Summary Bullets:
• Malaysian telcos are advancing their telco-techco transformation journeys and starting to see results.
• A wide ecosystem is important, but having the right partners are more important to drive successful collaborations and commercialization.
Malaysian telcos continue to enhance their enterprise offerings and modernize their infrastructure as part of their telco-techco transformation, but the focus in Q2 2023 has shifted from expanding partner ecosystems to wider industry collaborations, solution commercialization, and strengthening internal talents. Malaysian telcos are also starting to see the results of their techco transformations through wins with key vertical players.
Key initiatives:
Maxis’ wins with key vertical players: Maxis shared several key wins with major local players including Johor Plantations and BHPetrol. With Johor Plantations, Maxis is providing its SD-WAN solutions to offer secure and agile connectivity services for entire operations across its estates, plants, farms, and labs. This will also enable Johor Plantations to enhance its own operations with new use cases such as mobile plantation management systems and digital traceability using blockchain technology. With BHPetrol, the carrier offers managed SD-WAN to enable outdoor payment terminals and point-of-sale systems at all of its retail stations in Peninsular Malaysia. Maxis is rather new in the enterprise ICT space, so these wins are crucial to show Maxis’ momentum in the enterprise techco transformation, but also to strengthen its position in the enterprise ICT market. While these wins are on WAN services, they are important for Maxis as they can enable the provider to increase total contract values through upselling and cross selling other ICT solutions such as smart agriculture with Johor Plantations and smart retail with BHPetrol. Besides, Maxis is also further driving its industry collaborations through its recently launched business innovation center to co-develop new applications with enterprises leveraging emerging technologies (for more, please see: Maxis to Further Drive Enterprise Digitalization Through New Innovation Center, May 18, 2023).
TM partners with ZTE to collaborate on R&D and commercialization as well as enhancing internal talents: Telekom Malaysia’s (TM) partnership with ZTE focuses on R&D and commercialization, product, and technology improvement and enhancement of TM’s talent. The collaborations will leverage emerging technologies such as cloud and end-to-end vertical solutions. The partnership also includes enhancing TM’s talent through talent competency best practices, professional competency framework, training and certifications, and cross-border knowledge sharing. This will enable TM to drive emerging applications such as enterprise 5G, cloud VR, and intelligent manufacturing. The partnership will also further accelerate TM’s techco transformation and extend its lead in the enterprise segment in Malaysia, leveraging ZTE’s capabilities and experience. ZTE is expanding its vertical capabilities and collaborating with various industry players largely in China (e.g., manufacturing, mining). The vendor is also strong in the network and telecom infrastructure domains such as 5G, FTTP, data center switching infrastructure, IP routers, NFVI, and policy control (for more, please see: GlobalData Product Analysis and Competitive Landscape Analysis). ZTE is also making an increased push in the server and private cloud space. However, enterprise ICT transformation requires wider capabilities such as edge, cloud, applications, IoT, cybersecurity, and AI. While ZTE can offer various values, TM needs to consider driving wider collaborations with other technology and vertical players to fill the gaps.
These initiatives show strong momentum of Malaysian telcos in their enterprise techco transformation journeys. While telcos are starting to see the results, they should also consider further expanding their collaborations not only with the technology providers but also with enterprises as well as vertical and operational-technology players. This can drive successful collaborations and lead to commercialization. Besides, while the enterprise ICT landscape continues to evolve, having the right partner is also crucial for telcos to address market needs. 5G is also another key area that telcos should focus on. Despite the government’s announcement on the dual wholesale 5G network, enterprise 5G development was somewhat lacking in the country in Q2 2023 compared to neighboring markets (for more, please see: ASEAN Enterprise 5G Q2 2023 Round-Up: Leaders Focus on Key Use Cases While Challengers Start to Make a Move, July 11, 2023.