Wong Sai Wan published this artice in the STAR which essentially laments the poor state of our internet infrastructure. The thing about Malaysia is we have been conditioned over time that it is good to pay a lot of money for mediocre quality/service. We see it in our internet, cars, insurance, you name it. But of all, the lack of internet speed is what will send us back to the dark ages and I have to blame the government and regulators for this sorry state of affairs.
The fastest growing area in technology is SAAS or software as a service. It is esitmated to be growing by 25% a year. Examples of SaaS companies are like salesforce.com, basecamp, wufoo, kashflow and even internet banking. The proposition is that with fast internet, software can be delivered like any other utility. But key to this growth is SPEED.
As a Malaysian based businees, we are unable to capitalize on the benefits of Saas as our speeds are too slow. Thus we have to invest in overpriced hardware, have IT people on our payroll to manage all this hardware etc while our competitors are just paying for usage. The cost and speed advantage they have over us is phenomenal.
We are currently working on a SaaS project www.QuickSchools.com which is a fresh approach to school management. While we have been trailblazing in the US market , it is simply too painful and slow to be working in KL. What we can do in under a minute in the US takes us 5 minutes here. That is a huge competitive disadvantage to have.
The governemnt needs to wake up from dreamland and embrace the 21st century. Our brain drain is not simply a matter of better pay. Productivity and competitive advantage also counts. If left as it is, our company of 20 will soon end up in Singapore and if not, then the US simply because of internet speed. And when that happens we will be ‘branded’ by the government as unpatriotic instead of frustrated. Thus the real problem never gets solved. So MCMC and the Governement, please listen to Mr Wong Sai Wan and do something about our internet speeds.
