Four Receives PIKOM ICT Leadership Awards

PETALING JAYA – PIKOM, the National ICT Association of Malaysia, honoured two organizations and two individuals at the PIKOM ICT Leaderships Awards 2008 at its Annual Dinner last Friday (Nov 14).

Multimedia Development Corporation CEO Dato’ Badlisham Ghazali and World IT and Services Alliance (WITSA) Chairman Dato’ Dan E Khoo were both the announced as joint-recipients of the PIKOM ICT Man of the Year Award. AirAsia Bhd received the PIKOM ICT Organisation Excellence Award while Microsoft Malaysia Sdn Bhd received the PIKOM Member Excellence Award.

The awards were presented by the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation Datuk Dr Maximus Johnity Ongkili at the PIKOM Annual Dinner 2008 in Petaling Jaya today. Receiving the awards were Puan Yasmin Mahmood (for Microsoft Malaysia Sdn Bhd), Dato’ Sri Tony Fernandes (for AirAsia Bhd), Dato Dan E Khoo, and Ms Ng Wan Peng (for Dato’ Badlisham Ghazali).
PIKOM introduces the PIKOM ICT Leadership Awards, which is intended to honour and give due recognition to outstanding leaders in the ICT industry and user community.

Prior to this, PIKOM has been organizing the PIKOM-Computimes ICT Awards since 1989 (later evolved to PIKOM National ICT Awards) to honour outstanding Malaysian ICT companies, products and individuals in the field of ICT for their contribution to the industry and society. Beginning this year, the awards have been merged with the MSC-APICTA Awards.

For the category of PIKOM ICT Organisation Excellence Award, the recipient must be an outstanding organisation that have successfully utilised ICT to run the operation of its organisation effectively and created an environment that accelerates the all pervasive use of ICT across all segments of the community. AirAsia certain fulfills the criteria.

The success of AirAsia as the region’s leading budget airline is reflected not only in its fast growing passenger volume but also from the ICT perspective. It is very successful in the use of ICT as a core business model, and it casts a major influence over all segments of society in creating a compelling reason for the use of Internet booking and e-Commerce.
AirAsia has, almost literally overnight in corporate terms, demonstrated the strategic value of ICT to increase the competitiveness of businesses, promoted online booking, and helped dispel the myth that people are afraid to shop online because of network security fears.

The PIKOM Member Excellence Award honours the PIKOM member for the achievements or breakthroughs made by the organisation. The member must demonstrate significant progress made in the past 12 months that includes growth in revenue, profit, market access or technological innovation. It must also clearly demonstrate its contribution to the development of the ICT industry in Malaysia.

Microsoft has been in Malaysia for the past 15 years. During this period, it is estimated that Microsoft Malaysia has invested more than RM200 million to nurture and further grow Malaysia’s local software economy with continued annual investments of some RM26 million.

Microsoft Malaysia recently launched the BizSpark program with an anticipated investment of RM300 million over 3 years to accelerate success of local start-up software development companies.

Microsoft Malaysia is a true supporter of the Malaysian ICT industry as reflected in its US1 million pinnacle sponsorship of the World Congress on IT 2008, and its bridging the digital divide in Malaysia through activities under its Unlimited Potential Program as well as support of other community-related programs such as PIKOM very own Projek M.A.IN PC.

The PIKOM ICT Man of the Year, meanwhile, honours the individual, organisation, product or service that creates the greatest impact on the entire ICT Industry in Malaysia, bringing it to the next level of development, prominence or visibility, and impacts the overall competitiveness of the country as a whole through the use of ICT and/or as viewed by ICT related entities.

The judges had a very difficult time and based on the criteria felt that it is only appropriate to recognize both Dato’ Badlisham and Dato’ Khoo as joint-recipients of the Man of the Year Award.
In essence, Dato’ Badlisham has successfully strengthened the MSC foundation originally set up in 1996 to its coming of age party represented by the WCIT2008, to the current positioning of the Malaysia’s MSC in the global spheres
Dato Badlisham joined MDeC in January 2006 and immediately set about to accelerate the roll out of MSC Phase 2 that was launched from 2003. In a short span of just 2 and a half years, he revitalized and re-branded Phase 2 of MSC Malaysia into MSC 2.0, extended Cybercity status to the northern and southern regions comprising Kuala Lumpur Sentral, Penang Cybercity1, Kulim Hitech Park in Kedah, Melaka International Trade Centre, MSC Cyberport in Johor, Meru Raya in Perak, i-City in Selangor, Menara TM and Mid Valley City in Kuala Lumpur, and Bandar Utama Cybercentre in Petaling Jaya.
Over the period, he approved another 700 companies with MSC-status, bringing the total number of MSC-status companies to 2,000. The combined export value of MSC-status companies has exceeded RM5.5 billion this year.
Dato’ Badlisham not only stayed focused on attracting ICT FDIs into the country, he also initiated a drive for Direct Domestic Investments DDIs to encourage local Malaysian ICT companies to invest for growth in Malaysia and overseas.
Dato’ Khoo was seconded from the MDeC, where he was the Vice President of Business Strategy and Transformation, to be the Chief Executive Officer of WCIT2008 Sdn Bhd, the company formed to organize WCIT 2008.

As CEO, he turned WCIT 2008 into an event that was declared by WITSA, the franchise holder of WCIT, as the best ever in its 30-year history. Key highlights of WCIT2008 include garnering US$11.12 million in-cash and in-kind sponsorship from 81 institutional partners. The event attracted 3,313 delegates, compared to about 1,800 in 2006. The exhibition was over 100,000 square feet of space and attracted over 50,000 trade visitors. At the event, a total of over 1,023 structured business-to-business meetings with projected business opportunities worth U$3.6 billion were facilitated.

As a result of these accomplishments, Dato’ Khoo was elected as the new WITSA Chairman for the 2008/2010 period, effectively bringing the “ICT equivalent of the United Nations Headquarters” to Malaysia, and putting Malaysia on the global ICT map.