It has been barely two years since Alibaba Cloud established its official presence in Malaysia, and this data intelligence backbone of China's mammoth Alibaba Group is already highly sought after as a business partner by many reputable companies here.
Having brought with it two decades worth of best practices, Alibaba Cloud is here to further empower its Malaysian business partners to transform the way they market, sell, operate and succeed in this digital era. This will not only be great for large-cap companies, but also small and medium enterprises.
In this report, Alibaba Cloud shares various success stories from their clients and how it has helped its clients in their digital transformation - as it sets out to help empower Malaysia in its journey to become an innovative and dynamic nation.
Genting Group
"To be a leading integrated resort operator in the world" is Genting Malaysia's chairman and chief executive Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay vision. With this, Lim announced the group's 10-year US$2.5 billion Genting Integrated Tourism Plan in 2016.
Yong Way En, Genting Bhd's senior vice president of IT, today describes this new vision as an ongoing challenge, saying that Genting has and will continue to partner with experts in the technology field to be successful.
Having associated with Alibaba Cloud since 2015, there are three things which have impressed Yong while working with them.
"The first will be Alibaba Cloud's commitment towards delivering its promises and at great speed. Second, it had a solid cloud platform which enabled Genting to delivery values and outcomes to its businesses and customers quickly. Third, it has a deep bench of experts to advise and guide the group," says Yong.
"And the people that Alibaba Cloud has deployed to our initiatives are very knowledgeable, forthcoming and very client focused," he says.
Noting that technology is and will continue to be a key driver, Yong says Genting continues to look forward to achieving its vision together with Alibaba Cloud via a close collaboration and strong partnership.
"What I would wish for is that Alibaba Cloud will continue to introduce innovative, digital driven business solutions to us and that most critically it will continue to deploy its best and talented people to Genting Malaysia," he adds.
AirAsia
Heavily reliant on its online ticketing platform, Asia's largest low-cost carrier AirAsia needs to ensure that both its website and mobile app are secured from any crawlers and bot attacks which could potentially undermine its performance and also cause customer data leakages.
AirAsia Group chief information executive Declan Hogan says by implementing Alibaba Cloud's content delivery network and Web Application Firewall (WAF) services and working with Alibaba Cloud's security professionals, AirAsia has identified 90% of its traffic as bots.
"Every month, the WAF blocks about almost 50 million malicious sessions hitting our website. These are either screen scrapers or bot attacks trying to access our website," says Hogan, adding that Alibaba Cloud has also improved the performance of AirAsia's website and mobile app.
Presently, Alibaba Cloud provides Air Asia with weekly security reports and regular updates.
"No operator outside of China was able to make any real impact. The guys at Alibaba Cloud made a real impact and proved that they were willing to take the risk to try it. And we appreciate vendors who are willing to make that investment to prove that they have the technology that works," says Hogan.
TNG Digital
TNG Digital needs reliable and easy scalability for its e-Wallet service when it comes to processing millions of transactions daily.
And for TNG Digital, Malaysia's premier e-Wallet service provider, its partnership with Alibaba Cloud not only enables the company to work towards protecting and securing its data as well as using such data to improve the performance of its e-Wallet service, but to also grow in terms of scale.
Introduced by Alibaba Group through Ant Financial, former TNG Digital CEO Syahrunizam Samsudin said this high availability was one of the most important features for working with Alibaba Cloud and specifically for TNG Digital's e-Wallets, "making us very unique in the way we can scale.
"The first priority for us was to ensure that our infrastructure was robust and scalable. We were able to deal with the peaks as quickly and as responsive as possible to give the best service to our customer," said Syahrunizam.
"Alibaba Cloud has been uniquely experienced in China with an infrastructure that has scaled millions of transactions. This is key for us because Touch 'n Go has and will always be processing millions of transactions.
"We want to make sure that our users have a great experience. So, we must learn from the best and Alibaba Cloud provides us with that experience," he added.
Looking ahead, the future roadmap for TNG Digital would be to leverage on Alibaba Cloud's data technology to analyse customer behaviour in order to facilitate a smarter digital wallet solution with the aim of enhancing customer experiences.
"So maybe our competitors are unable to see this now … but when there are more than a million transactions happening in one day, we will be best equipped to deal with these changes," Syahrunizam noted.
Sena Traffic Systems
Traffic congestion is most likely the number one headache for drivers in Malaysia and Sena Traffic Systems Sdn Bhd is a company on a mission - which is to provide an intelligent and advanced traffic control and management system in Malaysia as well as for the overseas market.
The home grown company has continuously focused on the development and production of traffic controllers and traffic control centre systems and are committed to assisting customers via customised intelligent traffic solutions and systems.
With its beginnings in 1984 as an electrical contractor, Sena Traffic Systems has now grown to become a smart traffic controller company. To date, the company has installed more than 400 traffic junctions in Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya, Johor and Selangor.
Datuk Ir Dr Leong Siew Mun, the group's technical adviser, says Alibaba Cloud's strong big data analytics with artificial intelligence has helped Sena Trafic Systems with its enormous traffic data collected from its loop detectors as well as from closed-circuit televisions.
The processed information is fed into its artificial intelligence applications to automate traffic management processes such as traffic lights coordination and traffic diversion patterns using a variable messaging system and other visual traffic guidance equipment.
Leong says these improved accuracies of data will further make "our traffic timing plans generated by our smart traffic controllers more relevant and accurate.
"Our collaboration with Alibaba Cloud will further enhance our development capabilities in the area of smart city applications."
Tan Sri Datuk Seri Mohammad Noor, chairman of Sena Traffic Systems says, "We are hoping to take our solution beyond the Malaysian border and into the regional market.
"And I am hopeful that together with Alibaba cloud we can achieve this dream together," he says.
Atilze
Atilze Digital Sdn Bhd, a technology company of public listed company G3 Global Bhd (formerly known as Yen Global Bhd), is set to revolutionise the agriculture sector.
The company provides end-to-end process Internet of Things (IoT) connected devices, IoT networks and cloud-based data driven applications and services.
"In one of our recent projects, in partnership with Alibaba Cloud, we used our 'Atilze Sensor Hub for Smart Fertigation' at a chili plantation in Kuala Langat. The farmers were able to monitor the need for fertilisation of their chilli plants from anywhere and at any time," says Tan Han Wei, a product manager at Atilze Digital Sdn Bhd.
By utilising Atilze's IoT platform, farmers can receive real-time updates and notification whenever there are any unusual events, says Tan.
He notes that farmers have experienced a yield improvement of a minimum 20% on an average per season while reducing the usage of fertilisers by 30%, savings of manpower by eight hours daily and an improvement of income by 40%.
"The user friendliness of Alibaba Cloud has allowed us to adopt cloud quickly. We want to help our farmers with cloud technology to apply 'secret recipes' and produce a high quality 'Made in Malaysia' product," says Tan.
Atilze engaged with Alibaba Cloud in 2018 to collaborate its smart agriculture with affordable technology. Atilze can also monitor parameters such as soil electrical conductivity, soil moisture, pH, temperature and humidity in real-time.
Revenue Monster
To assist in invigorating other companies with their digital transformation, financial technology (fintech) company Revenue Monster's 'Fintech-As-A-Service' (FaaS) and financial cloud solutions helps organisations to innovate at a pace never seen before.
Revenue Monster's unique blend of payment, social media and loyalty merchant solutions help to provide a seamless experience for both its merchants and customers. This in turn enables high availability, impeccable security, and the ability to auto-scale.
In Malaysia, this mobile payment company was the first to implement cloud infrastructure in compliance with the requirements of Bank Negara Malaysia.
"With Alibaba Cloud, Revenue Monster is able to provide the best in class service and this also helps us to reimagine their business", says the company's spokesman.
"Clients are able to achieve millions of transactions in a day with 99.99% or above availability in a year.
"We are very excited to embrace both digital transformation and the power of Alibaba Cloud together with Revenue Monster's financial cloud solution and also our FaaS solution.
"We believe that we can help our clients with Alibaba Cloud's infrastructure capability, so they can focus on their products and leave the rest to us," he says.
With the support of Alibaba Cloud infrastructure, Revenue Monster's clients can enjoy the benefits of real-time cloud monitoring, big data analytics, data visualisation, and artificial intelligence.
"I have worked with many organisations before and I have never seen a dedicated team such as Alibaba cloud's support team.
"We are very happy with the collaboration we have had so far with Alibaba Cloud," he said.
Ground Team Red
With the rapid need to transform and innovate, Ground Team Red (GTR) wants to be a leader in technology adoption to bridge its IT and business priorities in order to deliver the best-in-class ground handling.
This ground handling services provider is a joint-venture between AirAsia Bhd and SATS Ltd. Both are prominent companies in the aviation industry, particularly within the Asia Pacific region.
Present in 18 airports in Malaysia and Singapore, GTR handles an average of 550 flights daily. The company provides a comprehensive range of ground handling services such as guest services, baggage services, ramp services, cargo services, and security services.
Introduced to Alibaba Cloud by its parent company AirAsia, Yam Weng Cheong, GRT's head of IT and innovation says both the companies' engagement began with the management of their infrastructure and the migration of their on-premises system to cloud.
With rapid solutions and implementation of Alibaba Cloud's infrastructure as a service (IaaS), GTR has gained an end-to-end service and 24/7 support from Alibaba Cloud solution architects, plus added security and reliability after deploying core security products such as Anti-DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) and WAF to enhance data security and cybersecurity protection.
"Alibaba Cloud gives us the best of its people to drive technology transformation. The working partnership between both parties is really outstanding," says Yam.
"With their 24/7 operations, I am assured that my problems are attended to anytime of the day. The service and solution provided by the team is absolutely fantastic," he adds.
Moving ahead, with Alibaba Cloud, Yam looks forward to tighter cooperation with Alibaba Cloud in order to further innovate its ground handling business.
Microlink
With many of its clients looking to adopt a cloud strategy, Microlink is now working with Alibaba Cloud to move their applications from on-premises to cloud.
Microlink is a company that provides application software like core banking, core insurance and "we also provide implementation services like system integration to cross-industries related to financial services, retail, and manufacturing and also the government," says Elwin Lim, CEO of financial services at Microlink Solutions Bhd.
"Our clients are looking at how they can move from on-premises to cloud and they are also looking at how to do adoption of cloud strategy, especially with a local presence."
Lim says Microlink "sought a partnership with Alibaba when it came to know that Alibaba Cloud had set up a data centre in Malaysia in 2017.
"The collaboration between us is tight. We are engaging almost on a daily basis to look at how we can work together, collaborate and go to the market," says Lim.
He adds that Microlink attended the Alibaba Cloud conference in Hangzhou, and has witnessed many real-life digital transformation across industries from financial services retail and also manufacturing.
"That makes me believe that they are the right partner to work with and that they also have the right solutions that help companies from all industries to transform by embarking on the digital journey," he says.