KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's vision to become one of Asia’s premier digital economy is on track with the establishment of Oracle Corp's first digital hub in Southeast Asia.
Oracle's decision to open its hub here also further strengthens both Malaysia's and America’s ongoing partnership that has span over decades, according to InvestKL chief executive officer Datuk Zainal Amanshah.
“Oracle’s decision to open a digital hub here when they are ranked 81st on the Fortune 500 list is monumental to the country's long term digital economy growth plans,” he said here, during the official launch this morning.
“With the establishment of this hub, Oracle joins the long list of American multinational companies (MNCs) that have called Kuala Lumpur (KL) their hub. This also further strengthens the Malaysia-America trade relationship that have always been healthy.”
Zainal also shared that there’s another American MNC that is set to launch its hub in October but was coy on the details.
Oracle managing director of Malaysia Fitri Abdullah said that the establishment of the KL hub is crucial towards the group’s collective objective to become a bigger Cloud solutions provider.
“The KL digital hub is set to leverage on Asia Pacific (APAC)'s small and medium enterprises (SMEs) immense growth through providing our Oracle Cloud solutions to streamline operations, boost innovation and build a platform for growth,” he said.
“Over 67 per cent of the world's total micro and SME market is located in the APAC region, accounting for more than 266 million businesses that can benefit from the cloud technology. With Oracle Cloud, SMEs now have access to the most modern solutions in the market and at an affordable price,” he added.
Senior vice president of Oracle Japan and APAC, François Lançon later said the group collectively saw a 51 per cent growth in its Cloud business in the first quarter of its 2018 financial year.”
“This is of course very commendable growth but we know if we want to keep the momentum, we have to tap into the SMEs segment as well,” he said.
“Based on the data that we have, we see that the SME segment in APAC is experiencing strong growth and this is expected to continue over the long term. Malaysia, with its strategic location in APAC and its deep talent pool therefore became attractive to us towards this objective.”
The Oracle digital hub currently employs some 250 staff, a majority of which are locals.
Lançon said that the firm will be looking at employing more staff as the digital hub scales up in the medium term.
