KUALA LUMPUR: For Time dotCom (TIME) group executive vice president (enterprise division) Kit Au, the word ‘choice’ is one that paves the road to success.

“The TIME group’s strategy as one of Malaysia’s leading cloud providers essentially boils down to providing ‘choice’ for customers, and not for them to be ‘locked-in’ to any particular cloud provider,” said Kit.

Multi-cloud architectures comprise multiple cloud computing and storage services in a single network architecture.

“The distribution of cloud assets, software, applications, and more across several cloud environments often results in customers being able to realise lower total-cost-of-ownership (TCO),” added Kit.

This strategy led to TIME acquiring AVM Cloud Sdn Bhd (AVM), a fully local company and known within the industry as one of the leading VMware service providers in Southeast and North Asia, earlier this year. AVM’s extensive product suite ranges from private cloud offerings to system integration services via its subsidiary Integrated Global Solutions Sdn Bhd (IGS).

“We at TIME believe that, as customers accelerate their digital transformation and journey to the cloud, connectivity will increase in terms of its importance,” explained Kit.

“This requires a reliable, secure, efficient, cost-optimised and a flexible cloud-enabled network, and that essentially is our other value proposition for our enterprise customers.”

Listed on the Main Market of Bursa Malaysia since 2001, TIME has a market capitalisation of some RM8.5 billion as of July 2021. Traditionally, the group is known as a telecommunications provider with businesses spanning fixed-line, global networks and data centres catering for the wholesale, enterprise and retail segments.

The group today owns and operates a Malaysia-wide network, while also being the first Malaysian teleco to also own fibre network infrastructure in neighbouring Singapore. In addition, it owns four international submarine cable systems connecting Malaysia to the United State and Europe, while its extended network coverage footprint has been expanded to Vietnam and Thailand through its investments in CMC Telecommunications and Symphony Communications PCL, respectively.

Meanwhile, AVM CEO David Chan said that multi-hybrid cloud is gaining traction in Malaysia.

“Essentially, to reap the rewards of true digital transformation, visionary organisations are partnering with dependable service providers that assure them of high performance, comprehensive, secure and swift services for their cloud journeys,” said David.

“TIME, collectively with AVM, can be that service provider. With the respective track records of both companies, which are part of the same family now, we are in a strong position to help customers succeed in their digital transformation and cloud journeys,” said David.

“The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation among businesses as they race to build resilience, agility, and new revenue streams,” he explained, before expressing his belief that cloud adoption is also set to climb even further this year. “With TIME’s backing, we are also aiming high of transitioning entire industries to more productive ways of doing business.”

David also shared that AVM is set to accelerate cloud adoption within TIME’s existing customer base, while further expanding AVM’s market reach due to TIME’s regional footprint: “Together, the TIME-AVM group has progressively strengthened its value proposition for public, private or hybrid cloud deployments.”

‘With a multi-cloud approach, businesses would enjoy lower cost of tapping into public clouds, while maintaining the different benefits that come with on-premises architecture and private cloud options,” said David.

This is also because a hybrid cloud provides an alternative for storing sensitive data: A company might provide services via a public cloud while keeping sensitive information on a private cloud.

“A hybrid cloud solution works best when a single set of management tools, skills and workflows can extend seamlessly across consistent infrastructure that is common to both on-site, public cloud, and hosted environments,” he added.

Multi-cloud solutions play an important role when businesses seek to operate across two or more clouds that do not have a consistent infrastructure. These solutions are designed to help manage workloads that run on the native infrastructure of public clouds like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud among others.

“Managing a multi-cloud environment can be a challenge for organisations, as well as increased costs and protecting workloads. Improving operational governance and automating core processes are also high priorities to solve,” said David.

“This is where TIME-AVM come in to help customers with these concerns.”

AVM is one of Malaysia’s leading cloud computing providers, and one renowned within the local industry for leveraging VMware’s various cloud and virtualisation solutions.

The company was Malaysia’s first VMware authorised consultant and premium partner. It is also known for having implemented the largest virtual storage area network (VSAN) in Malaysia.

Source: Time dotCom Berhad and AVM Cloud Sdn Bhd

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