of connectivity, to businesses.
Fine-tuning cloud computing
An interesting tidbit of info that arises from a data centre provider’s perspective, especially with looming pressure from potential rivals like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, is that local data centres are still relevant.
At least AIMS is finding this to be case, collaborating mostly with system integrators (SI) to build out private clouds for corporate enterprises.
No doubt, cloud providers like AWS have appeal for SMEs in Malaysia who do not want the hassle of owning IT resources, for example. But, outside Malaysia, in the US itself, AWS is providing private cloud ‘service’ for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
There is no shared infrastructure, but the CIA also do not own any hardware or storage, using IT resources with full AWS-benefits, as a service.
Besides just ‘private’, ‘public’ or ‘hybrid’, perhaps it’s time for the phrase ‘virtual private cloud’ to become a bit more mainstream in conversations amongst Malaysia’s IT industry players.
