21pc of Malaysia’s GDP will be digitized by 2022 says IDC

AS the global economy transforms digitally, acquiring digital skills and moving up the digital maturity curve become critical for everyone.

In the APAC, where the digital economy is already thriving and is expected to triple in size in the next five years, efforts to go digital are even more apparent.

In Malaysia, 21 percent of the country’s GDP is expected to be digitized by 2022, with IDC predicting that growth in every industry will be boosted by digitally enabled offerings, operations, and relationship.

IDC also projects that the country’s digital journey will spur some US$82 billion worth of spending in the next three years with increased application of the emerging future economy being the significant driver of the nation’s economic growth.

More initiatives needed

Four industries – financial services, telecommunications, media, and retail –  will continue to be the critical drivers in increasing the contribution of digital revenue to Malaysia’s journey to become a high-income economy but there is always room for improvement.

“In its journey towards achieving greater economic progress, Malaysia needs to do more to unlock the full potential of its digital economy,” said Baseer Siddiqui, IDC Asean’s senior research manager at the unveiling of the predictions.

“Industries in Malaysia must transform themselves by adopting best practices and emerging technologies to sustain and be able to compete in a highly connected and competitive world.”

To that end, Siddiqui urged the government and IT vendors to take on a more significant role in crafting policies, nurture the required talents, and develop solutions for the end-user enterprises, enabling them to grow and flourish.

Adopting future technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, and the internet of things has allowed enterprises across Malaysia to achieve better outcomes in enhancing customer experience, increasing workforce efficiency, maximizing revenue streams and optimized business models.

Nevertheless, the instances of successes are still relatively scarce when compared with more digitally matured regional economy, Siddiqui argued.

“There is a greater need to enable digital success at a bigger scale, and to achieve it, every stakeholder has to work in tandem with a comprehensive and actionable roadmap,” he added.

Some of the other prediction that was made by IDC include:

# 1 | Digital-native IT

By 2023, 70 percent of all IT spending will be on 3rd platform technologies and over 50 percent of all companies build digital-native setting to thrive in the digital economy.

# 2 | Expansion of edge solutions

IDC expects that by 2022, more than 25 percent of Malaysian enterprises’ cloud solutions will feature edge computing while 25 percent of endpoint will be able to run AI algorithms.

# 3 | Revolution of app developments

In three years, 60 percent of new apps will boast microservice architectures that will improve the ability to design, debug and leverage third-party code while 25 percent of all production apps will be cloud-native.

# 4 | A new generation of developers

In the next five years, there will be a new class of developers producing code without custom scripting, effectively expanding the developer pool in Malaysia by 20 percent, which will further accelerate digital transformation.

# 5 | Consolidation vs Multicloud

Eighty percent of IaaS/PaaS implementations will be hosted on the top four megaplatforms by 2022, and 90 percent of Malaysia 100 will revert to multi-cloud and or hybrid technology to circumvent vendor lock-in.

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