(L-R): Lancelot Guo, Ng Wan Peng, Syahrunizam Samsudin, Patrick Khoo, Kanags Surendran
Alibaba Cloud, organised their inaugural Cloud Summit in Kuala Lumpur today, drawing participation from execs representing top companies in Malaysia.
Significantly, Alibaba Cloud also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Bank Muamalat, their first ever co-operation with a financial services industry player.
CTO of the bank, Abdul Razak Mohamed Ismail said, “The collaboration presents a perfect opportunity for us to use predictive analytics powered by big data and AI technologies to better understand our customer segmentations and preferences.”
Ultimately, this will help the bank offer relevant products and services to customers. “It helps us offer tailor-made financial services that suit their growth aspirations.”
Alibaba Cloud hsa more than 70 security and compliance accreditations worldwide. In addition, it has one of the largest infrastructure networks in the Asia Pacific region with operations in 56 availability zones across 19 regions globally including Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, India and Japan in Asia Pacific markets.
Inclusive technology
During a panel discussion, Lancelot Guo, VP of Alibaba Group and President of Strategy and Marketing of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence International, sat down with CxOs of large Malaysia companies, to discuss “Flourishing in the New Economy with Inclusive technology.”
Industry personalities from the likes of CIMB, Averis and MDEC and Touch n’ Go, shared about how they approach the use of technologies in their respective industries.
Of note was MDEC COO Ng Wan Peng’s observation, that Malaysia needs to see more usage of technology in the micro enterprise and small-to-medium size enterprise (SME) segments.
MDEC as an ecosystem enabler has been trying to create awareness in these segments, and a key thing which they came to realise is that SMEs want to be able to make money first before being receptive to the idea of using tech to be productive.
Wan Peng concludes that technology has to be adopted in the right way, in a transformative way. “And we need talent too. If we don’t do it right, we will miss the boat and be left behind.”
SaaS boost
Henry Zhang, GM of Products and Solutions was emphatic that Alibaba does not have a software-as-a-service (SaaS) play.
What they do have however, is the SaaS accelerator which enables faster go-to-market. This is offered as a programme and platform for SMEs to accelerate development of their applications, integrate technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality and so on whilst allowing them to quickly reach enabling players in the e-commerce ecosystem, for example Ali Pay, Ding Talk, AutoNavi and so on.
This offering was recently launched in Malaysia, complete with modules for retail selling, payments, and so on.
Selina Yuan, President of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence International has shared that the group is increasing investment in Malaysia, which they count as a very important market.
The group had completed expansion of their data centre footprint in the country earlier this year, and they continue to invest in training cloud talents and enhancing their related skills, as well as data centre products to launch, said Selina.
