In a surprising turn of events, Amazon Prime Video has decided to cut back on the audiovisual experience for users on its ad-supported tier. The move, following the introduction of ads to the streaming service on January 29, means that the free tier will no longer support Dolby Vision HDR or Dolby Atmos surround sound, leaving viewers with a diminished audiovisual feast.
The decision was first highlighted by German website 4KFilme and subsequently confirmed by Forbes. Instead of the previously available Dolby features, users on the ad-supported tier will now experience content in HDR10 with Dolby Digital 5.1. If users are looking to retain the higher quality audio experience, they’ll need to opt for the ad-free service, which comes with an additional cost of $2.99.
An Amazon spokesperson clarified the changes, stating, “Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos capabilities are only available on the ad-free option, on relevant titles.” This shift in strategy might irk users who were accustomed to the better audiovisual quality, especially considering the lack of a prior announcement regarding the removal of Dolby support from the ad-supported tier.
Amazon Prime Video’s ad-supported tier, introduced with ads at the end of January, has caused discontent among subscribers. The change not only introduces interruptions to their viewing experience but also strips away Dolby features unless they opt for the more expensive ad-free service. This move has prompted a proposed class-action lawsuit against Amazon, accusing the company of violating consumer protection laws and calling its change of terms “deceptive” and “unfair.”
The lawsuit argues that users who have already paid for a year-long Prime subscription were expecting an uninterrupted viewing experience, as promised by Amazon. However, with the removal of Dolby features from the ad-supported tier, subscribers feel that Amazon is not meeting their reasonable expectations. The proposed class action is seeking at least $5 million in damages and an injunction prohibiting Amazon’s “deceptive conduct.”
This shift in strategy not only affects users in terms of content quality but also raises concerns about transparency and customer satisfaction. Amazon, while introducing ads to its existing tier, did not explicitly mention the removal of Dolby features from the ad-supported tier, causing frustration among subscribers. As Amazon continues to make changes to its streaming service, it remains to be seen how these alterations will impact its subscriber base and reputation in the long run.
It’s a sad day for Comixology App users. Starting from 4th December, the comic centric app will officially be out of business. However, it seems like the app will live on as part of Amazon’s Kindle App. Any live or exclusive comic, manga, graphic comics or novels can only be accessed through the Kindle App moving forward.
Edited AI Generated Image with Adobe Firefly
While it may be upsetting to users, it’s something that was bound to happen. Amazon acquired Comixology nearly ten years ago, in 2014, but barely made any changes to it. That changed recently in early 2022 when they shut down the browser version of the app, forcing users to use the Kindle App or Amazon’s browser-based readers. This made Comixology very inaccessible to long time users who read their subscriptions primarily on the browser.
Ahead of the December 4th deadline, users are advised to download any books they are presently reading from Comixology into the Kindle app. According to Amazon, users can seamlessly switch from one ongoing comic series to another by having their reading progress in Comixology automatically sync with their Kindle.
ICYMI: We’ve shared an important update regarding the comics reading experience — the Comixology app is merging into the Kindle app, including all the features you’re used to:
In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), Comixology announced the merging of both apps. They also mentioned that with the merging, certain familiar features will contiue to be available on the Kindle App. Users will also be able to continue to have a separated library for their graphic novels, comics and mangas within the Kindle App.
Users moving over to the Kindle App will be able to find their comic and manga collection with ease with the “Comics & Manga” filter in the library. Issues, volumes, and omnibuses will be grouped according to series. Additionally, users have the option to hide and unhide individual books. Books that have been hidden in the Comixology app will remain hidden in the Kindle as well.
As of now, the Comixology Unlimited subscriptions are not affected by the merging. Even the comic book buying process via Amazon’s Comixology shop remain unchanged.
This article is contributed by Azhar Abdullah, Head of Enterprise at Amazon Web Services (AWS)
As Malaysia pushes towards becoming a regional leader in the digital economy under the Malaysia Madani vision of achieving a highly-skilled, prosperous, and sustainable economy, organizations must now take steps to adopt a digital-first mindset to innovate and transform their businesses.
The digital economy is one of the key economic pillars contributing to 23.2%[1] of Malaysia’s gross domestic product (GDP), which is set to increase to 25.5% by 2025. However, 77%[2] of small and medium enterprises, which contribute almost 40%[3] of Malaysia’s GDP, are still early in their digitalization journey. This represents a huge opportunity for Malaysian businesses to accelerate the pace of digital adoption for tech transformations across the board.
As new technologies emerge, businesses need to invest in both solutions and training to enhance efficiency and productivity in day-to-day work and position themselves for growth. Digital upskilling is a key component of Malaysia’s digital transformation, which includes ensuring employees are equipped with capabilities to deploy cloud-enabled solutions, individuals are empowered for future digital careers, and the digital inclusion of citizens is advanced.
Keeping Pace in an Evolving Landscape
To keep pace with industry disruptions and evolving customer needs, it is essential for business leaders to embrace cloud technology as a strategic priority. Doing so will allow them to benefit from the cost-efficiency, reliability, flexibility, scalability, and security of the cloud.
One such example is the well-loved homegrown curry powder and spice brand, Baba’s Products[4], which adopted AWS cloud to efficiently scale, optimize costs, and implement disaster recovery strategies. With AWS, Baba’s Products has achieved faster time-to-value, reducing the order-to-cash cycle by 40%, and supporting its expanding regional presence with products sold across nearly all retail grocery stores in Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei.
Malaysian businesses should move forward on their digitization efforts, to reduce the risk of falling behind as the country moves towards achieving its digital economy goals. Without integrating digital tools and strategies into operations, businesses may face several challenges such as inefficiencies in their productivity levels, resulting in slower delivery of customer products or services. Additionally, with data playing a critical role in decision-making, they might miss out on valuable insights, hindering their ability to make informed choices and strategic decisions.
As part of its strategy, Maxis, Malaysia’s leading converged solutions company and AWS Advanced Tier Partner, taps into resources from the global community AWS Partner Network[5] to drive innovation, modernization, and deliver enhanced personalized experiences for its end customers. Maxis leverages more than 400 AWS-accredited employees to date that provide solutions to local businesses to accelerate cloud adoption.
Building Malaysia’s digital workforce with the right talent
As technology continues to shape the world, education, skilling, and talent play a pivotal role in driving innovation, economic growth, as well as societal progress. In June 2023, Human Resource Minister V. Sivakumar highlighted that based on 2020 World Economic Forum predictions, 4.5 million Malaysians are likely to lose their jobs by 2030 if they do not improve their skills with the emergence of AI[6].
AWS has committed to training 29 million[7] people globally in cloud computing through free training programs by 2025 and has helped 13 million globally access cloud skills training to date. Since 2017, AWS has trained more than 1 million individuals across ASEAN and more than 50,000 individuals in Malaysia.
Training programs like AWS re/Start prepare the workforce for a digital economy, as well as transforming lives in Malaysia. One example is Malaysia’s own re/Start alumni, Ganesan Mahesan, who was faced with the challenge of finding a professional job when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. “During the pandemic, I struggled to find employment in my field. I came across the AWS re/Start program, and it was an excellent introduction to core cloud concepts. I was excited to learn new skills.” Through the program, Ganesan secured a job with the chemical company Evonik as an IT Support Engineer.
Investment in skilling is equally beneficial to both individuals in the workforce and employers. According to a Gallup study,[8] organizations that employ digitally advanced workers, digital technology, and cloud technology reap higher business growth and innovation. In a similar vein, Malaysian workers with advanced digital skills can earn salaries 106% higher, and 74% of respondents express higher job satisfaction.
To stay ahead of the evolving job landscape and skills demands, Bank Islam, Malaysia’s first listed Islamic financial services institution, launched a broad staff upskilling program to give more than 4,000 Bank Islam employees access to foundational cloud skills. This was achieved through a combination of on-demand digital training, live instructor-led training, and group interaction sessions, as part of a skills roadmap to establish the Bank Islam Digital Academy, a permanent learning centre that will drive and grow digital skills across the organization.
Long-term commitment to enable Malaysia’s Digital Era
It is inspiring to see the potential of how cloud technology can enable SMEs, enterprises, government agencies, and citizens. In the public sector, government agencies can tap into the Cloud Framework Agreement with the Malaysian Administrative Modernization and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU), which grants Malaysia’s government agencies and departments access to power IT modernizations and improve citizen services.
Earlier in March, AWS announced its plans to launch an AWS infrastructure Region in Malaysia, which will give government, developers, businesses of all sizes, and non-profit organizations across the country the access to greater choices – from compute and storage, to artificial intelligence and machine learning, and more, to foster innovation and growth. As part of its commitment to the region, AWS is planning to invest $6 billion (approx. MYR 25.5 billion) in Malaysia by 2037. We look forward to seeing how this investment will spur job creation, cultivate skills training, and provide growth opportunities to the communities surrounding our data centres, helping Malaysia reach its potential as a digital leader in the region.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is preparing to go live with its Malaysia AWS Region. The eagerly awaited AWS Region in Malaysia is now confirmed to go live in 2024. This is part of AWS’s RM25.5 billion (USD$5.39 billion) investment pledge, which aimed to construct a brand-new AWS Region in Malaysia by 2037. This monumental step will provide a slew of benefits for developers, startups, enterprises, educational institutions, and various organizations.
The forthcoming AWS Region is set to play a crucial role in driving Malaysia’s digitization efforts and meeting the surging demand for cloud services. It will also be a hub for innovation in Malaysia and Southeast Asia. An array of cutting-edge technologies such as generative artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the Internet of Things will be at the fingertips of startups, small to mid-sized businesses, enterprises, and public sector organizations. The announcement also aligns with the Malaysian government’s recent strategic Madani Economy Framework, which strives to enhance the well-being of all Malaysians by 2030.
The new AWS Region also brings a significant advantage for customers with data residency preferences, enabling secure data storage within Malaysia, faster response times, and catering to the escalating demand for cloud services in the region.
In-Person Support for Local Visionaries & AWS Partners
To further support Malaysia’s digital transformation, AWS opened a new office in Kuala Lumpur on June 1, 2023. This state-of-the-art facility spans over 32,000 square feet, designed to encourage agile work, lifelong learning, and collaboration. It is primed to serve as an innovation hub, deepening relationships with customers and partners.
The Malaysian team is diverse and features experts from different fields who are able to support the company’s Malaysian clientele remotely and in person. Their focus is on empowering customers and AWS Partners of all sizes. Some prominent names include Al Rajhi Bank, Bank Islam, Cancer Research Malaysia, the Department of Polytechnic and Community College Education (DPCCE), the Department of Statistics Malaysia, Maxis, and PETRONAS.
Having a diverse team, AWS has been able to help its clientele and partners drive innovation and transformation in their respective fields. For instance, Pos Malaysia Berhad (Pos Malaysia), the nation’s postal and courier service provider, has embraced AWS as part of its ambitious transformation plan. This includes migrating its IT infrastructure to AWS, which has streamlined operations, reduced IT costs by 50%, and introduced new, customer-centric solutions.
The partnership between PETRONAS, Gentari Sdn Bhd (Gentari), Amazon, and AWS is set to accelerate sustainability and decarbonization efforts. Their plan includes the construction of a state-of-the-art facility incorporating advanced technology, robotics, and automation, similar to what’s used in Amazon’s facilities. PETRONAS will continue leveraging AWS technologies to improve and expand existing solutions like SETEL and STEAR.
Generative AI, with its ability to create new content and ideas, is making significant inroads in Malaysia. One of AWS’s partners, 123RF, a major digital image stock agency, has introduced an AI image generation service in collaboration with AWS. This service allows users to create custom images from text prompts and has led to a 20% increase in licensing rates for AI-generated content.
Creating a More Diversely Accessible Launchpad for Malaysia’s Digital Ambitions
The launch of the AWS Malaysia Region in 2024 is set to become a catalyst in Malaysia’s journey toward becoming a regional leader in digital technology. AWS’s commitment, stretching back to 2016, underscores its dedication to supporting Malaysia’s digital transformation, fostering innovation, and building a brighter future for Malaysians.
The company has also been instrumental in the upskilling of Malaysians. They have trained over 50,000 individuals in cloud skills since 2017. Through initiatives like the AWS re/Start program and AWS Academy, they offer free cloud computing skills development and job training. This equips learners for essential roles in the cloud computing industry, connecting them with employment opportunities.
It seems like Generative AI isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is bringing a whole suite of Generative AI innovations to its services stack. These innovations are set to empower organizations of all sizes, enabling them to develop cutting-edge generative AI applications, enhance employee productivity, and transform their businesses.
Amazon Bedrock Lays the Foundations for Wider Generative AI Applications & Adoption
Leading the charge is Amazon Bedrock, a fully managed service that simplifies the development of generative AI applications. This service offers a variety of foundation models (FMs) from top AI companies, such as AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Cohere, Meta, Stability AI, and Amazon. These FMs are versatile and can be applied to a wide range of use cases, from content creation to drug discovery.
One key challenge for businesses interested in adopting generative AI has been finding the right FM for their specific needs. Amazon Bedrock solves this problem by providing access to a diverse selection of FMs via a single application programming interface (API). It also removes the need for specialised hardware deployments. This streamlines the process and eliminates the complexity of managing multiple models and infrastructures.
Unlocking the Power of Generative AI Through Amazon Titan Embeddings
One of the highlights is the general availability of Amazon Titan Embeddings. This family of models, created and pre-trained by AWS, includes a large language model (LLM) known as Amazon Titan Embeddings. This LLM converts text into numerical representations called embeddings, which are crucial for tasks like search, personalization, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).
What sets Amazon Titan Embeddings apart is its ability to support more than 25 languages and handle context lengths of up to 8,192 tokens. This makes it highly versatile and suitable for various applications, from processing single words to entire documents. Its output vectors, boasting 1,536 dimensions, ensure both accuracy and low-latency performance.
Integration with Meta’s Llama 2
In the coming weeks, Amazon Bedrock will also offer Llama 2, Meta’s latest large language model. Llama 2 models come with significant enhancements, having been trained on 40% more data and featuring a longer context length of 4,000 tokens. These improvements make Llama 2 ideal for dialogue-based applications, providing fast responses on AWS infrastructure without the need for complex setup and management.
Securely Customise Amazon CodeWhisperer Suggestions with Your Own Codebase
For developers, Amazon CodeWhisperer has been a game-changer. This AI-powered coding companion is trained on billions of lines of Amazon and publicly available code, making it a valuable tool for improving developer productivity. Now, developers can securely customize CodeWhisperer’s code suggestions using their private codebase, addressing the challenges of working with internal, proprietary code.
This customization capability streamlines the process of finding and incorporating internal code into applications. Developers save time, as they no longer need to manually search through extensive internal code repositories. Additionally, administrators can centrally manage customizations, ensuring adherence to quality and security standards.
Generative Business Intelligence with Amazon QuickSight
Amazon QuickSight, a unified business intelligence (BI) service, is introducing Generative BI authoring capabilities. These capabilities go beyond answering structured queries and allow business analysts to easily create and customize visuals using natural-language commands. Analysts can describe their desired outcome, and QuickSight generates compelling visuals, reducing the time spent on manual tasks like data source identification and visualization creation.
Availability
Amazon Bedrock is now generally available, offering businesses the opportunity to leverage the power of generative AI. Amazon Titan Embeddings is also available, while Llama 2 is set to launch in the next few weeks. Customizations for Amazon CodeWhisperer are coming soon while Generative BI authoring capabilities in Amazon QuickSight are already available on AWS.
What is Matter? At least we think that is what some of you might be asking before anything else. It is an Internet of Things (IoT) thing. It is, in our opinion from our research, the future of connected devices.
There are plenty of in-depth explanations out there about what Matter is and why it will be a good thing for universal connected devices. We are not going in-depth, but we do need to explain Matter a little bit.
Matter is a standard for IoT hardware developed by Connectivity Standards Alliance. The Alliance is a sort of collaboration and standardized guidelines to all things IoT, connected, and smart home. Collaborators include Google, Samsung, Apple, and Amazon. In short, they aim to make all IoT and connected devices universally available to every person no matter what device they own. For example, you should be able to connect to a Samsung washing machine even if you do not have Smart Things on your Apple iPhone or Google Pixel. Your Samsung TV should also be able to control that new Amazon light bulb you just bought for your smart home ecosystem.
Matter is rather new though, and not every device is compatible with it yet. While there are new smart home products that comes with Matter compatibility, it is the older stuff that needs some attention. For example, Amazon’s various Echo devices.
A month after Amazon announced that they have committed to add Matter compatibility to their Alexa compatible devices, they delivered with 17 of their existing products including their plugs, switches, and bulbs. This is only Amazon’s first wave of Matter compatibility update though, and they are bringing the update to their most popular devices first. They added that they will roll out Matter update to other devices later.
There is a small caveat with the new Matter compatibility from Amazon though. While it now works with Matter, you still must have an Android smartphone and you can only connect to the devices via WiFi. That also means that if you have an Apple iPhone and an Amazon Echo device, you still might not be able to access Alexa via your iPhone. The Echo devices that works with Matter now are the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Generation Echo Dots, the Echo Show 8 (2021), Echo Show 10 (3rd Generation), Echo Show 5 (2021), Echo Show 15, v3 Echo, Echo Input, and Echo Fex. More information on Amazon’s Alexa ready Matter compatible devices can be found on their developer blog.
God of War is coming to life thanks to a deal between PlayStation Studios, Sony and Amazon Prime. Amazon Prime broke the news in a single tweet which read “God of War is coming”. The announcement comes barely a week after God of War won six awards at the Game Awards.
According to Deadline, Prime Video has been in negotiations with Sony and PlayStaion to bring the critically acclaimed game to the silver screen since its first report in March. It appears like negotiations have gone well with some of Hollywood’s best TV Fantasy talent coming onboard. The God of War series is apparently going to be helmed by Rafe Judkins who has worked on titles like Amazon’s “The Wheel of Time”, “Agents of SHIELD” and “The 4400” to name a few. He’ll be working with the creators of “The Expanse” Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby. The series has already been in production since March according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Fan of the series will definitely be excited to see where the series takes its inspiration as God of War as a franchise has a rich library of tales to tell. According to the report from Hollywood Reporter, the story will be taking its queue from the game after Kratos hangs up his blades and retires to the Norse realm of Midgard. Of course, if the game is any indication, we’re in for loads of adventure and thrills as Kratos and Arteus discover that his late wife’s last wish was a quest in disguise. The father and son duo will be facing the minions of Hel and take on new gods and mythical creatures as they seek to save the world.
God of War is the latest game in Sony’s library to get the Hollywood treatment. It joins the ranks of Unchartered and, most recently, The Last of Us. There’s no indication when the series will be released nor any news of the cast just yet.
A lot of what we do now is underpinned by the cloud, and “cloud” has increasingly become a tech buzzword. There are many reasons there is buzz around the cloud, and I will expand on some of them here.
Cloud democratises access to the kind of computing power that was previously only accessible to large corporations with deep pockets. What used to require a $100 million investment can now be achieved on the cloud for as little as $26 a year. And, by not spending time and resources on traditional IT infrastructure, companies using the cloud can build faster, better, and cheaper – in more sustainable ways. Cloud is flexible, agile, scalable, and has the potential to impact all industries in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago across healthcare, finance, agriculture, education, and sustainability, to name a few. And as the demand for cloud computing grows, so does the demand for cloud-skilled workers. It has been predicted that there will be a significant skills gap by 2025 unless more is done to train, retrain, and upskill the region’s workforce.
Driving digital transformation and harnessing data
In today’s digital economy, it’s hard to find an industry that doesn’t use cloud applications. From accelerating medical research, improving crop yields in developing economies, and driving sustainability, to tracking bush fires, the cloud is changing the way we live, work, and play. Digital transformation is both an agent of change and a facilitator of it, and some of the biggest disruptions have been in the banking sector as we change the way we bank. There are more than 50 digital banks across Asia, with more on the way, helping drive financial inclusion in developing countries using the cloud. Today’s digital bank customers have high expectations for convenience, enhanced user experience, and personalisation, and access to the cloud has enabled these banks to innovate to meet these demands quickly and at low cost.
The pandemic has accelerated disruption and cloud adoption, and the volume of data produced as industries move to the cloud is growing rapidly. This data holds the potential for insights that can inform business strategies and is a resource that can’t be ignored. While some businesses are already leveraging data to drive decisions, gain competitive advantage, and fuel the next generation of innovation and success, more will do so in the coming year as business leaders start to understand the potential that cloud computing presents.
Data and analytics will become this decade’s priorities, and we must be ready with the necessary tools, skills, and expertise to tap into this resource to deliver efficiency and unlock experimentation. For many organisations, data is their most valuable asset, and we are helping them move data to the cloud, modernise applications, build next-generation secure data platforms, and build data lakes to collect real-time data. And, using Machine Learning (ML) algorithms, these organisations can gain real-time actionable insights, results, and predictions to improve decision making.
The digital skills gap
The rapid evolution of cloud technology and widespread adoption of cloud computing will require a workforce that has the right data and cloud skills, and across Asia, the supply of digitally skilled workers is nowhere near the demand. COVID-19 accelerated the adoption of cloud tech which meant the skills gap widened as the global talent landscape transformed. Digital workers in Asia today know they will need advanced digital skills – almost half believe cloud computing skills will be required in their jobs within just four years.
Broadening the skills base of workers globally is vital for economic growth, resiliency, and prosperity, and the social implications of failing to act include rising income disparity and more unemployment. Since COVID-19, there has been mass labour market displacement with job losses predicted to far exceed the Global Financial Crisis, and unemployment is forecasted to be at its highest since the Great Depression. With this in mind, governments around the world are implementing national policies on skilling and laying the building blocks for reforms, but more needs to be done by the private sector. Employers need to help current workers upskill, educational institutes need to adopt curricula that provide relevant skills, and workers across all fields need to seize the opportunity to learn new digital skills.
AWS is invested in the future
AWS is committed to a dynamic and entrepreneurial IT sector and supporting economic growth globally, and we hope to build resilience into the digital-skilled workforce and help bridge the skills gap. Globally, we are committed to helping 29 million people grow their technical skills with free cloud computing training by 2025. We have made over 500 free, on-demand, courses available online, with many courses available in local languages such as Bahasa Indonesia, Japanese, Korean, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, as well as interactive labs and virtual day-long training sessions through AWS Training and Certification. We are also working with educational institutes around the region to develop programmes that provide students with relevant in-demand cloud tech skills.
The world’s workforce needs a sustainable future, and Amazon is committed to helping provide this by making more than 91 renewable energy investments around the world and committing to Amazon’s Climate Pledge to be a net-zero carbon business by 2040, 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement, and to be on 100% renewable energy by 2025.
The cloud has the power to do a lot of good, but we must be prepared to harness that power with a skilled workforce that can meet the challenge to innovate at exponential speed. As the world emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic with new ways of operating, working, and living being adopted, cloud will remain at the forefront of our digital lives.
When I was a young boy growing up in Jersey in the British Channel Islands, I’d turn on the grainy TV to warm up so I could watch sports with my father and brother. FORMULA 1 racing was the most exciting sport for us, even though the cars often sped by faster than the camera operator and the technology could keep up.
Now, racing is covered in a far richer and more engaging way, especially since F1 launched F1 Insights powered by AWS in 2018, bringing data analytics as a live feed to my screens. Watching on my phone in Singapore, I love the real-time Car Performance Scores, which include thousands of data points streamed every second from every car on the track, giving me a much better understanding of where my favorite car ranks in the field – and what’s driving its performance.
It’s exactly this type of real-time information that businesses need to understand their performance, so they can make decisions rapidly and keep up with market changes. During the pandemic, we have learned that speed matters, whether you’re a digital native or a more traditional organization. As all businesses faced social distancing measures, those who survived the pandemic adopted new ways to do business, and they adapted fast using the cloud.
Some moved faster than others. Some enterprises with legacy systems seem resigned to moving slowly. Even today, I often hear comments like, “It’s just the nature of our size and heritage.”
We must debunk that myth. Speed is not preordained by heritage. Speed is a choice that any organization can make if it is prepared to harness the cloud. As a recent McKinsey article put it: “For CEOs, cloud adoption is not just an engine for revenue growth and efficiency. The cloud’s speed, scale, innovation, and productivity benefits are essential to the pursuit of broader digital business opportunities, now and well into the future.”
Culture Change
Many organizations can look for ways to change their culture and embrace speed, creating an environment that values urgency. In a culture designed for speed, people are actively encouraged to experiment and are rewarded for it. Although, flipping a switch won’t suddenly deliver speed – companies have to build muscle while they learn how to innovate at pace, all the time.
Amazon has been around for nearly 27 years, and to this day we maintain what we call a “Day 1” culture – approaching everything we do with the entrepreneurial spirit of being on the first day of your organization. We do this by giving our teams autonomy, on the understanding that they operate within the guardrails of our culture.
We believe the more we can equip people to make high judgment decisions at all levels, the better off we, and our customers, are. We encourage employees to make high-velocity, high-quality decisions by setting the vision and context for teams. Since Amazon was founded in 1994, we’ve consistently operated based on three big ideas that every employee knows. The first is to obsess over customers. This is cemented in our mission statement to be “earth’s most customer-centric company.” The second is that if we focus on the customer it will force us to innovate – to look at new ways of solving problems on behalf of our customers. The third is to be stubborn in sustaining our long-term vision while being flexible in how we get there.
As Jeff Bezos explains, “In a traditional corporate hierarchy, a junior executive comes up with a new idea that they want to try. They have to convince their boss, their boss’s boss, their boss’s boss’s boss and so on – any ‘no’ in that chain can kill the whole idea.” Systems and processes that identify, validate, and approve new ideas from within the business are invaluable in democratizing company-wide idea exploration and driving experimentation in business as usual. For example, at Amazon, we make it easy for those closest to our customers to raise ideas for speedy review. Imagine a time-wasting process or one that results in a poor customer experience. People complain about it regularly, but they know that it can be so hard to implement change, that it’s not worth the effort. The problem is put in the “too hard” basket and no one says anything. Now, imagine actually rewarding teams for suggesting a fix. Imagine if the process was fast and painless and resulted in change. How many great ideas would happen every week?
Thinking Big and Acting Small
Thinking big is the hallmark of innovation. But, as we look to move quickly and embrace greater experimentation, we should also look to de-risk the process. This means recognizing that the most powerful innovations often come through simplification. One small, seemingly insignificant cost or time-saving can drive enormous benefits for both companies and their customers when applied at scale. Thinking big also means starting big ideas with very small, reversible experiments. At Amazon, we look for “two-way doors.” If an experiment fails (as they often do), we can back out of the decision rather than being committed to moving ahead through a “one-way door,” which can be expensive and difficult to undo. This way, you learn quickly with very low stakes.
A great example of innovative thinking in the face of legacy technology is FashionValet. As the modest fashion brand grew, its multi-environment hybrid technology infrastructure was unable to keep up with demand during product launches. In 2019, FashionValet went all-in on AWS to optimize processes and meet growing demand. With Auto Scaling Groups and RDS Aurora features, FashionValet can now run 10x more servers during product launches to meet demand, then scale down automatically with no downtime. Using this technology, FashionValet has also accelerated their product development timeline by 200% and reduced their infrastructure management costs by 75%.
Companies don’t have to bet their business on innovation, but they shouldn’t let legacy thinking hold them back. By actively empowering teams, clearing the path to “Yes,” and using small experiments, companies can build capability to promote high-velocity decisions – helping them operate at the speed of F1.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been a part of Malaysia’s digital transformation journey since 2015 when we established our presence in the country with a local marketing entity, AWS Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. The announcement by the Malaysian Government outlining the Malaysia Digital Economy Blueprint via MyDigital marks a milestone in the nation’s journey to transform to a digital economy, built on cloud computing. As part of this journey, AWS is delighted to be named as a Cloud Service Provider for the Government of Malaysia by the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU).
With the right technology, governments, nonprofits, economic development organisations, and other entities can improve their internal operations, become more productive and, ultimately, focus more acutely on serving citizens. This can support business growth and help citizens enjoy improved quality of life. As organisations increasingly embrace cloud-based solutions, long-lasting effects can be realised in the form of community-wide collaboration, partnerships with local businesses, and increased innovation. These organisations can in turn wield greater influence on economic development and growth. The cloud also provides affordable IT services for entrepreneurs, helping them start and scale companies quicker and more reliably. These efforts pave the way toward building new businesses and a more productive workforce, which boosts local economic development.
AWS works closely with state governments, education institutions, and not-for-profit organisations in Malaysia to accelerate innovation, increase agility, and drive cost savings through the cloud. Our Malaysian customers range from public sector entities such as Smart Selangor Delivery Unit (SSDU), Asia Pacific University, and other government agencies, to enterprises including Petronas, Maxis, Astro, and Boost (Axiata), to startups like StoreHub, FashionValet, and 123RF.
SSDU leverages cloud computing to transform government services
SSDU started working with AWS in 2018 when they first built a Citizens Electronic Payments Platform for Malaysians to access paid government services through a highly scalable and reliable central mobile and web portal on AWS. Using the centralised platform, SSDU was able to conduct data analysis in identifying trends with near real-time data generated across the entire Selangor state to forecast and optimise services, accelerating the development of new solutions without large upfront investments. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, SSDU rolled out an operation dashboard on AWS that provided critical data for making real-time decisions to enforce containment measures. Simultaneously, SSDU facilitated the shift of over 1,000 local traders to sell products from physical to online stores to enable business continuity.
Using AWS, SSDU gained the control and confidence they needed to securely run their platform with the most flexible and secure cloud computing environment available today. As an AWS customer, SSDU benefits from AWS data centres and a network architected to protect all customer information, identities, applications, and devices. With AWS, SSDU has improved its ability to meet core security and compliance requirements, such as data locality, protection, and confidentiality using AWS’s comprehensive services and features. We look forward to partnering with more government agencies, empowering them to transform their digital service offerings for citizens.
Optimising the educational experience with cloud
Education institutions, like Asia Pacific University in Malaysia, have gone all-in on AWS, moving their entire technology infrastructure to AWS in order to transform the teaching and learning experience. They are running a mobile application for a cashless campus, deploying IoT services for their student attendance and queue systems, and using artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) for part of its learning environment. Asia Pacific University is delivering education resources to students 116 times faster than when they were using on-premises infrastructure, vastly improving students’ user experience.
Upskilling the next generation of cloud talent
Additionally, AWS Educate programme provides students and educators with resources and content that focus on building cloud skills in education institutions in Malaysia such as Universiti Malaya (UM), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), and Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation. In August-September 2020, AWS held the ASEAN DeepRacer Women’s League to encourage young women in higher education institutions to acquire skills in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and discover how technology can be used to create innovations to solve real-world problems. Two Malaysian students attained the first and second runner-up in the ASEAN League.
AWS has also been nurturing the local startups in Malaysia, and providing cloud skilling to develop the future workforce. Through AWS startup programmes, we have helped reduce cost of experimentation and accelerate innovation with AWS promotional credits. For example, the AWS Trusted Advisor online tool helps startup customers reduce costs, increase performance, and improve security by checking their use of AWS services, and making suggestions to help optimise performance. We further offer a variety of free online education and livestreamed or on-demand training events for startups across Asia at every growth stage, including AWSome Days and the AWS Builders Online Series for early-stage founders new to the cloud. To date, AWS has supported and helped grow hundreds of startups that are headquartered in Malaysia.
AWS is deeply committed to providing Malaysia with the best-in-class cloud technology. We look forward to building upon our worldwide experience in working with over 7,500 government agencies, more than 14,000 academic institutions and over 35,000 nonprofit organisations, alongside millions of active customers across other vertical industries around the world, to support the Government of Malaysia on its digital transformation journey.
