By Cat Yong
Sunway Group President Dato’ Chew Chee Kin said that the collaboration solution is delivered via IBM’s Connections Cloud and will be implemented by their own regional IT services and solutions provider, Hitachi Sunway Information Systems (Hitachi Sunway), which was formed as a joint venture between Hitachi Systems and Sunway Technology.
Hitachi Sunway’s Group CEO and Director, Cheah Kok Hoong said, “Excellence in customer experience is a crucial component for the continued success of Sunway and Hitachi Sunway looks forward to playing a key role to help Sunway achieve its IT business transformation, which among others, include turning the Group into a truly ‘social enterprise’.”
Cloud
Sunway Group’s General Manager of Group IT, Jonathan Lim, clarified that there would be no capital expenditure, due to the nature of cloud-based solutions where users only pay for what they use.
Only operating expense would be incurred, as Sunway Group would be utilising existing infrastructure for authentication, for example.
Lim shared that the Group also uses other cloud services like Microsoft’s Azure for its enterprise development platform, and Amazon Web Service’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service capabilities.
He said, “We are going to use IBM’s BlueMix development platform capability as well, because we are a dual-vendor company.”
Also in the pipeline to be delivered, is IBM’s Watson engine in the field of oncology. Sunway Group which counts healthcare as one of its core business, plans to leverage the Watson technology and its ability to compute vast amounts of data, to replicate oncological knowledge and expertise.
Only one other hospital in the Southeast Asia region is utilising the Watson engine.
Sunway’s business transformation progress
To be deployed in phases, the first phase of Sunway’s transformation includes migration of email services to IBM’s 50GB quota solution. This is a four-month endeavour that is expected to be completed by end March, while Q2 2015, will see roll out of the social components of the solution.
Further deployment to remote Sunway Group sites in countries like Australia, China and Indonesia is expected to be completed by this year.
