Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been a part of Malaysia’s digital transformation journey since 2015 when we established our presence in the country with a local marketing entity, AWS Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. The announcement by the Malaysian Government outlining the Malaysia Digital Economy Blueprint via MyDigital marks a milestone in the nation’s journey to transform to a digital economy, built on cloud computing. As part of this journey, AWS is delighted to be named as a Cloud Service Provider for the Government of Malaysia by the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU).

With the right technology, governments, nonprofits, economic development organisations, and other entities can improve their internal operations, become more productive and, ultimately, focus more acutely on serving citizens. This can support business growth and help citizens enjoy improved quality of life. As organisations increasingly embrace cloud-based solutions, long-lasting effects can be realised in the form of community-wide collaboration, partnerships with local businesses, and increased innovation. These organisations can in turn wield greater influence on economic development and growth. The cloud also provides affordable IT services for entrepreneurs, helping them start and scale companies quicker and more reliably. These efforts pave the way toward building new businesses and a more productive workforce, which boosts local economic development.

AWS works closely with state governments, education institutions, and not-for-profit organisations in Malaysia to accelerate innovation, increase agility, and drive cost savings through the cloud. Our Malaysian customers range from public sector entities such as Smart Selangor Delivery Unit (SSDU), Asia Pacific University, and other government agencies, to enterprises including Petronas, Maxis, Astro, and Boost (Axiata), to startups like StoreHub, FashionValet, and 123RF.

SSDU leverages cloud computing to transform government services

SSDU started working with AWS in 2018 when they first built a Citizens Electronic Payments Platform for Malaysians to access paid government services through a highly scalable and reliable central mobile and web portal on AWS. Using the centralised platform, SSDU was able to conduct data analysis in identifying trends with near real-time data generated across the entire Selangor state to forecast and optimise services, accelerating the development of new solutions without large upfront investments. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, SSDU rolled out an operation dashboard on AWS that provided critical data for making real-time decisions to enforce containment measures. Simultaneously, SSDU facilitated the shift of over 1,000 local traders to sell products from physical to online stores to enable business continuity.

Using AWS, SSDU gained the control and confidence they needed to securely run their platform with the most flexible and secure cloud computing environment available today. As an AWS customer, SSDU benefits from AWS data centres and a network architected to protect all customer information, identities, applications, and devices. With AWS, SSDU has improved its ability to meet core security and compliance requirements, such as data locality, protection, and confidentiality using AWS’s comprehensive services and features. We look forward to partnering with more government agencies, empowering them to transform their digital service offerings for citizens.

Optimising the educational experience with cloud

Education institutions, like Asia Pacific University in Malaysia, have gone all-in on AWS, moving their entire technology infrastructure to AWS in order to transform the teaching and learning experience. They are running a mobile application for a cashless campus, deploying IoT services for their student attendance and queue systems, and using artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) for part of its learning environment. Asia Pacific University is delivering education resources to students 116 times faster than when they were using on-premises infrastructure, vastly improving students’ user experience.

Upskilling the next generation of cloud talent

Additionally, AWS Educate programme provides students and educators with resources and content that focus on building cloud skills in education institutions in Malaysia such as Universiti Malaya (UM), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), and Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation. In August-September 2020, AWS held the ASEAN DeepRacer Women’s League to encourage young women in higher education institutions to acquire skills in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and discover how technology can be used to create innovations to solve real-world problems. Two Malaysian students attained the first and second runner-up in the ASEAN League.

AWS has also been nurturing the local startups in Malaysia, and providing cloud skilling to develop the future workforce. Through AWS startup programmes, we have helped reduce cost of experimentation and accelerate innovation with AWS promotional credits. For example, the AWS Trusted Advisor online tool helps startup customers reduce costs, increase performance, and improve security by checking their use of AWS services, and making suggestions to help optimise performance. We further offer a variety of free online education and livestreamed or on-demand training events for startups across Asia at every growth stage, including AWSome Days and the AWS Builders Online Series for early-stage founders new to the cloud. To date, AWS has supported and helped grow hundreds of startups that are headquartered in Malaysia.

AWS is deeply committed to providing Malaysia with the best-in-class cloud technology. We look forward to building upon our worldwide experience in working with over 7,500 government agencies, more than 14,000 academic institutions and over 35,000 nonprofit organisations, alongside millions of active customers across other vertical industries around the world, to support the Government of Malaysia on its digital transformation journey.

-- BERNAMA

Lee Chew Tan is Managing Director ASEAN, Worldwide Public Sector, AWS.