Malaysia has been able to establish itself as a premier outsourcing destination. Malaysian outsourcing industry is predicted to be worth $1.9 billion by 2013. Malaysia is well positioned in terms of its key enablers to remain a key contender and a future destination for high-value services spanning key vertical competencies. Further structural and business environment advantages provide a key sustainability for cost-effective and value-oriented services.

According to an IDC report, the key growth areas for Malaysian entities remain Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Systems Integration (SI) and IT Consulting. The Government, Financial Service Industry (FSI) and Manufacturing verticals remain the largest services opportunity verticals for the country.

In both its 2004 and 2005 Global Services Location Indexes, consulting firm A.T. Kearney named Malaysia the top third location for shared services and outsourcing behind only India and China and just ahead of Singapore. The ranking analyzes the top 40 service locations worldwide against 40 measurements in three categories: cost, people skills and availability and business environment.

According to the report, "...Government promotion policies continue to pay off... Malaysia has augmented continued investment in world-class infrastructure along the Multimedia Super-Corridor, with further incentives for corporations choosing to locate in Malaysia and additional policies to open up the labor pool and deepen English language and technical skills throughout the population."

Royal Dutch Shell Group runs a global IT support center in Cyberjaya, offering desktop support as well as engineering and development services to Shell companies around the world.

DHL has located its regional IT hub there, responsible for operations in Asia Pacific. Known as DHL GIS Cyberjaya, it’s one of three global data centers run by DHL around the world.

HP is running a data center in Cyberjaya as well as Petaling Jaya outside of Kuala Lumpur. The company said part of its drive to open the newer center in Cyberjaya was to support local clients, including DHL and Western Digital.

Other companies with a presence in Malaysia include Microsoft, Intel (with 8,000 employees in Malaysia, including 1,500 in R&D), Ericsson, BMW and Nokia. On the service provider side, IBM, Fujitsu, EDS and CSC have all set up operations here. In 2006, ACS opened a new technical development center in Cyberjaya, which employs 700 workers. From this facility ACS will provide clients with network and desktop engineering solutions, system engineering services, mainframe support, application management systems, customer care and human resources services.

Much of what has attracted this blue-chip roster of companies is a stable government, a highly skilled talent pool and competitive costs. The country enjoys low inflation, low staff attrition and high levels of returnees among its foreign graduates

If you are a buyer looking for information on the outsourcing industry and capabilities in Malaysia, please contact us.