Client Showcase: TM One Tier III Certification of Constructed Facility

OVERVIEW

TM One has a goal of enabling both private and public sector organisations to fully realise their digital opportunities. In line with its mother brand, Telekom Malaysia’s mantra of “Life Made Easier,” TM One illustrates the commitment to offering the best converged solutions and services to customers.

TM One is developing various innovative products and solutions on top of the core infrastructure as a means of accelerating convergence, with the goal of becoming the number one digital enabler for customers. The key lever to accomplish this goal is verticalisation throughout 2018-2020.

The first step in the verticalisation approach was the completion of the Experience Centre at Menara TM One, with this highly anticipated Experience Centre designed with state-of-the-art technologies to showcase a number of vertical solutions for customers. At 20,000 square feet, the Centre aims to help customers envision the future of their digital business transformation through inspirational, visionary and co-creational experiences. Customers can see new experiences and better understand the value that TM One brings as a trusted partner for both enterprises and public agencies throughout Malaysia.

The 20,000 square foot Uptime Institute Tier III certified data centre is built in Nusajaya Tech Park, Johor, the flagship technology park in Iskandar Malaysia. The Iskandar Puteri Data Centre (IPDC) is one of two major facilities planned by TM One to meet anticipated growth in data and hosting requirements. The carrier-neutral data centre will also house TM One’s international gateway that serves as a regional hub in providing services like end-to-end managed ICT services, BPO services, cloud services via digital marketplace and high-speed connectivity.

The IPDC, in tandem with the Klang Valley core data centre currently under construction and slated for a November, 2018 completion, is part of the company’s “twin core” strategy. Located 320 km apart, the two facilities will be linked with a fast fibre optic link to important business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities.

Both data centres will certified by Uptime Institute; IPDC is currently one of two such facilities to be awarded the Tier III Certification of Constructed Facility in Malaysia.

OPPORTUNITY

TM One began the organisation’s journey with Uptime Institute by achieving the Tier Certification of Design Documents, which is intended as a provisional verification ahead of the facility construction. The Tier III Certification of Constructed Facility award ensures that TM One’s world-class Data Centre facility is constructed to the same specifications as those laid out in the original facility design documents. With many of TM One’s customers in highly regulated sectors, the Tier Certification award assures customers that the facility is built to its intended performance, availability and reliability. The certification award also shows TM One customers that the data centre provides further confidence to our customers as it meets if not exceeds industry standards and affirms that TM One is the enabler for the digitisation journey for the industry.

Customer targets for the IPDC include:

• Singapore enterprise market (local and foreign owned)
• Businesses in highly transactional industries such as BFSI, Commercial; Energy industries utilising the Twin Core Data Centre as the DR site where data is stored.
• Singaporean manufacturers looking for an alternative manufacturing plant in Johor.
• Global carriers – less than 5ms latency (back and forth) to Singapore via the cloud connect with Equinix.

“We are committed to provide our customers with state-of-the-art business solutions, coupled with the best customer support service towards enhancing their business productivity and market competitiveness, in line with our promise of `Life and Business Made Easier,’ hence working with Uptime Institute to realise the aspiration was a very progressive journey.”

SOLUTION

TM One has the largest Tier III certified data centre in Malaysia, which is a testament to the continued efforts to facilitate the nation’s aspiration of becoming a world-class digital and smart services hub in the region. The TM One data centre meets the industry’s top standards and thus ensures high availability, reliability and advanced security and connectivity. TM One is committed to providing customers with state-of-the-art business solutions, coupled with the best customer support service towards enhancing their business productivity and market competitiveness.

The certification processes undertaken by the TM One team provided insights into the best practises applicable to the TM One data centre design and build approach. This allows further competitive differentiation and assurance of the high quality of the data centre.

Digital transformation is one of the key strategic goals for enterprises and the public sector across the region. An Asia Pacific end-user survey by Frost & Sullivan highlighted that 93% of the organisations surveyed considered themselves ready or have embarked on the digital transformation journey. Further result from the survey shows data analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) were rated as critical investments over 2017 – 2023 to the success of their digital transformation.

The drivers for these investments however vary significantly depending on the size and digital maturity of these organisations. To ensure desired business outcomes, enterprises are continuously exploring new technologies and investing in critical enablers such as Data Analytics and AI – as analytics itself has undergone a paradigm shift over the recent years – from data warehousing and mining to providing predictive business intelligence.

As organisations adjust to the rapidly changing digital lifestyle of consumers worldwide, they are discovering the importance of understanding and envisaging the impact of information generated from digital sources. Sophisticated analytic capabilities and intuitive visualisations are driving a profound change in how marketing, advertising, communications, supply chains, value chains, processes, transactions and deals are going to be accomplished.

Banking, Financial Services & Insurance (BFSI) and Energy sectors – Reinventing in the digital world

Amongst other verticals, leading BFSI and Energy companies are building their digital transformation strategies as the foundation for sustained growth. While, the BFSI sector has leveraged digital extensively over the years, there is continued focus on adopting technologies that can enable improved cost of operations, streamline processes and create better customer experience. Big Data and AI tools are being deployed extensively by banks in the region to ensure greater compliance as well as gain deeper customer insights to identify cross-sell opportunities. Besides, emerging technologies like blockchain, continue to transform the industry, in a way that may completely disrupt traditional banking in years to come.

Digital has also emerged as the key enabler in Energy sector, driven by the need to reduce costs, make faster and better decisions, and to increase operational productivity. Besides operational applications and digital asset management, Internet of Things (IoT) driven applications are creating a data-first approach to managing existing assets, supply chains, or customer relationships. Integrated deployment strategy with analytics is becoming the key for Energy companies to unlock value and potential.

The constant advancement of hardware and breakthrough Machine Learning (ML) algorithms has also unleashed a new wave of exponential progress that is set to affect every industry. True success in AI depends on access and timeliness of data, drawing insights and utility from the Internet of Things and Big Data paradigms. While all industries stand to benefit from this, the adoption is at different levels.

Telekom Malaysia’s (TM) end-to-end solutions and services capabilities create a compelling value proposition for enterprises and is also demonstrating a continued focus towards creating value for supporting enterprises in their transformation journey. TM’s offerings across software applications, network services, Tier-III Data Centre, Cloud services, high-performance computing infrastructure and managed services position it well to partner with enterprises in their digital journey.

Given TM’s strong focus towards offering digital solutions for both BFSI and Energy Industries, TM led a strategic initiative of inviting UK based AI companies (in partnership with British High Commission) in October 2018. Close and intensive engagements with these AI companies helped explore opportunities for collaboration and identify means to create greater value for BFSI and Energy organisations in the region.

Security and Scalability

The initial discussion started with an introduction on TM solutions and capabilities, as well as TM’s strong understanding of the Malaysian Market. Led by Wan Ahmad Kamal, Executive Vice President, Enterprise Business, TM One, the conversation deep-dived into how the nation’s Convergence Champion and No. 1 Converged Communications Services Provider, has transformed itself to fully support both BFSI and Energy industry’s transformation journey and continuously be relevant in the digital market.

He added that by having a deeper understanding of verticals, TM is better equipped at delivering solutions and services packed with high security standards catered to the need of the BFSI and Energy industries. TM, through its business solutions arm, TM One, assures securities aspects of both industries via its Twin Core Data Centre’s world class security capabilities.

TM One’s Twin Core Data centre, comprises two-state-of-the-art Data Centres, named as Iskandar Puteri Data Centre (IPDC) that is located at Iskandar Puteri in Johor and Klang Valley Data Centre in Cyberjaya, Klang Valley. IPDC is in compliance with various industry and security certification standards, including undergoing threat, vulnerability and risk assessment (TVRA), ISO27001, as well as PCI DSS¹. While KVDC, will be undergoing a few rounds of certification processes to complement its sister twin, after 3 months of operation once construction completes in early 2019.

Wan Ahmad Kamal added that with the Twin Core infrastructure in place, scalability, flexibility and agility will no longer be an issue. As speed to market becomes critical for both of these industries, the need to scale with technology that is constantly agile, capabilities and competencies that are always available and on top of an infrastructure that is robust through changing times, is crucial to maintain a business’ relevancy and competitiveness in the market.

He also commented that TM One has been involved in various infrastructure investments in order to support both of these industries. Among the solutions provided are TM One’s Multi-Cloud Services, Twin Core DC Disaster Recovery (DR) services and TM’s very own TM One ID Hub, or widely known as eKnowYourCustomer (eKYC) and Managed Security.

Driving Fundamental Change

Digital transformation entails the integration of digital technology into all areas of business, and these integrations would then drive the fundamental changes of how a business operates and deliver value to its customers.

Driving the discussion further, the AI vendors explained how their technology capabilities enable businesses to enhance their customer experience, optimise processes and operations as well as improve security in a highly data intensive environment. The discussion focused on how businesses are taking precautionary measures in their own digital transformation journey.

Everyone generally agreed that by going digital, the banking and insurance companies would require clear articulated strategy, funding, talent, agile ways of working and an internal culture that is willing to take risks in order to transform their businesses. As for the Energy industry, there is a need to optimise operational performance that would significantly reduce costs and minimise risks throughout the transformation process.

It is clear that to drive transformation; an organisation would require a thorough enhancement to the business’ organisational efficiency and increase the speed of delivery to its customers. Opinsta, one of the UK companies, showcased their capabilities in countering operational challenges. The company specialises in amplifying an organisation’s operational potential, in essence, by putting routine business processes into an automated and digitised mode.

Their capabilities include digitising and innovating customer-related business operations, with a multifunctional app that acts as a bridge to employees of all levels. It serves as a tool for efficient maintenance reporting and to minimise manual processes altogether.

As experts in rapid build, development and support in amplifying operational performance, they have to-date built nine (9) separate solutions that caters to specific business requirements.

Managing Risks

It was clear that digital has changed the way businesses operate over the years. Given its impact it has on businesses, the risk of human error would bound to happen along the way. Jazz Networks, another UK company involved in the discussion, explained that businesses need to mitigate human error from the source.

They continued to explain that their technology was created to address complexities of human behaviour and the countless times humans have indirectly bypassed security built to protect them. Their platform is equipped with an advanced learning systems that collects and analyses human behavioural data of users on the network, and detect flagged activities that is considered suspicious.

This platform gives the administrator a complete transparent view of the network – with a user interface that analyses the collected data to ensure end-to-end visibility for each activity happening on the network.

Jazz Networks takes accuracy and transparency seriously. Their platform enables users to view real-time data that will help them make benefitting business decisions each step of the way. And to top it off, their platform’s capability to scale together with user’s business needs, managed as a single entity through intelligent segmentation that dynamically split the network into logical partitions, enable any security policy and machine learning insights to apply to all end users’ computers.

Accelerating Businesses, and the Nation Forward

The discussion was effective as it leveraged on TM’s strong understanding of the Malaysian market and deep domain/ industry expertise. At the same time, the AI vendors brought forth technologies which would enhance customer experience, optimise business processes and operations as well as improve security in a highly data intensive environment.

In summary, all parties cohesively agreed that:

Digital has been driving the country’s digital economy for the last decade, and will continue on for the next. It is imperative for businesses to be on the right digital track, with the right technology, at the right time, or they will risk being irrelevant to the market. The need to be equipped with scalable capabilities, coupled with competent resource is also important for any business embarking on their digital transformation journey.

Frost & Sullivan, and TM One believe that engagements between leading service providers and emerging global technology vendors play a critical role towards accelerating development of innovative solutions and creating an ecosystem enabling sustained growth of organisations in the digital era.

Nishchal Khorana,
Director, Digital Transformation
Practice, APAC,
Frost & Sullivan

1. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS¹) is a set of security standards designed to ensure that ALL companies that accept, process, store or transmit credit card information maintain a secure environment. (https://www.pcicomplianceguide.org/faq/)

The agriculture industry faces a variety of challenges such as climate change, low agriculture productivity and yield, high operating cost, and health hazards to farmers. Leveraging digital technologies, TM One Smart Agriculture solutions are opening a promising ability to address the industry’s long challenges through the Smart Farming revolution.

TM One Smart Agriculture offers a diverse set of solutions to help farmers adapt to technological advancement. One of the features is a centralised monitoring dashboard that is integrated into the IoT-powered machines, which enables farmers a holistic view of their entire machinery performances and crop conditions.

Watch this video and know more about how TM One Smart Agriculture solutions can provide more efficient and sustainable farming practices.

To learn more about TM One Smart Agriculture, Contact us here.

According to Technologist Dr. Saiyid Abdallah Syahir Al-Edrus, General Manager for Cybersecurity Services and Product & Innovation at TM One, every organisation has the responsibility to ensure that their cybersecurity strategies run in tandem with their business growth.

“Organisations are responsible to protect and safeguard their business and customer data from cybercriminals. They need to have the right tools, processes and above all the right people, a team of cyber-intelligence experts or security analysts, in place at all times.”

BusinessToday spoke to the industry expert who has over 15 years of experience in consulting, network security, endpoint security, cloud security, application & data security, and cybersecurity risk management, and who has leveraged his expertise to help organisations protect their businesses from the increasing challenge of cyber-attacks and threats.

He pointed out that many Malaysian organisations of all sizes and across all industries faced gaps between their perceived capabilities and their actual performance when it came to ensuring their cybersecurity strategies addressed the needs of their business.

“Organisations may believe that they have taken all the necessary steps to protect their data and systems, when they have not. This false sense of security has resulted in major global corporations and regional government agencies falling victim to massive security breaches.”

Dr. Saiyid also noted that organisations tended to become complacent. “Organisations often take for granted that they will not be the target for cyber-attacks, because they feel that they are not managing critical infrastructure and sensitive data. However, attackers will target any organisation that can provide them with a lucrative payoff.”

Lack of resources was a third factor, he added.

“Most organisations may not have the budget to invest in robust cybersecurity measures or the necessary expertise/personnel. Instead they often rely on general IT support. Unfortunately, cybersecurity itself encompasses a very huge spectrum and domain, for which you need specific skills, experience and knowledge.”

“Having an external partner that can provide professional and advisory services will help enterprises navigate and manage their cybersecurity strategy.”

Dr. Saiyid noted that while TM One, the enterprise and government sector arm of Telekom Malaysia Berhad is fully capable of providing a complete outsourced cybersecurity service to its customers, his preferred approach involved a hybrid solution between organisations and their cybersecurity partner.

“Cybersecurity strategies must be based on the organisation’s needs and priorities. My recommendation would be that policies are governed in-house, where the client dictates and determines which security services are needed and cybersecurity framework the organisation should adopt.”

Shifting Resources Purposefully

Responding to an IDC Enterprise Services Sourcing Survey, which stated that over 70% of Malaysian organisations recognised that security is not their core expertise, Dr. Saiyid pointed out that this view stems from understandable reasons – cybersecurity is generally underfunded and under-resourced.

“Businesses are often challenged to find and retain the right talents to manage digitalisation, cybersecurity, and innovation within their organisations. IT departments are now expected to support new revenue streams, on top of managing operational efficiency and reducing cost. Business leaders find it difficult to understand the ROI of IT security, and are more focused on growing their digital revenue – especially in the wake of COVID-19.”

As a result, meeting the need to secure these digital platforms can weigh on businesses’ priorities, requiring them to divert limited budgets and resources from opportunities to risk avoidance, Dr. Saiyid highlighted.

“In large organisations, managing cybersecurity efficiently requires a significant amount of resources and effort. Aside from the need to secure a well-equipped and complex IT environment, setting up a dedicated team means organisations need to invest in the technology and put together the security controls for the entirety of their IT environment. This can prove difficult as there is a marked scarcity of cybersecurity professionals, not only in Malaysia but internationally.”

With these realities, individual organisations should decide whether they want to outsource a certain portion of their cybersecurity responsibility or outsource the whole function.

“For instance, they can choose to retain identity management, which is the heart of IT operations and sits with Active Directory and domain controllers, while the rest, such as perimeter security, firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, or the 24/7 monitoring of the overall environment can be outsourced to the experts, like TM One.”

Service providers such as TM One can also provide organisations with round-the-clock protection, ensuring that their systems are always safe and secure. Furthermore, outsourcing cybersecurity can help organisations free up their internal resources so that they can focus on other areas of business.

TM One’s Professional Services supports organisations to assess their cybersecurity capabilities, and provides consulting and advisory services to help them strengthen their capabilities to respond to potential threats.

Specifically, TM One’s Cyber Defence Centre (CYDEC) is an end-to-end cybersecurity service which includes cybersecurity consulting or professional services to guide organisations carve out the best cybersecurity solutions that fit their needs and budget.

Through continuous support from TM One’s Security Operations Centre (SOC) and CyberAssurance services, organisations can benefit from managed security services to discover and address potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities, leverage solutions that help strengthen the readiness of in-house security teams, test systems to identify exploitable gaps, and monitor their broader business ecosystem to detect attacks or indicators of compromised systems and data more efficiently.

This includes Security Posture Assessment (SPA), Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT) services and Digital Attack Simulation either as a one-time engagement or a retainer programme.

Organisations who are interested to learn more about how TM One can help enhance their cybersecurity profile can visit its website at https://www.tmone.com.my/solutions/cybersecurity-services/.

This article was first published in Business Today