KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 5 (Bernama)-- SME Corporation Malaysia and Microsoft Malaysia on Monday announced a landmark agreement to transform Malaysian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with cloud computing technology using the Office 365 productivity suite.
Microsoft Malaysia managing director Ananth Lazarus said Microsoft would reinvest US$13 per Office 365 seat, which could see an expected investment by the company of up to RM20.8 million for the first year alone, if adopted by 50,000 SMEs in the country.
The Office 365 package offered to SME Corp's clients combines the power of Office Web applications with enterprise-grade e-mail, shared documents, instant messaging, video and web conferencing (Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online) in an always up-to-date cloud service that is backed by Microsoft, for only US$6 per user per month.
"We'll reinvest RM41 per year to every user that subscribes to Office 365 through SME Corp. Lowering the cost of getting to the cloud is something that we focus on. Through our partners and equal systems, we are looking at training and developing SMEs," Ananth told a press conference after the launch of the landmark agreement with Microsoft today.
The partnership will allow Malaysian SMEs to realise business and competitive advantage through using the Microsoft Office 365 to create, edit, store and share their ideas and work in the cloud.
SME Corp chief executive officer Datuk Hafsah Hashim said SMEs have to grow at about 8.5 per cent annually in order to contribute about 41 per cent to Malaysia's Gross Domestic Product by 2020.
"For us to be able to achieve about 41 per cent contribution from SMEs, they have to grow unexceptionally different. They have to grow at about 8.5 per cent which means they must have the leapfrog growth.
"To be able to do that, we need to ensure that they are growing on the premise of innovation, creativity and higher productivity.
"Through higher efficiency and higher productivity, we would be able to achieve this extraordinary growth coming through SMEs. One of the ways is to encourage SMEs to use ICT," she said.
Currently, there are over one million SMEs in Malaysia that employ 56 per cent of the nation's workforce and generate 32 per cent of the GDP.
Hafsah also foresees that the SMEs would be able to face the current economic situation in Europe and withstand the competition as 80 per cent of them are domestic-driven.
"The external market is now quite uncertain but 80 per cent of the SMEs are still very much in the domestic market. As long as we are able to create the right kind of opportunities for the SMEs, they would be able to withstand the competition.
"With the FTAs (free trade agreements) and competition now coming knocking at their doors, we are preparing them so that they will be more efficient and more productive," she added.
-- BERNAMA
