MSC Companies Infotech Cluster (How Things Work ?)

In 2011, under the leadership of MDeC, Infotech ( Information Technology) cluster under the MSC Malaysia umbrella contributed to the biggest revenue for Malaysia's digital economy and is the biggest job contributor. Refer more on Malaysia Technology News.

Infotech led the Global Sourcing and Creative Multimedia clusters to grow 22-percent from 2010 to RM15.36 billion in 2011. Of the 7602 new jobs created, 4030 were from the Infotech cluster as well.

The Infotech cluster is one of the three clusters under the MSC Status initiative. The other two clusters are global sourcing and creative multimedia.

Basically what infotech means is companies which belong to this cluster perform R & D and create solutions. Global sourcing means the company performs shared services and creative multimedia means the company is involved with creative products such as multimedia content like animation, games and etc.

The reason behind the success of infotech cluster can be attributed to an initiative known as 'solution stacking'. Basically what it means is that companies with different products try to stack together to deliver a common solution for a customer such as AirAsia and etc.

Solution stacking not only ensures that everybody can contribute its best solution but also it can encourage customers to get involved (more) with design and customisation of the solutions simply because less time is going to be spent on the coding stage.

For example, let's say a project with 10 modules has a duration of 6 months. And usually customers will only be involved heavily during design and planning stage. If the project is awarded to only one particular Infotech company, then this company has to churn out 10 modules in 6 months from design to coding to maintenance in an agile manner. When this occurs, the Infotech company will only probably only allocate 30% of the time for design and planning, 50% for coding and 20% for testing and commissioning. Thus, customers are only involved with 30% of the project (in the design and planning stage).

Coming back to solution stacking, this project can then be awarded to 10 different Infotech companies, each will contribute their best ability to a module only. When such is possible, there is no need to spend 50% of the 6 months on coding stage anymore, because most of the codes could have been ready and thus more time can be allocated for design and planning. This is how it works.

MDeC explains that their turf is up to the Malaysian shore only whereby it is hard for them to exert influences on Malaysian based MNCs because procurement decision is usually done offshore. Therefore, MDeC would most of the time, get Infotech companies to work with Malaysian PLC, GLC or public sector.

MDeC is expected to focus on cooking up the industry for embedded system next.

Watch out for MDeC.

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