This article first appeared in Digital Edge, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on April 22, 2024 - April 28, 2024

With the pressure rising for businesses to migrate and modernise their mainframe applications, they need to start crafting a clear goal towards digital modernisation. Simultaneously, they should ensure that their infrastructure possesses the necessary maturity to sustain the present demands for data and artificial intelligence (AI).

Focus points a business should look out for are its degree of modernisation within its ecosystem, its capability to drive  innovation within its own operations and customers’ environments, and its security measures to protect its data sets.

“The maturity across these three areas dictates a company’s ability, as well as that of the industry as a whole, to effectively adopt digital transformation,” says Xerxes Cooper, president of Kyndryl Strategic Markets, an information technology infrastructure services provider.

Moving into 2024 and the subsequent decade, he anticipates a shift in the landscape of capabilities for Malaysia. This is particularly so for local customers, even those operating within regulated sectors, that are looking to harness the potential of cloud technology.

“It’s really how they are modernising and building a strong foundation that is going to help them enact the new to the core that helps them to move with speed in those areas,” says Cooper.

It is crucial to ensure data agility throughout the organisation, he says, as having data siloed in one area without being utilised elsewhere serves no purpose. “It’s essential to evaluate the quality and consistency of the data — is it clean and replicable? There is no sense in building a bunch of generative AI use cases on static data.”

Building a strong data platform and underlying infrastructure supports the development of analytics and various use cases. By having solid groundwork, it enables customers to innovate and drive better insights into their operations.

“I think that really fuels the innovation for customers, how they can drive better insights on their customers and [understand] customer trends and [preferences to better pivot their strategies]. It helps with understanding how companies can better support and organise their employees,” says Cooper.

Challenges faced in digital transformation, such as the risks with regulations, complexity in operations and cost, can be overcome by leveraging data and fostering innovation. But of course, digitisation must also come with the reassurance of data security for the consumers.

The threat and risk of exposing businesses more to the open ecosystem can hinder their ability to grow. There are also bad actors that are leveraging the power of AI to do nefarious things that businesses should pay attention to in order to ascertain whether their cybersecurity is capable of defending against such attacks.

“The demands around AI, data and cloud services perhaps are making security officers and CEOs think a bit more about the vulnerabilities and exposures that they may have. In turn, it makes them hypersensitive around protecting their environments and infrastructure,” says Effendi Azmi Hashim, managing director of Kyndryl Malaysia.

With the spotlight increasingly on data and AI, organisations must first ensure that their underlying technological platforms are up to date and capable of supporting the demand for them.

“The challenges that have been put on companies to look at are data, AI, persona profiling, customer profiling and regulatory compliance. [It is driving organisations to start] thinking about their journey to the cloud [and] how they are migrating workloads in a market, which is demanding more maturity on the utilisation of cloud,” says Effendi.

Clearly defining the purpose and objectives of starting any project is important, whether in addressing cost and efficiency issues or implementing a new core system. Additionally, success often involves leveraging the resources of a wider network of expertise to meet the diverse needs of customers effectively.

“Organisations need to have a firm grasp of what they are trying to achieve. They need to start small, conduct proof of concept or experiment with moving certain workloads off the mainframe systems to newer platforms. With that, it provides confidence and assurance [associated with larger-scale transformation],” says Effendi.

He encourages organisations to seek out partners with robust assets encompassing the entire framework and methodology for such endeavours. And if it is to the cloud, collaboration with hyperscalers is recommended to harness their capabilities and bring transformative power directly to the organisation.

Most businesses are in a transitional phase with one foot in traditional legacy systems while also exploring new avenues such as hyperscalers, says Cooper. He shares that in Malaysia, however, the adoption rate of hyperscalers is only at 10% while Singapore’s adoption rate is more than 60%.

Hyperscalers are large cloud service providers that can provide services such as computing and storage at enterprise scale. This allows businesses to easily scale their computing resources up or down.

“This is a step-by-step process, starting off with the why, with measurable and achievable outcomes, not just at the end, but through the journey,” says Effendi.

Cooper commends the Malaysian government for helping with and creating programmes to enable the development and import of skills, which requires a conscious effort.

As more Malaysian organisations are paying attention to regulatory compliance and the profiles of their users, both internally and externally, organisations must learn how to navigate within the parameters of these frameworks as they devise and execute their digital strategies.

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