Summary Bullets:

• The rapid increase in cloud demand is pushing providers to innovate and drive the market competition.

• Malaysian telcos continued to add new capabilities through acquisition and partnerships.

This report discusses major enterprise telecom events based on announcements from industry players in the recent quarter For more on the previous update, please see Malaysia Enterprise Telecom Update Q2 2021: Major Cloud Developments, July 27, 2021.

1. Maxis Launched Right Cloud: Maxis stepped up its cloud play with the launch of Right Cloud. Moving from the basic cloud service (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS) player, Maxis Right Cloud offers multicloud solutions that manage workload across multiple environments. Further, it also offers Right Network, integrating its cloud with network services, and Right Expertise, for cloud professional services.

The impact is high on the domestic cloud market. With rapid adoption during the pandemic, most domestic enterprises have advanced their cloud journey and hosted their workload across multiple environments (on-prem, colocation, and cloud) and from different providers. The launch of Maxis Right Cloud was a timely move to address the growing market need for multicloud solutions that can enable them to manage their workload more efficiently. The Right Expertise is also a strategic initiative to address the widening skillset shortage especially around application modernization and migration. Further, the cloud-network integration offered by the Right Network enables Maxis to differentiate against the non-telco provider.

2. Celcom’s acquisition of Infront: Following partnerships with Microsoft and Google earlier this year, Celcom continued its momentum to enhance its cloud offering through the acquisition of Infront, a domestic cloud service provider and an established Azure partner.

The impact is moderate on the domestic market because there are already various established cloud providers. Furthermore, Celcom’s brand is also rather new in the enterprise ICT segment. Most enterprises still see it as a consumer mobile provider. Nevertheless, the acquisition will offer Celcom the right capabilities to address the increasing need for managed cloud services and enable the provider to strengthen its brand in the larger enterprise segment.

For more, please see Celcom Acquired Infront to Enhance Cloud Service Capabilities and Go Beyond SMBs, November 8, 2021.

3. Digi Partnered with Oracle to Offer Cloud-based ERP to SMBs: Digi is further expanding its enterprise capabilities by offering Oracle NetSuite to transform SMBs’ business operation. The services are offered through a subscription package to give SMBs wider flexibility to start small and scale their deployment when needed.

The market impact is moderate because the solutions are well-positioned to address SMBs needs. However, like Celcom, Digi is also widely known as a mass-market mobile provider rather than an enterprise ICT provider. It may be challenging for the provider to gain enterprises’ trust to manage their data.

4. TM ONE Partnered with SAP to Offer the Latter Solutions from Its Cloud Alpha Edge: TM ONE expanded its partner ecosystem by offering SAP solutions through its cloud infrastructure. This is another timely move to reflect the growing cloud migration during the pandemic.

The market impact is moderate because while enterprises across the world are increasingly migrating their ERP solutions from on-premises to cloud, most Malaysian enterprises still see ERP as critical applications and are not ready to move the data to a third-party facility. Nevertheless, the partnership will offer TM ONE an edge against other domestic providers to capture the early market opportunity.

What’s Next

Telcos continue to build their cloud capabilities in the recent quarter as enterprises advance in their cloud journey. Besides the wider partner ecosystem, professional services are becoming key buying criteria. Celcom and Maxis expanded their service capabilities through acquisitions, this could also be achieved through partners’ certification and accreditation programs. Multicloud is also becoming a regular conversation and has appeared often in enterprises’ requirements. Cloud should be positioned as a platform that enables application modernization across different environments rather than a hosting option. Further, having edge computing capabilities could also offer providers a first-mover advantage in the market.