Malaysia Needs 100K IoT Professionals to Complement the Big Data Workforce

If Malaysia’s Asean Data Analytics Exchange (ADAX) aims to produce 20,000 data professionals (10% of them data scientists) by 2020, having already produced 1,000 data professionals and 200 data scientists last year, how many IoT professionals must Malaysia produce to support that number?

If we look at the IoT value chain, we must consider the people working in the areas of the chipset, devices, middleware (cloud), system integration and applications and if assume one professional per area, we need 5 people (minimum) to support 1 data professional. That will add up to 100K IoT professionals to be trained by 2020. It looks like a realistic figure, but how many of them will be from the University. Let’s assume 10 local universities in Malaysia are focusing on training this 100K, it will be around 10K for the next 3 years?

Thus, while we are so hyped up with the number of data professionals, we shouldn’t forget the rest of the value chain that’s responsible for developing new products, connecting the devices, collecting data and build IoT applications. Without them, we simply can’t turn Malaysia into an IoT hub for the Region.

However, Universities can’t be the only ones that shoulder the responsibilities of producing IoT professionals. We must also train the professionals that are already working now.

About the Author

Dr. Mazlan Abbas is currently the Co-Founder and CEO of FAVORIOT Sdn Bhd. He is an IOT Evangelist and a Thought Leader. He received an award as 50 Most Impactful Smart Cities Leaders by World CSR 2017. He is ranked No. 20th Thought Leader in IOT by 2014 Onalytics Report – “The Internet of Things – Top 100 Thought Leaders”, ranked Top 10 in IoT Top 100 Influencers by Postscapes 2016/2017, ranked Top 100 in Smart Cities Top Experts by Agilience Authority Index May 2016. You can reach him on LinkedIn or Twitter. Check all his presentation slides HERE.