Cyberjaya (May 23, 2017) – Even though FAVORIOT, the latest startup in Malaysia, is only about 2 months old in the industry, we felt that we can’t wait for the Internet of Things to be in full market readiness and thus we accept the invitation to showcased our FAVORIOT platform publicly for the first time. We have also included the demo with Promosys HawkEYE Cloud monitoring gateway.

FAVORIOT First Public Showcase

The event was held at MCMC. All of the presenters are from vendors and network provider such as SigFox, Atilze (LoRa), NB-IoT (Huawei), Nokia and ST Microelectronics.

Panel Session

Together with the rest of IoT industry players, we were given a small booth at the Experiential Learning Spaces to showcase our products. It comprised of various companies that are part of the IoT ecosystem. It’s exciting to see a variety of players started to mushrooming – that’s good for a start. Hope more of these events can be supported by the government agencies such as MCMC. Creating awareness about IoT is not only meant for the technology players but also to the people at the street and the actual users.

IoT players need to get together

For a start, getting to know who are the players in the industry is also important. I have mentioned many times that IoT can’t be delivered by a single company. You can try to be a “lone ranger” but it will take much longer time to deliver. Every company has their own specialization and collaboration is a better way to deliver a better end-to-end IoT solution. The industry is still fragmented and no single company monopolizes the game.

IoT in Malaysia is still in the embryonic stage but the opportunity is still very big and it’s everyone’s guess what are the killer IoT applications.

And the fact that many organizations have started asking for an IoT solution (although they are not sure what “solution”) showed that the interest is growing daily.

With John Tay and Toh Swee Hoe from MCMC

The Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) said the Industry 4.0 was critical to boost the industrial and economic growth and for Malaysia’s economy to reach RM2 trillion target within the next eight years as announced recently by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.

Will this be another hype? Will it face similar skepticism as Smart Cities development in Malaysia? Will it go beyond than just Strategies, Blueprints and Frameworks?

How do you jumpstart IoT?  One thing that you can do is by getting a company as big as Siemens AG to announce that it will be providing some €100 million (RM468.85 million) worth of software grants to local universities and colleges to boost re-skilling and increase training capabilities in preparation for the next industrial age in Malaysia.

“We offered to the (Malaysian) Prime Minister yesterday that Siemens can provide first-class help in establishing software tools for the industrial Internet to be applied to areas of manufacturing like Industrie 4.0, and will willingly grant the sum of €100 million worth of software to universities and colleges so that the young generation can learn to simulate in the virtual world of manufacturing,” its president and chief executive officer (CEO) Joe Kaeser said in a statement on April 14, 2017 recently.

This is a welcoming news to the whole IoT industry. Nothing moves without proper investment. The industry needs a boost, need to get its feet off the ground, need to act fast – and that amount of €100 million is a real “energy pill.”

There is 3 key success factors Industry 4.0 can realize IoT in Malaysia faster than Smart Cities:

1. Survivability – If SMEs in Malaysia want to compete and remain relevant, there is no other way but to introduce cyber-physical technology such IoT, Big Data Analytics, and automation. With the rising costs of resources and challenging economic situation, the only way to ensure sustainability is to reduce operational costs and increase productivity.
2. Stakeholders – Unlike smart cities deployment that needs to go through multiple stakeholders, the introduction of Industry 4.0 to their manufacturing facilities are made by the smaller individual companies. The criticality and urgency of their situation far surpass the life of a city.
3. Scale – SMEs are far smaller than a city. Thus, any implementation is less risky and have better control. Build small but think big.

When Siemens AG plan to introduce Industry 4.0 to the Universities and Colleges, it shows that education is essential and must start at the very early stage to produce a new generation of engineers and software developers.

About the Author

Dr. Mazlan Abbas is currently the Co-Founder and CEO of FAVORIOT Sdn Bhd. He is an IOT Evangelist and a Thought Leader. He received an award as 50 Most Impactful Smart Cities Leaders by World CSR 2017. He is ranked No. 20th Thought Leader in IOT by 2014 Onalytics Report – “The Internet of Things – Top 100 Thought Leaders”, ranked Top 10 in IoT Top 100 Influencers by Postscapes 2016/2017, ranked Top 100 in Smart Cities Top Experts by Agilience Authority Index May 2016. You can reach him on LinkedIn or Twitter. Check all his presentation slides HERE.