Cyberjaya, Malaysia
IBM is preparing to close its Global Delivery Centre in Malaysia’s Cyberjaya at the end of May as part of an ongoing efficiency review.
“As part of IBM's continual review of the most efficient way to source our products and services, our global centre supporting client information technology infrastructure in Malaysia will close May 31,” an IBM spokesperson told Channel Asia.
The spokesperson stressed that there would be no impact to other IBM operations in Malaysia.
“IBM remains committed to Malaysia and will continue to focus on building its capacity and capability to help our clients on their hybrid cloud and AI [artificial intelligence] journey,” the spokesperson said.
IBM revealed in late 2011 it would invest RM1 billion over a six-year period to build its information technology (IT) Global Delivery Centre in Cyberjaya, located in the Sepang District, Selangor, creating up to 3,000 highly skilled jobs.
At the time of its initial announcement, IBM said the Cyberjaya centre would provide competency-based services, as well as multilingual capabilities, and be a Centre of Excellence (CoE) for software distribution and packaging.
"This centre is an outstanding example of a project that brings together economic development and highly skilled jobs in a way that can help transform our economy in the 21st century,” said then Prime Minister, Dato' Sri Haji Mohammad Najib bin Tun Haji Abdul Razak, at the time. “IBM has been a supportive partner to Malaysia’s efforts to build a competitive and modern shared services hub.
“While shared services centres are a valuable source of employment and income, they are also a source of less tangible but equally important benefits which includes the transfer of important skills and competencies to local knowledge workers as well as exposure to international best practices and standards,” he added.
IBM was one of the first technology companies to make a shared services investment in Cyberjaya, with the centre itself officially launched in early 2014.
In March this year, IBM revealed it had partnered up with Samsung Electronics and digital network operator M1 to launch what is being referred to as an ‘Industry 4.0 Studio,’ designed to be a testing ground for advanced 5G and other emerging technologies.
Broadly, the Singapore studio is designed to combine 5G connectivity with AI, hybrid cloud and edge computing capabilities to develop and test innovative Industry 4.0 solutions for enterprises in Singapore and across the region.
