Recently, we did a survey and asked 3 questions to some of the industry players. Check out their responses below from:
- Norfaisal Ismail, Business development, Celcom Axiata Berhad
- Amirul Aizat Md Noor
, Mana ger, Business Development, Silver Ridge Holdings Berhad - Mu Pathma, CPO, Cre8IOT
- Mohamad Ariffin Zulkifli, IoT Consultant
and Trainer,Myinvent Technologies Sdn Bhd - Mohd Adib Sarijari, Lecturer, UTM
Question (1) – What’s your comments about the overall IoT industry in Malaysia compared to the rest of the world?
Norfaisal – A bit slow if compared to countries with well-planned cities.
Mu Pathma – Some feel that its slow, but I think each country have its own game plan when coming to IOT implementation, of course, the macro level (gov.) not putting in a serious thought in this, when compared to countries like Singapore, here we focus more on race, religion, and political survivals. SME and MNC having small isolated projects, some are jumping in to grab the $$ associated or be relevant with “new girl in town”.
Mohamad Ariffin – Good. It is moving but quite slow as there are more businesses or organization not yet really understand what is IoT.
Amirul Aizat – Slow movement
Mohd Adib – There are industries in Malaysia already using IoT based technology in their operations, such as in Panasonic on how do they manage the supply chain, etc. However, in general industries in Malaysia needs help on iotizing their operation. Many still in IR 2.5 and in fact 1.0. However, in my opinion, awareness of IR 4.0 /industry 4.0 in Malaysia is good.
Question (2) – What’s your top 3 IoT applications?
Norfaisal
- Smart fleet management
- Smart home
- Smart health
Mu Pathma
- Trash Bin Solution
- Parking
- Healthcare
Amirul Aizat
- Smart Home
- Smart Energy
- Smart City
Mohamad Ariffin
- Rain Water Harvesting Monitoring and
Analysiss - Production and Energy Monitoring (Factory)
- Smart Office
Mohd Adib
- Security system
- Facility management
- Digital campus
Question (3) – List top 3 (or more) stumbling blocks of IoT deployment?
Norfaisal
- Budget issue
- Unable to figure out efficiency with cost reduction
- Reliability concern
- Need to educate people – lots of internal
task to carry out to meet objectives - Digital migrants issues – baby boomers might be able to tolerate
Mu Pathma
- End Customers mentality that initial cost should/must be cheap.
- The stupidity of everyone thinking to capitalize on IOT by thinking IOT will work like a magic, it needs multiple domain expert comes together to develop something that works like magic.
- False Representation, some technology providers are giving false or not fully “layman” understandable explanation when explaining about using IOT to do XXX. Like 10 years of battery life, where its possible, but with the limitation of one message per day, layman think every 1 min with downlink.
- End customer refuses to pay for the solutions IOT provide, making it harder to compute the ROI, this is partly because they used to get for free, monetizing become harder in IOT where initial CapEx is higher
Amirul Aizat
- The government would take cognizance that apart from making policies to adopt IoT
- Depend on cheap labor or foreign workers
- Due to fear of expenditure and refusal to change business styles
Mohamad Ariffin
- The myth of IoT development is cheap.
- The client is not an expert in his/her domain as we are not able to discuss properly on solving their problem.
That is all.
Mohd Adib
- Investment
- Manpower
- Awareness
Check out Malaysia’s IoT Outlook – Part 2
Join Us at FAVORIOT FORUM to ask, discuss or share your IoT experience!
Dr. Mazlan Abbas, CEO FAVORIOT
I congratulate you Dr Mazlan for initiating this and for the responses that I consider candid and a fair representation of reality. The responses also confirms some of the concerns I have generally in Malaysia with respect to technology promotion and implementation. We are not short of masterplans and strategic plans and some (or perhaps most) reflect a mindset that “Oh yes we are into it, ,,, this is our strategic plan … bla bla bla” without actually putting in the necessary incentives, funds and institutional support to make the plan work, even though these provisions are mentioned in the respective plan in most cases.
In the book titled “Malaysia Policies & Issues in Economic Development” by the Institute of Strategic and International Studies Malaysia, a part of the text referring to earlier Malaysia plans (before the ninth Malaysia plan) says, “Many of the Science and Technology targets under most of Malaysia’s Five-year Development Plans have not been achieved and many of the policy pronouncements have remained statements of intent. Performance has always fallen short of the targets.”
I think it is not much different today perhaps not only pertaining to Science and Technology plans but many other non Science and Technology plans. Also it is not pertaining to the five year plans only but the many masterplans and strategic plans we have. I stand corrected.
Thanks Fattah – Your comments are worth mentioning in my next article if you don’t mind.