This article has been written by a Facilitators consultant currently based in Malaysia.  It provides an insight as to how Malaysia is developing its use of technology in order to improve its business opportunities and compete in South East Asia with the intention of becoming a first world economy. 

It also demonstrates that there are business opportunities to be taken advantage of in this part of the world.  Malaysia, having gained its independence from the UK in 1957, still uses the founding principles of the British legal system, and English is spoken by the majority of the population.

In 1998, the now outgoing Prime Minister, Dr. Mahatir spelled out his vision of Malaysia becoming a first world country by the year 2020.  This vision included the creation of Asia’s equivalent of the US Silicon Valley.  A “corridor” of land 15Km wide and 50Km long, has been designated as the country’s “Multimedia Super Corridor” (MSC).  The area extends from the capital, Kuala Lumpur on the Malaysian peninsula, to Sepang in the state of Selangor, where the famous F1 racing circuit and the prestigious new Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) are located.

In the centre of this zone is the new Malaysian government administrative city, Putrajaya, located around a massive lake.  Most of the major government ministries, the Prime Minister’s office and his private residence are all now occupied and are extremely impressive.  Adjacent to Putrajaya is Cyberjaya, the new commercial/residential centre for the MSC. 

This new city, dubbed the “Intelligent City” is home to the new Multi-media University, a major campus designed to blend in with the environment and provide an incubator for research and development.  Cyberjaya also has a state of the art road infrastructure, traffic management system and broadband telecommunications facilities to every building.  A nearby hilltop houses a major “farm” of satellite dishes providing high-speed telecommunications services to the area.

As the commercial centre of the MSC Cyberjaya is also home to the MSC Development Corporation offices, and many other impressive buildings, including those of HSBC, Shell, DHL, Fujitsu, NTT, Telecom Malaysia (Malaysia’s equivalent to BT) and many lesser-known companies.  BMW have also recently announced their decision to locate their South East Asia office in Cyberjaya, and their building is now under construction.

Residential buildings in the area are all served by broadband Internet access, state of the art security and fire systems, CCTV, terrestrial and satellite TV services.  The local bus services use GPRS to provide instant bus information and a number of Wi-Fi “hotspots” (see September Understand IT for a definition of Wi-Fi and hotspots) around the city provide mobile computing services.

The Cyberjaya City Command Centre (CCC) provides a central computing and communications facility for monitoring and controlling the city’s advanced traffic management facilities, utilities management and community services.  A web portal is currently being piloted that will provide much on-line information, to residents and visitors to the city, including links to the bus and train transport GPRS systems, the ability to plan journeys, monitor traffic via CCTV at key road junctions, and to pay for a range of public services and utilities online. 

The portal can be found at:

http://www.cyberjaya.com.my

The concept of the MSC is to provide an environment in which knowledge and technology based businesses can be established and grow, hand in hand with a number of universities.  It is also being used to attract foreign investment, and government subsidies, reductions or elimination of local taxes and other incentives are being offered to create a viable business-friendly infrastructure.

Now only 5 years into the MSC development plan, a total of over 900 companies both small and large are operating within the zone - double that of the target of 500 originally envisaged at this stage.  Sales by companies located in the MSC amounted to over 4 billion Malaysian Ringgit (US$588 million) last year, and this is estimated to rise to 5.85 billion in 2003.

The Malaysian government is actively encouraging foreign investment and the economy is expanding to compete very effectively with its close neighbour, Singapore, with whom it has been a robust rival since Singapore became independent from the federation in 1963.

More information on the MSC and Cyberjaya can be found on the following web sites:

http://ww.msc.com.my

http://www.cyberjaya-msc.com

If you are interested in developing business ties with Malaysia, or require information on Malaysia generally, please call Allan Dick of Facilitators UK on 01224 697457.