Cisco has announced that it is discontinuing its HyperFlex hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) product family, effective March 12, 2024. The company cited evolving customer needs and market dynamics as the reason for the decision.
Cisco HyperFlex HCI combines data centre elements, including storage, compute, networking, and management, into a single unified system. It has been a popular choice for organizations of all sizes, offering a simplified and scalable way to manage their IT infrastructure.
However, in recent years, there has been an increasing number of companies shifting towards hybrid and multi-cloud computing which requires more flexible or scalable solutions. This has led to a decline in demand for traditional on-premises HCI solutions, such as Cisco HyperFlex.
Source: Cisco
In response to this trend, Cisco has decided to focus its efforts on developing and supporting hybrid and multi-cloud solutions. The company has recently announced a strategic partnership with Nutanix to offer a complete hyperconverged solution for IT modernization and business transformation.
Cisco has assured existing HyperFlex customers that they will continue to provide support for the product for the next five years. The company is also offering platform migration support and services to help customers transition to other HCI solutions, such as Nutanix. Cisco also offers a Take Back and Recycle program that allows its customers to sustainably remove and dispose of obsolete products.
The unprecedented disruption the world faced during the past two years forced governments to rewrite the rulebook on how they serve their citizens. During the COVID-19 pandemic, public sector organizations across Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) had to act quickly to find digital solutions to everyday challenges to keep citizens safe and productive. Enabled by cloud technology, digitized government agencies became better equipped to offer citizen, educational, and healthcare services, which helped improve and even save lives.
As we emerge from the crisis, the experience, momentum, and lessons learned have heightened potential for leaders to drive digitization as a priority to deliver their national agendas. Public sector organizations across APJ are pivoting from the pandemic and looking ahead to how digital transformation enabled by cloud can help to seize opportunities to deliver faster, more innovative, and modernized citizen services.
Scaling Digitization for Public Sector Organizations
According to a Gartner survey in 2021, digitally advanced government organizations realize more benefits of modernization, including higher efficiency, cost reductions, greater workforce productivity, compliance, and transparency. Research by Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud Economics shows that AWS customers in ASEAN – across commercial and public sectors – who migrated to AWS are seeing an acceleration in innovation, with an approximate 29% reduction in time-to-market for new features and applications, about 41% increase in employee efficiency, and an improvement of about 37% in operational resiliency through less downtime of services.
In the last year, AWS has signed six government cloud services agreements across APJ to boost digitization, supporting these governments with our network of local partners as they move their customers and themselves to the cloud, including Malaysia, and Thailand in ASEAN. These initiatives help governments save lives, provide critical citizen services, and support learner outcomes – ultimately changing the way society engages, educates, and does business for good. They also enable opportunities for local businesses on the AWS Partner Network to work closely with public sector customers to solve some of the biggest community challenges.
Enabling Security, Resilience, and Continuity through the Cloud
Aside from accelerating the speed and scale of digitization, leveraging the cloud also ensures security, resilience, and continuity. This creates a safe and reliable environment for students to learn, employees to work remotely, and citizens to access government services and healthcare.
In Indonesia, when the Bali Provincial Government launched its Smart Island initiative to transform the Indonesian island into a digital province, the Communication, Information, and Statistics Agency of Bali (Diskominfos) migrated its data to AWS cloud from an on-premises infrastructure. Launching an attendance system using machine learning technology, it enabled 19,820 public service employees to sign in to the office virtually, saving almost 69% in monthly costs for its attendance system. Many of Bali’s other critical applications are also built using AWS solutions, including a traditional village census system, a health facility oxygen monitoring system, and an asset management system.
By digitally transforming on the cloud, the public sector can rapidly scale services to meet spikes in demand, wind-down operations to reduce costs, and innovate widely using the latest cloud technology.
More Digital Skills Needed to Support Digitization
As the digitization momentum accelerates, governments across APJ will also need to prioritize digital skills training for their workforce in order to unlock the cloud’s full potential. The recent “Building Skills for the Changing Workforce” report produced by AWS and AlphaBeta shows that Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Korea will need to train an estimated 86 million more workers in digital skills collectively over the next year to keep pace with technological advancements – equivalent to 14% of their current total workforce. The report also noted that three of the five most demanded digital skills by 2025 will be cloud-related.
In Thailand, the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society is collaborating with AWS to train more than 1,200 public sector employees with cloud skills, so they can implement cloud technologies at scale, make better data-driven business decisions, and innovate new services to drive improved outcomes for citizens. In Indonesia, its Information and Communication Technology Training and Development Center (BPPTIK Kominfo) worked with AWS to get its employees up to speed on cloud knowledge, in support of Indonesia’s goal of creating a pool of about 9 million digital professionals by 2030 as part of its national digital information agenda. And in Malaysia, AWS has worked to provide cloud training for the Malaysian Administration Modernization and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) to help accelerate their cloud use and fulfil mission-critical needs. This is in addition to the training of over 3.5 million users across Asia Pacific since 2018.
Looking ahead, we will need to move beyond business as usual to close the skills gap and create conditions for successful digitization. Governments, educators, and industries across APJ will need to collaborate more closely than ever to give all individuals the opportunity to build and deepen their digital skills that will support digitization momentum now and in the future.
Closer Collaboration Needed to Unlock the Potential of APJ
As societies and communities across APJ continue to evolve, organizations of all kinds – from governments to industries to non-profits – will need to come together to solve some of the biggest issues we are facing, from helping marginalized communities to addressing climate change.
This is why AWS launched Cloud Innovation Centers (CIC), to serve as a platform for public and private sector organizations to collaborate, solve challenges, and test new ideas with AWS’s technology expertise. In Singapore, AWS is partnering with East Coast Town Council and Accenture on a six-month pilot to deploy cloud-powered sustainability solutions in municipal estate management, to support Singapore’s move towards its net zero carbon emissions goal by 2040.
We encourage collaborations between governments, industry, and cloud services providers to enable long-term scaling of digital programs. The momentum has been established, so let’s continue to ride the wave and work together to keep digitization at the forefront of the region’s push for progress as we pivot from pandemic to prosperity.
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.
2020’s gone and it won’t be missed. For all of the chaos, confusion and change the previous year brought, it helped illuminate a critical facet of Red Hat, our associates, our partners, our customers and our communities. It showed that we are resilient. Not only did we weather it as a company, we helped those around us stand firm through the storm. That’s something to be proud of, and I know that as CEO of Red Hat, I’m thankful at how we as a business, as a pillar of the open source community and as a global organization kept a steady hand throughout.
Red Hat was born out of community. It’s at the center of everything we do. When faced with uncertainty and when we see others in need, that’s when we pull together and show our mettle. Throughout the past year, Red Hatters showed a tremendous capacity for fortitude and humanity. When I first took over the role of CEO, I made the comment that I wanted every Red Hatter who was here at that point to still be here in a year. And I think we’ve held true to that.
At the time, that conversation centered on finding work-life balance when the lines became blurred. Without taking care of our personal lives and mental health, we’re not able to meet the needs of our customers. As associates became school teachers and caretakers, dealt with drastically reduced social interactions and grieved the loss of normalcy, they still served customers and helped them be successful. We didn’t just hunker down and wait for the storm to pass; we still moved forward and made ourselves available to help others.
No time to slow down
While the COVID-19 pandemic stalled many industries, the software industry raced forward. Technologies like cloud computing and automation became more important than ever. They are now firmly in the category of must-have, instead of nice-to-have. As a company, we turned our attention to products and services that our customers need to support remote work, expand digital services, scale to meet demand, become more resilient and keep innovating. I attribute our ability to continue to show strong growth throughout the year to this strategy and I’m so proud of the team for keeping the momentum going.
With our biggest announcements last year, you’ll no doubt sense a theme – making sure that our customers can develop and deploy any app, anywhere. They want the choice and flexibility to use the innovations and technologies on a platform that makes sense for the job at hand, and we’re making sure they can do just that. Red Hat OpenShift is the industry’s leading enterprise Kubernetes platform and highlights a future where containers and virtualization, managed consistently across the open hybrid cloud, are helping customers maintain operations while still bringing new products and services to market faster.
We introduced Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes, a new management solution designed to help organizations exert more consistent control over their Kubernetes clusters across the hybrid cloud — from bare-metal to major public cloud providers and everything in between.
Once they can deploy anywhere, they need to be able to bring those mixed workloads together and that’s where OpenShift Virtualizationcomes in. An integrated component of Red Hat OpenShift, we’re giving customers the ability to manage traditional workloads alongside cloud-native services, letting them prepare for the future while retaining existing investments. This helps to break down technology silos that can slow innovation and impact the customer experience.
For those wanting an increased level of support from us, OpenShift Dedicated is a fully managed service of Red Hat OpenShift on AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. We continue to enhance and refine the capabilities of this managed offering, providing an option for organizations looking to reduce the operational complexity of infrastructure management, but still get all the benefits of enterprise Kubernetes. This enables their IT teams to focus on building and scaling the next-generation of applications, rather than keeping infrastructure lit up.
One of the benefits of open source is our close connection to the innovation born in open source communities, where new ideas and concepts emerge and incubate. This is a direct link to IT’s future, enabling us to more readily see trends as they evolve. It’s this connection that enabled us to push the envelope in open hybrid cloud computing, and it’s now providing our launchpad for the next wave: edge computing. Edge brings its own challenges for administrators and developers alike, so we’ve delivered new capabilities for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShiftto help bring edge computing into hybrid cloud deployments.
Coming together
The channel is what made Red Hat. Without our partner ecosystem, Red Hat would be a very different company. We have been successful because of our independence and our work across a broad spectrum of cloud and service providers, including Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft. As the saying goes: “actions speak louder than words.” Our neutrality is something that can’t change and you can see it in some of the moves we made this year.
Red Hat and Microsoft have been working to co-develop hybrid cloud solutions for years, which ultimately led to Azure Red Hat OpenShift, the industry’s first jointly-engineered, managed and supported OpenShift service on a leading public cloud. This year we continued our drive as a leading enterprise Kubernetes service on the public cloud with Azure Red Hat OpenShift on OpenShift 4, bringing the power of Kubernetes Operators to Azure along with the flexibility of Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS.
As I’ve said, open source is about choice and about meeting customers where they are, on whichever cloud platform they prefer. With that in mind, we continued our work across the public cloud withRed Hat OpenShift Service on AWS, a jointly-managed and jointly-supported enterprise Kubernetes service on AWS. Red Hat OpenShift is now the common Kubernetes denominator on two of the world’s largest clouds but, most importantly, it’s now easier for our customers to consume OpenShift where it makes most sense for them without sacrificing operational flexibility or service levels.
We’re also seeing the promise of our acquisition by IBM come to fruition, as we scale and work together for powerful world-spanning solutions. Schlumbergerrepresents one of these moments. By collaborating with IBM, this initiative will support its business and provide Schlumberger’s associates global access to its leading exploration and production cloud-based environment and cognitive applications by using IBM’s hybrid cloud technology, built on Red Hat OpenShift.
On the horizon
Just a month in and we’ve already set the tone for the year. All roads, whether it’s through edge computing, serverless or Kubernetes, lead to open hybrid cloud. That’s what we’ve worked to build and where our focus continues to be. We’ve been talking about it for nearly a decade because it’s not just another trend; it’s an enterprise imperative. It’s through the hybrid cloud that we help our customers solve dynamic challenges and keep Red Hat in innovation’s vanguard.
We announced our intent to acquire StackRox, a leader and innovator in Kubernetes-native security. Once the transaction closes, this move will allow us to enhance security for cloud-native workloads by expanding and refining the Kubernetes’ native controls already present in OpenShift while shifting security into the container build and CI/CD phase.
Having a seamless integration between our sales and services strategy and our technology vision is critical to our success, and it calls for the right leader. For nearly a decade, Arun Oberoi has led the team and transformed our go-to-market approach matching our expanding open hybrid cloud portfolio, through strategic acquisitions and new alliances. He will retire later this year and Larry Stack will step into the role of executive vice president of Global Sales and Services. What I appreciate most about him is that he embraces the Red Hat culture and the customer is always the focus. There is a huge opportunity in front of us, as we keep scaling, Larry’s strong experience and the strategic thinking that he brings are going to help us capitalize on it.
Just because we made it out of 2020, doesn’t mean we’re back to business as usual. The pandemic is still impacting the world and organizations are still feeling the effects. The challenges aren’t going away, but we’ve shown resilience and that needs to be a trait that we keep as we move through the year. While 2021 holds many unknowns, one thing that is not unknown is our path forward.
It would come as no surprise is the first thing that comes to your mind when your hear “Amazon” is the popular online marketplace or the largest rain forest in the world. What if we told you that there is another Amazon that you should know of – Amazon Web Services (AWS). Yes. This Amazon is related Amazon.com but their reach is far, far greater than just an online marketplace. AWS is a subsidiary of Amazon.com which powers most of the internet. Yep. You read that right! AWS provides the backbone for a majority of the world’s websites, apps and services. They provide a slew of cloud computing infrastructure services which allow many websites, apps and businesses to scale and accommodate sudden spikes in their usage as well as the backbone for cloud based compute services.
Now that you have a general idea of who they are. We’re pretty sure that you’re wondering why you should be paying attention to this company. From what we’ve outlined, it seems like AWS is a very corporate service. So why would the regular joe need to know about it? Here’s three of the compelling reasons you should.
1. Nearly Half of the world’s Cloud Computing Services and Platforms Run AWS
AWS is one of the most omnipresent service providers in the world. Apps, websites, banks and more are using AWS to drive digitalization of their businesses. In fact, in his keynote, Andy Jassy, CEO of AWS, shared that about 47.8% of all services using cloud computing run on the platform. This number puts them far ahead of their nearest competition, Microsoft Azure (15.5%) and Alibaba Cloud (7.7%).
Q3 Cloud Computing Market Share estimates from Canalys. Taken from https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/global-cloud-market-Q3-2019
This also
means the company’s platform and services are being adopted at a rate much
higher than its competition. The AWS platform has an edge over its competition
thanks to the extensive services and granularity of the customisation that the
service offers.
2. More Companies are adopting Cloud Computing to
better serve customers
We’ve
talked about Industry 4.0 a whole lot over the past year and the truth is,
we’re only at the cusp of it. In the next few years, we will be seeing more and
more companies adopt cloud computing as one of their main tools to serve their
customers. You may not see this being announced publicly, but nearly all the
services that you use from Agoda to Facebook have a cloud computing component
to it; whether it’s to hyper personalise their offerings or to have
redundancies that will help with making things more seamlessly. With this
increased adoption, it may be time to know a little more about how these
services are provided.
3. AWS has one of the most complete Cloud Computing
services
Amazon Web Services is one of the most complete cloud computing platforms available now. In fact, the company is ahead of the curve when it comes to providing the latest and greatest in cloud computing. AWS currently has over 165 modules or services which it offers its customers. Each of these services can be selectively deployed to meet their customers’ unique needs. With their recent announcement at their annual Re:invent conference, the number of services offered by AWS has grown further.
AWS service categories as listed on aws.amazon.com
Very briefly, the company’s offerings span everything from storage, machine learning, artificial intelligence and data processing. The company has announced even more services with a strong focus on allowing its customers to adopt edge computing and better manage and process their data which is being stored in the cloud and even on premises with their new AWS Outpost.
With the companies adoption across the internet becoming more and more popular, AWS is set to become one of the largest cloud computing providers in the world. They’ve even made it into things like the Formula 1 (F1) and National Football League (NFL). You may even see them helping your self driving vehicles in the near future. With that in mind, prepare to find out more about AWS and how they are changing the state of the internet.
The
world is abuzz with a massive change in the way things are working when it
comes to companies. This change is spurred by the introduction of many
technologies which have revolutionised and fundamentally changed how things are
done. Perhaps the biggest observable change so far is that start ups have
become the new normal. The simple reason behind this is that there has been a
fundamental change in paradigm when it comes to product development and the
duration is takes for an industry-wide disruption to occur. What once took
decades is now happening at a near daily pace. The reality of the nature of
disruption today is that you don’t have to be a large corporation to disrupt
nor do you have to be a digital native. You simply have to be able to impact
the way things are done and fundamentally change a preset mindset.
Being
Digital Simply Means Adopting A New Mindset
Looking back at disruptors such as Grab or Uber, this statement couldn’t be more true. Even in our sit down with Mr Santanu Dutt, Chieft Technology Officer and Head of Technology (ASEAN) at Amazon Web Services, this point was stressed upon. The world has changed from an industry-first paradigm to one where customers are placed front and center. Development starts with the identification of a gap in services or a new way of offering the service which would cater to better customer experience. From there, companies need to address the constantly changing demands of the customer with quick iterations. The harsh reality is, when it comes to competing in Industry 4.0, companies are now vying for a very limited commodity: customer attention. The days in which customers have a sense of loyalty are quickly fading. Instead, they look to new experiences and features which make their life easier.
Santanu Dutt, Chief Technology Officer and Head of Technology (ASEAN) at Amazon Web Services (AWS)
So the big question is: How can companies have a competitive edge in this marketplace? As Mr Santanu put it, “Being digital is also largely a cultural change. Yes, it is about technology but [also] a cultural change of a company to have their product and services digitally [and] expand their reach.”. He stresses that the fundamental cultural change is for companies and their employees to understand the needs of their customer, listen to their feedback and to iterate quickly to address them. In fact, in recent years, we’ve seen companies die because of this. One of the best examples of this on a international scale is Blockbuster and other video rental services. With the advent of fast, broadband internet, their customers started expecting videos and movies to be immediately available for on demand viewing. The only company to capitalise on this fundamental change was Netflix. Netflix changed from an overnight DVD and Blu-ray courier and rental service into a platform which allowed users to stream video on demand. This was, of course, followed closely by Amazon Prime Video and other companies. Another example is that of Grab which started off as an app to making hailing a taxi easier and safer. It is today, Southeast Asia’s largest ride-hailing application and e-Wallet.
Learning and Unlearning to Compete in Industry 4.0
There
is a misconception that comes with companies going digital and that’s the
assumption that going digital simply means that companies need to adopt new
technologies to streamline processes. Truth be told, going digital entails more
than just adopting new technologies; it involves the learning of new approaches
and technologies and the unlearning of old approaches which are holding the
company back. However, in adopting new technologies such as Amazon Web Services
(AWS) cloud based services, companies cannot simply be looking at a “lift and
shift” approach where they simply take their pre-existing architecture and
shift it to platforms such as AWS. Instead, SMEs need to look at learning new
the technology and implementing them in such a way that they are maximising
their potential. In essence, unlearning the old and optimising essential
processes and architecture using new technologies such as Machine Learning (ML)
and Data Lakes.
To
be agile and effective, SMEs must look to the most effective approach to their
needs. Certain industries may not permit the complete migration of on premises
infrastructure to one that is purely cloud based. In cases such as these, Mr
Santanu says that there is no harm in keeping core services on premise with
permitted peripheral services being moved to the cloud. This approach allows
SMEs to benefit from an agile workflow whilst keeping inline with regulations.
When it comes to regulated industries, certification is essential. This is why
SMEs looking to take advantage of Industry 4.0 should look to partners who
share the burden of getting industry certifications. Companies such as AWS
share this burden with their clients and ensure that any certification
necessary for relevant industries is met on a regular basis.
With
these worries aside, SMEs can focus on learning new approaches such as
implementing DevOps in a leaner, more efficient manner. This will, over time,
lead to better processes which allow for greater profits while minimizing cost.
With partners such as AWS, SMEs can focus on servicing their clients while
leaving infrastructure maintenance to their partner.
Planning For Scale from the Beginning
To
keep up with the demands of the rapidly changing landscape in Industry 4.0,
companies need to have the foresight to plan for scale from the get-go. While
AWS acknowledges that know-how and skill set may continue to be a gap in the
near future, the company is working with Universities to train the future. In
Malaysia alone, AWS is training over 100,000 students who will soon enter the
work force ready with the skills and knowledge required to take advantage of
Cloud Computing.
That
said, companies have to look to scale dynamically. As businesses continue to
grow rapidly thanks to the internet, they need to be ready, from the beginning,
to cope with scale. At a moment’s notice, they may be required to adapt from
thousands to hundreds of thousands of transactions. This can only be achieved
when infrastructure is able to scale as such. With Cloud computing platforms
such as AWS, SMEs need not worry about new infrastructure acquisition. Instead,
they are able to accommodate with simple automation the increased scale.
Malaysia is already moving towards industry 4.0 with the push from the government as well as industry. More importantly, SMEs need to learn to iterate – at scale – to accommodate the needs and demands of their customers. That said, it is still early days in Malaysia. The change in mindset needed for the country and its industries to fully appreciate and benefit the potential of Industry 4.0 is still in its growing stages. Mr Santanu stresses that with the passage of time and the willingness of Malaysian SMEs in adopting new technologies and approaches, there is no doubt that the country will be able to reap the many benefits of Industry 4.0.
