Whale Cloud has signed a three-year BSS contract with Malaysia’s Sarawak Digital Economy Corporation (SDEC), a government-owned company entrusted to lead the implementation of Sarawak’s Digital Economy initiatives.

The deal is aimed at accelerating the digital transformation of Sarawak, diversifying the telecommunication services available to the public. Sarawak’s Government aims to turn the state – the largest in Malaysia – into a modern and leading digital economy and society by 2030 under the Digital Economy Strategy.

As a company wholly-owned by the Sarawak Government, SEDC is acting to extend internet coverage for full network penetration; in the meantime, implementing an agile, reliable BSS solution is of great importance to enable the digital lifestyle of people in Sarawak.

Whale Cloud will deploy a full BSS suite, including charging, billing, and customer relationship management (CRM). The uniformity and automation of the system will streamline operations, introduce diversified, secure and trusted service faster, and deliver a consistent customer experience across all touchpoints.

“Providing high-speed connectivity and digital services is the foundation to create a better environment for growth in Sarawak. We are delighted to collaborate with Whale Cloud, in terms of leveraging the capabilities and functionality of its BSS suite to offer and optimise services to assist businesses and the public to adopt new technologies and to enhance efficiency through services and solutions offered by Whale Cloud,” said Ir Ts En Sudarnoto Osman, Chief Executive Officer of SDEC.

“We are proud to support SDEC and Sarawak Government on its way to a digital economy….The deployment of Whale Cloud BSS Suite will ensure SDEC serves its Telco customers better, and enable more essential services to citizens in Sarawak in the utility sector,” said Ben Zhou, CEO International of Whale Cloud.

The Huawei Intelligent Finance Summit for Africa 2023 has just ended in South Africa, and Africa’s technology press is reporting on the unveiling of what Huawei calls its Non-Stop Banking initiative.

The initiative was launched at the event in Cape Town, where the company said it plans to facilitate ‘a digital future of non-stop services, non-stop development, and non-stop innovation’. It also called for increased co-operation between the technology and banking industries to facilitate innovation in financial services across Africa.

Of course, highlighting the likelihood of exponential growth in spending on technology by the banking sector is nothing new. Nor is the argument that artificial intelligence, big data analytics and the cloud will see the largest investment. Banks have clear incentives to automate, digitise, and become more data-driven and intelligent, assuming, as Huawei points out, that  digital investments will reduce operational costs, allow the development of new products, and enhance relationships with customers, resulting in increased revenues.

But what about Africa? Well, Jason Cao, CEO of Huawei Global Digital Finance, quoted by ITWeb Africa, said: “Huawei is dedicated to helping its African financial customers address challenges and accelerate changes across six fields: shifting from transaction to digital engagement; cloud-native and agile businesses; data democratisation; secure and reliable infrastructure; hybrid multi-cloud and Lego-style modular services; and automated and predictable operation.”

In Africa, he added, there’s an even greater imperative for banks to embrace digitisation, as it allows for greater financial inclusion.

An audience that included key industry opinion leaders, as well as executives from major banks across Africa, heard this and will no doubt be keen to know more. It will therefore be interesting to see how and whether the Non-Stop Banking initiative translates into a detailed strategy.

By John Denemark, SVP and GM, Carrier Provisioning, TransUnion

A growing number of enterprises are using software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) to deliver the capacity and agility required in today’s complex, diverse networks to support technologies such as cloud services, mobility, edge computing, and the Internet of Things (IoT). As a result, SD-WAN is experiencing significant growth and creating increased … [visit site to read more]

Keep up-to-date with all the latest news, articles, event and product updates posted on Developing Telecoms.
Subscribe to our FREE weekly email newsletters for the latest telecom info in developing and emerging markets globally.

Four international infrastructure items to catch up with from the middle of this week: … [visit site to read more]

Keep up-to-date with all the latest news, articles, event and product updates posted on Developing Telecoms.
Subscribe to our FREE weekly email newsletters for the latest telecom info in developing and emerging markets globally.

Keep up-to-date with all the latest news, articles, event and product updates posted on Developing Telecoms.
Subscribe to our FREE weekly email newsletters for the latest telecom info in developing and emerging markets globally.

EXA Has been busy in southern and southeastern Europe this week, with two interesting infrastructure announcements this week. They are leveraging Infinera’s gear on the Trans Adriatic Express, and they have been tapped by FibreConnect to build backbone infrastructure. … [visit site to read more]

FunP Innovation Group, a Taiwan-based digital advertising sales and advertising technology conglomerate, has reportedly secured US$3.12 million in additional investments to fuel a smart retail and cloud drive into the Indonesian market.

The company received the support of Ennoconn Corporation, a global leader in integrated cloud management services, industrial internet of things (IIoT) and embedded technology, in the funding round.

FunP Innovation Group (BVI) controls cacaFly, a leading digital advertising sales consulting agency, and Tenmax.io, an advertising technology development. Both have spearheaded earlier initiatives in Indonesia, including a joint venture to form a data-driven digital marketing agency for Indonesia, a partnership with Google Cloud to launch a Cloud AI+ Solution Centre in Taiwan and a partnership to develop a one-stop digital advertising solution.

FunP has said that it will use the extra capital injection to develop and roll out smart retail and cloud services solutions for the Indonesian market and other Asia Pacific countries, under its cacaFly business unit and in a partnership with Ennoconn.

Quoted in a number of local reports Brian Yang, funP group Co-founder, and Chief Strategy Officer, says: “Ennoconn’s capabilities in AIoT, together with our own in cloud computing and marketing technology, equals the opportunity to develop pioneering retail solutions for Indonesia and beyond.” 

There is a wider context to this announcement, however. Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo has expressed his intention to focus on the digital transformation of the economy through investments in technology like cloud computing and 5G, along with a green city that will harness smart technologies, renewable energy, and IoT. CacaFly, in collaboration with Ennoconn, has committed to help in these initiatives.