Malaysia is currently at the same level of most countries in the region in its effort to develop a smart city, following the footsteps of the countries that had already established the concept such as the US, Sweden, Singapore, Switzerland, South Korea and Japan.

Barry Lerner, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd’s regional CIO for the South-Pacific office, said as a nation, Malaysia understands that all agencies need to work together and how a smart city’s concept will involve a lot of intervention data that needs mass participation.

“I see Malaysia is slowly beginning to understand the concept of a smart city. Although it is still at the beginning, we understand that the concept is very complicated.

“We need to have the correct vision and message and the participation of all ministries and agencies for this, and to understand the benefit of having a smart city — a concept that is unlike anything we have done before,” he told reporters after the launch of Huawei Customer Solution Innovation and Integration Experience Centre (CSIC) in Cyberjaya yesterday.

On the other hand, Huawei has ranked Malaysia at 42nd place in terms of its Global Connectivity Index (GCI) 2015, under the followers cluster, together with countries like Spain, Italy, Portugal, Chile, Czech Republic, China, Russia, Brazil and Poland.

The GCI 2015 benchmarked 50 economies in terms of connectivity, information and communications technology (ICT) usage, and digital transformation, providing an indicator of which countries are best poised for development and growth, and an ICT planning reference for policymakers looking to embrace the digital economy.

Huawei said overall, the GCI 2015 shows that 20% growth in ICT investment will grow a country’s gross domestic product by 1%.

“It also identifies five enablers of digital transformation — data centres, cloud services, big data, broadband, and the Internet of Things. These technologies represent the targets that stakeholders should focus their investments on in order to most efficiently transform their economies for the digital age,” it said.

Meanwhile, Huawei has launched its CSIC in Cyberjaya in its bid to build on its commitment to Malaysia’s transformation into a smart digital nation.

Huawei Technologies (M) Sdn Bhd CEO Abraham Liu said in order to achieve smart digital nation and regional ICT hub statuses, the need for the industry to be smarter and faster is pivotal now more than ever.

“CSIC is an integrated ICT experience platform that will boost the transformation speed of the way we govern, conduct businesses, live, work and play,” Liu said.

Huawei’s CSIC is a global network of dedicated and global innovative experience labs that allows interested parties to experience, architect, validate and build ICT solutions and applications.

The showcase at CSIC aggregates over 120 global reference applications and services from Huawei’s clients and research and development labs.

“Building on Malaysia’s ICT hub aspirations, Huawei’s new Cyberjaya installation will serve strategically as the South-Pacific regional innovation centre,” said Liu.