Summary Bullets:
• Digi expanded its enterprise portfolio and strengthen its SME position with the launch Oracle NetSuite.
• Maxis is moving in the right direction with its Right Cloud to address the increasing multi-cloud demand in the market.
The last three months saw Celcom’s partnership with Google to offer Google Workspace to SMEs; Maxis’ acquisition of Peering One, a private and hybrid cloud provider; and TM ONE’s partnership with SAP to offer a range of the latter solutions from its infrastructure (Cloud alpha). Now, in the first half of September, there were already two significant moves by Digi and Maxis to enhance their cloud offerings:
1. Digi Business brings cloud-based ERP solutions to SMEs
Digi offers Oracle NetSuite to drive the digital transformation of SMEs across multiple verticals in Malaysia. The cloud-based ERP solutions are positioned to enhance SMEs’ business operation in areas such as sales, marketing, and customer engagement through control, monitoring, and analytics on a real-time dashboard.
Digi has been expanding its enterprise portfolio from the traditional connectivity play to business solutions such as IoT, unified communications (Omni) and cybersecurity (Cisco Umbrella). The recent addition of Oracle NetSuite shows its strong momentum to expand in the segment and challenge bigger players such as TM ONE and Maxis. With a strong mobile background, Digi also plays to its strength by focusing on the SME, offering solutions tailored for the segment. Digi targets key SME verticals such as retail, services, food and beverage, manufacturing, and media and advertising. Furthermore, the solutions’ value propositions are aligned with the SME business needs, e.g., subscription-based package to lower barriers to entry and self-service capabilities. The launch was also a timely move to address the increasing cloud demand from SMEs driven by the pandemic as well as various government initiatives.
2. Maxis enhanced its cloud portfolio with the launch of Right Cloud
Maxis launched Right Cloud, positioned to enhance cloud management across multiple platforms through greater control and visibility. Maxis also offers Right Network and Right Expertise alongside Right Cloud to offer integrated managed cloud and network services and accelerate cloud adoption in the country.
After a couple of acquisitions and various new partnerships with major cloud providers, Maxis streamlines its cloud capabilities with its Right Cloud proposition that offers a wide range of services from public to hybrid and private as well as multi-cloud, connectivity and professional services. Maxis is moving in the right direction with the multi-cloud proposition as Malaysian enterprises are advancing in their cloud journey and migrating their workloads to multiple platforms. GlobalData ASEAN ICT Study in early 2021 shows that Cloud Management Platform was the second most important criteria for Malaysian enterprises when considering new cloud services. Maxis Right Cloud also enables the provider to challenge TM ONE Cloud alpha especially in the large enterprise and mid-market segments. The network integration (Right Network) enables Maxis to offer higher service efficiency and agility through wider workload visibility across cloud and network domains. This also offers the provider a competitive advantage, especially against the non-telco providers.
What’s Next
While cloud demand is growing significantly in the country, the overall adoption is low. GlobalData ASEAN ICT Study reveals that Malaysian enterprises planned to migrate on average only 27% of their workload to cloud by the end of the year, about 6% lower than the ASEAN average. Multi-cloud and network integration are important for more advanced enterprises, but basic capabilities such as security are still crucial for the majority of local businesses. Professional services, particularly migration and integration are also key to ensure deployment success. Further, cloud could be offered as a platform to offer higher flexibility and integrations across multiple systems through containers and microservices.There is still a skillset gap in these areas and cloud providers could enhance their managed service capability and position it to address the issue.
IT Connection 