Industry News

IHS to invest US$8m in Penang centre of excellence

GEORGE TOWN (Sept 30, 2011): IHS Inc, a US-based business process outsourcing (BPO) company, has picked Penang to set up a centre of excellence for the Asia-Pacific, with an initial investment of US$8 million (RM25.44 million).

The centre, located at Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah here, is expected to be operational by December and will initially have 20 employees.

IHS CEO Jerre L. Stead said the investment will be raised to US$50 million and the workforce to some 1,600 people by 2015.

"The centre of excellence will be the largest IHS centre in the world and will be staffed and led by locals. For us, it's always locals as I believe it is the only way to success," he told a press conference yesterday.

Also present were Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng, IHS Asia-Pacific human resource vice-president Paul McAvoy, CFO Richard Walker, and InvestPenang executive committee chairman Datuk Lee Kah Choon and general manager Loo Lee Lian.

Lim said IHS' entry into Penang would help the state achieve its aim of becoming an intelligent and international city.

The company is one of the world's leading sources of information and insight providers and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2005.

IHS, which expects to post a revenue of US$1.3 billion for the financial year ending Nov 30, 2011, provides information on industries such as energy and power, oil and gas, design and supply chain, defence, risk and security, environmental, health and safety and sustainability, country and industry forecasting and commodities.

It has been in business since 1959 with its headquarters in Englewood, Colorado, USA and employs more than 5,000 people in more than 30 countries.

Source: http://www.thesundaily.my/news/161459 

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Google buys land to build three data centers in Asia

John Ribeiro (IDG News Service)— 28 September, 2011

Google has acquired land in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore to build data centers in these three locations, it said Wednesday.

The data centers will be the "first Google proprietary data centers in Asia," and will be fully owned and operated by the company, said Taj Meadows, the company's policy communications manager for Asia Pacific.

More people are coming online every day in Asia than in any other part of the world, so locating data centers there is an important next stage of Google's investment in the region, the company said Local data centers will help the company provide faster and more reliable access to Google's services, it added.

There is a large surge in Internet use in Asia, particularly for consumer applications, said Jun Fwu Chin, research manager for virtualization and data center at IDC Malaysia.

A number of new data centers are coming up in the region as multinational Internet and hosting companies set up data centers to serve local customers, and also to meet governments regulations in some countries that require data to be handled locally, Chin said.

The costs of setting up data centers in Asia also tend to be lower than in the U.S., he added.

Google already has six data centers in the U.S., with one each in Finland and Belgium, according to its website.

It already has 15 offices and thousands of employees across the Asia-Pacific region.

The company has acquired 2.45 hectares of land in Jurong West, Singapore, and another 15 hectares of land in Changhua County, Taiwan, to build the data centers. It has also acquired 2.7 hectares of land in Kowloon, Hong Kong, for a data center there.

Google expects to invest over US$100 million in each of the facilities in Taiwan and Hong Kong, including the cost of land, construction and technical equipment. It did not specify the size of the investment in Singapore.

Google did not specify when construction would begin at these sites, as it is still working with its local partners and governments to finalize plans. Once construction begins, the facilities could be operational within one to two years, barring major delays, it said.

Google is however facing tough competition from local players in a number of local markets in Asia. In China, for example, it trails Baidu, the largest player, in Internet search.

In Taiwan, Yahoo and Facebook are ahead of Google as the top sites in the country, according to web traffic monitoring service Alexa. The rank is calculated using a combination of average daily visitors and page views over the past month. In Hong Kong, Yahoo and Facebook are again ahead of Google, while it leads in Singapore.

Source: http://www.goodgearguide.com.au/article/402349/google_buys_land_build_three_data_centers_asia/

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Malaysia's data centres on expansion mode

September 27, 2011 - (Malaysian Business (Malaysia) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) The government realises that there will come a time when most businesses will need data centres and Malaysia has the geographical stability to meet this need. And today, home grown data centres are slowly but surely making their presence felt regionally and globally.

Demand for data centre services and facilities are expected to remain robust in Southeast Asia, and there will be increased competition between Singapore and Malaysia in particular as critical locations.

According to BroadGroup Consulting's study, competition at regional level is intensifying, which presents location insensitive enterprises with a choice most often influenced by the most critical factors.

The study shows that data centre decisions present significant challenges, as user transaction demand is accelerating, storage requirements intensify and the need for bandwidth and connectivity increases.

Added to all this, global pressures to reduce carbon emissions, curtail energy requirements, introduce green technologies and comply with a range of legislative and regulatory mandates have collectively provided a new dynamic to enterprise IT decisions.

`On that note, Malaysia could well see data centre space more than double over the next four to five years,' says Steve Wallage, managing director of BroadGroup Consulting.

He points out that Malaysia would be an ideal location for IT- based centres due to its stable geographical environment with no major disasters like earthquakes and with growing opportunities in cloud-related services in the country. At home, the Malaysian government believes data centres can play a vital role in the country's economic growth.

In fact, it expects this space to contribute about RM2.4 billion of gross national income and create some 13,290 jobs by end-2020.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak last year announced a national master plan comprising public-private sector economic activities to transform Malaysia into a high-income nation. Dubbed the Economic Transformation Program (ETP) and facilitated by its government arm, Pemandu, the scheme seeks to double the country's per-capita income to US$15,000 by 2020.

It encompasses 131 entry-point projects (EPP), which the government says will outline actions required to grow the local economy. One of these involves the upgrading and development of three data centre providers - MyTelehaus, CSF Group and Teliti Datacentre - for approximately RM400 million, aimed at turning Malaysia into a data centre hub.

As part of this, the Prime Minister outlined his government's aspiration "to grow the data centre space from 0.5 million to 5 million sq ft by 2020 and establish Malaysia as the preferred destination for regional data centre investors".

Teliti is currently building a fully-integrated, carrier neutral, `green' data centre which, at 120,000 sq ft of net lettable area, will be one of the largest in Asia. Located in the Bandar Enstek technology park in Negeri Sembilan, the facility is scheduled to open in the first half of 2012.

OTHER PLAYERS Other home grown data centre operators are also stamping their marks in this space by offering better and new services and solutions that appeal not only to local customers but also to companies at regional and global level.

For example, AIMS Group, a data centre operator that owns and manages network neutral data centres, is set to further invest RM80 million to expand its existing data centre and build a new centre.

Chief executive officer Chiew Kok Hin says the company, already considered as one of South-East Asia's leading carrier-neutral data centre operators, wanted to add two more floors at its current data centre in KL.

`As of now, we have six floors here in KL and we are working to add two more floors to offer better services,' he explains.

In addition, the company is also in the midst of two more data centres in Johor Baru and Cyberjaya respectively.

Chiew reveals that the group is already running at full capacity at its existing data centre and the new centre would help increase its capacity.

`The centres in Cyberjaya and Johor Baru are expected to commence operation in the first quarter and fourth quarter of 2012 respectively,' he adds.

Chiew hopes with the new capacity in place, the company will also be able to increase its ARPU (average revenue per user).The ARPU varies from few hundreds to few thousands.

Today, AIMS is the only Internet data centre that offers a carrier- neutral environment to international carriers to establish a point of presence in Malaysia.

The data centre is also the home to the Malaysian Internet Exchange, providing solutions for Internet peering and exchange of Internet traffic. It has also expanded its customer base to include the financial services industry, known for their stringent information security standards.

AIMS has been registering double-digit growth in terms of number of carriers it hosts (as with Maxis Bhd, DiGi Bhd and Celcom Axiata Bhd) over the past few years. The group currently has about 200 carriers and service providers from various industries.

Moving forward, Chiew discloses that the group also plans to move up the value chain by offering more value added services. He adds cloud computing would be the foundation on which to provide such value-added services.

CLOUD OFFERINGS Speaking of cloud solutions, another home grown data centre operator, iPerintis Sdn Bhd, recently opened its private-cloud services to other enterprises, especially those in the oil-and-gas industry.

The company, the ICT (information and communications technology) arm for Petronas, is working with virtualisation-software vendor VMware to provide services that include software-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, and infrastructure-as-a-service.

Its chief executive officer, John Miller, says the company is positioning itself as a major provider of storage-on-demand, as well as compute-on-demand, for the oil-and-gas sector.

Over the years, iPerintis has expanded its services portfolio to include consultancy, ICT project management, business solutions and solutions integration, as well as the cloud computing solutions.

`We have to be innovative in order to provide our clients with solutions that will drive both business improvement and reduce cost. Our private cloud computing model is a great example of this.' `With private cloud, our customers can expect not only improved business efficiency across the board but also a reduction on its total cost of ICT ownership,' Miller says, adding that it is primarily eyeing the growing Indo China market.

HeiTech Managed Services (HMS), another local data centre operator, is also keen on offering cloud solutions.

Early this year, the company launched Padu M.O.B.S (Managed Online Backup Services), claimed to be the first such hosted backup service in Malaysia, designed especially for small-to-medium businesses (SMBs).

Based on Avamar technology from EMC Computer Systems (Malaysia), Padu M.O.B.S. remotely stores data backed up from an organisation's servers, desktop and notebook PCs, as well as mobile smart phones onto servers at HeiTech Padu's Tier IV secure data centre in Bukit Jelutong, Shah Alam.

Its chief executive officer Abdul Halim Md Lassim says this solution enhances the company's competency in providing cloud services in the area of business continuity management, disaster recovery and data protection services.

However, he admits that cloud-related services are still relatively new but its potential is growing, and it had swiftly moved from mere industry hype to a top IT initiative.

GREEN INITIATIVE Another company, Basis Bay, which launched two of its newest data centres - Basis Bay Data Centre (BDC) Cyberjaya and BDC Glenmarie last year, is approaching the market with its green initiative.

Before it launched these two green data centres, Basis Bay already had two data centres in the Temashya Industrial park in Shah Alam and the Kulim Hi Tech Park in Kedah.

Datuk Praba Thiagarajah, Basis Bay Group chief executive officer, realises that more businesses are looking for outsource partners who not only provide IT outsourcing infrastructure services but which can also help them reduce their carbon footprint, without the need for high capital outlay and time lag necessary to build a data centre of that standard from scratch.

He estimates that these green initiatives can save between 20% and 30% of costs, depending on the servers and other equipment hosted within. These data centre's centralised monitoring system monitors the temperature around different devices and adjust the cooling in the vicinity accordingly. Today, Basis Bay has a regional presence in Singapore, Indonesia and India. While leveraging the strength of countries like Malaysia and Singapore that Praba sees as strategic partners, he wants to take this green IT approach to the West.

He shares recently that Basis Bay is looking to expand to Europe and had established an office in the Netherlands, employing local staff. Basis Bay already has a rep office in Switzerland.

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Outsourcing Malaysia Introduces Excellence Awards

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 14 (Bernama) -- Outsourcing Malaysia (OM), an initiative of the Malaysian Outsourcing Industry, is introducing Excellence Awards aimed at recognising and rewarding top performing outsourcing service providers and companies.

The inaugural 2011 Outsourcing Malaysia Excellence Awards are aimed at the two segments who have individually and collectively pursued global best practices in crafting sustainable value by leveraging on outsourcing models, OM said in a statement.

A total of 15 awards across nine categories will be presented.

Of these, seven awards are for service providers (known as vendors) and the remaining eight for buyers/end-users.

OM Chairman David Wong said outsourcing is gaining importance as a business service, especially now with Malaysia, aiming to be high-income nation by 2020.

"The awards are timely and will help further the cause of outsourcing as a key driver for value as Malaysia strives to become a world-class location for outsourcing services," he added.

The awards are open to companies and government agencies/public sector organisation registered in and conducting business in Malaysia. -- BERNAMA

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