Becoming Digital-Native: IDC’s Top 2018 Predictions Unveiled for Malaysia

It’s the time of year when every company or analyst in the technology space comes up with predictions on how the torrential storm of new technology will affect each local market. In Malaysia, it is no different.

If 2016 – 2017 was about convincing C-level execs on the need to imbue advanced technology and architecture into their companies’ daily operations, in 2018, one can agree that these same execs are mostly now “bought over”. It is now more a question of how much investment cost and how fast can they harness artificial intelligence and data analytics to roll out targeted business improvements.

Well, they better stride fast because International Data Corporation (“IDC”) ASEAN’s top ten technology predictions for 2018 and beyond shows a country and its people embracing digital economy in as short as three years’ time. IDC Futurescape’s recent event, themed “Becoming Digital-Native in the Malaysian Digital Economy”, highlighted trends and key imperatives that will impact strategic decisions as digital transformation (“DX”) attains macroeconomic scale in Malaysia.

“In order to be able to lead in a fully-scaled DX economy, organisations must become digital-native enterprises. The digital-native enterprise is able to scale its business and innovate at a pace that is an order of magnitude greater than traditional businesses. New technologies should be adopted as business benefits become more obvious and clear. The technology predictions for this year provide insights for business leaders to achieve their business goals in a competitive digital ecosystem,” said Pranabesh Nath, Research Director, IDC Malaysia.

IDC’s predictions primarily focus on the four pillar technology areas: Cloud, Mobility, Social and Big Data & Analytics as well as six innovation accelerators; Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR), Cognitive/AI System, Next-Gen Security, Internet of Things (IoT), 3D Printing and Robotics.

These are IDC’s top ten predictions impacting Malaysia for 2018 and beyond:

1. Digital economy tipping point: By 2021, at least 20% of Malaysia GDP will be digitized, with growth in every industry driven by digitally-enhanced offerings, operations and relationships; by 2020, investors will use platform/ecosystem, data value, and customer engagement metrics as valuation factors for all enterprises.
2. DX platforms: By 2020, 28% of all enterprises in Malaysia will have fully articulated an organization-wide digital transformation (DX) platform strategy and will be in the process of implementing that strategy as the new IT core for competing in the digital economy.
3. Cloud 2.0: Distributed and specialized: By 2021, Malaysian enterprise spending on cloud services and cloud-enabling hardware, software and services will reach US$621 million, leveraging the diversifying cloud environment that is 15% at the edge, over 20% specialized (non-x86) compute, and 50% multicloud.
4. AI everywhere: By 2019, 30% of digital transformation initiatives in Malaysia will use AI services; by 2021, 50% of commercial enterprise apps will use AI, over 20% of consumers will interact with customer support bots, and over 20% of new industrial robots will leverage AI.
5. Hyperagile apps: By 2021, Malaysian enterprise apps will shift toward hyper-agile architectures, with 50% of new application development on cloud platforms (PaaS) using microservices and cloud functions (e.g., AWS Lambda, Azure Functions), and over 40% of new microservices deployed in containers (e.g., Docker).
6. HD interfaces: By 2020, human-digital (HD) interfaces will diversify in Malaysia, as 15% of field-service techs and over 15% of infoworkers use augmented reality, nearly 20% of new mobile apps use voice as a primary interface and 15% of consumer-facing M1000 use biometric sensors to personalize experiences.
7. Blockchain and digital trust: By 2021, at least 10% of Malaysian enterprises will use blockchain services as a foundation for digital trust at scale; by 2020, 20% of banks, 10% of supply-chain and 5% of healthcare organizations will use blockchain networks in production.
8. Everyone a data provider: By 2020, 15% of Malaysian enterprises will generate revenue from data-as-a-service – from the sale of raw data, derived metrics, insights, and recommendations – up from virtually 0% in 2017.
9. Everyone a developer: Improvements in simple (“low-/no-code”) development tools will dramatically expand the number of non-tech developers over the next 36 months in Malaysia; by 2021, these non-traditional developers will build 20% of business applications and 30% of new application features (60% by 2027).
10. Open API ecosystems: By 2021, more than quarter of Malaysian enterprises will see an average of 15% of their digital services interactions come through their open API ecosystems, up from virtually 0% in 2017 – amplifying their digital reach far beyond their own customer interactions.

Therefore, as Malaysia strides towards a pervasive digital economy, IDC urges local enterprises to scale up and accelerate innovation as emerging technology trends are set to redefine IT and businesses in as little as three years’ time.